maybe you should drive.

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6 november 1997

10:46 p.m.

Dear diary, It's been a crazy week. Then again, is that ever not the case? My mom has "walking pneumonia." I still haven't worked out exactly what that means, but it sounds bad enough that I don't really want to. The "walking" makes it sound like the focus of a bad horror movie... and it might as well be. Over the weekend, she'd attempted driving in her delirious, drug-induced state, and reversed at what had to be at least 10 mph into a concrete pillar at Pearlridge. So, I've spent the last few days doing her grocery shopping and shuttling her to and from the body shop in `Aiea, where she has twice now decided to get them to fix something else when we were supposed to just get her car back. Much as I love her, these last few days have reinforced why I'm struggling to live on my own. Her latest campaign seems to be to improve my driving, mostly through incessant criticism as I haul her the million or so miles out to Mililani. (I guess I'll have to face it -- I'm becoming a townie. These days, anything past Pearl City is the 'boonies.') I guess she's forgotten that she taught me to drive -- an ugly, ugly experience I don't care to recount -- and all my "bad habits" came from enduring her driving for sixteen years. She's the only person I've ever known to get into an accident with a bus. A parked bus. So I forget to signal. And I make illegal turns. And I speed (how can you not speed coming down the H-2?). And I tailgate. At least I wave when I merge and let people in, carefully keeping my carma in balance. There's a bright side, I guess. Since she's not satisfied with my behavior behind the wheel, she's no longer thinking of trying to replace my trusty (usually) tank with a matchbox. December 1 brings an early Christmas for the people in my building. I got a happy, almost congratulatory letter -- a form letter, I imagine -- from my landlord. With the rental market so weak now, they're lowering the rent by $50 a month to stay competitive. They're having a hard time keeping "good tenants" such as myself. Yup, it's a form letter all right. This "good tenant" is generally a week late with rent, locks herself out at least once a month, and has recently taking to playing "Duran Duran" in the dead of night. It's true, though. There are fifty or so units in my building, and I'd bet about ten are vacant right now. Even Derek's building has had a "for rent" sign up for as long as he's lived there. His landlord has even taken to housing Japanese tourists who only stay for a couple of months for a stretch. I suspect it's because of this slump that my late payments are grudgingly tolerated, even though they technically fine $70 if they don't get my check by the fifth. It's too bad I'm already pushing my luck. I'm tempted to ask if I can keep a cat. I think I did pretty good on my midterms. I dare say I kicked ass. My papers both got A's, even though I actually turned one in with a bunch of random notes ("conclusion/something about L. theory") accidentally left on the last page. My lowest grade was an 86 in Hawaiian. I actually breezed through the written portion... unlike most of my classmates, I've got sentence structure and the technical stuff down pat. I fumbled too much during the oral, though. I didn't practice, and I tripped over practically every line. My kumu gave 10 points' worth of extra credit for remembering Hawaiian proverbs, though, and I got the full 10. Of course, that means my grade would've been 76. And that means I really better work on my speaking. "Mr. Bean" opens tomorrow. 'Nuff said.