Eve Passed Her Driving Test!

 This is such an immense relief, I can't even tell you. Like I said, we were confident that she is a capable, safe driver, but the fact that Covid postponed first the in-car part of her Driver's Ed and then her test made this all very fraught. She was worried that I was going to drive her an hour and a half and then she'd fail. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to get another test soon and she'd miss out on being able to drive her last summer before university. She was worried she'd throw up on the way there. It was a big giant worry-fest.

The night before she said "I have something I do that I think is normal but is probably weird but you have to find it cute because you're my mom". She said she has soap that she uses the night before every test because it's gold and sparkly and she feels like it's good luck. I told her this is not a remotely mockable thing - anyone who has access to soap that is gold and sparkly would be an idiot not to avail themselves of its possibly miraculous properties. I also told her about the time we glued a tortilla chip back together in my student house because it was the Lucky Tortilla Chip that was clearly the reason the Blue Jays were still winning and someone accidentally broke it. 

To distract ourselves the night before we watched a couple of episodes of the Really Bad Fireman show I'm currently watching. I'm finding that I can't deal with anything challenging, insightful, dense or really with any redeeming qualities right now viewing-wise, so I just keep finding terrible shows with bad writing and lots of episodes (me: finds a show with a bunch of seasons and episodes so I can just put one on whenever I want to watch something and it will last a long time. Also me: watches two-hundred-and-forty-hours of tv straight and then feels annoyed that I'm out of show). Eve enjoys heckling the ridiculous situations and dialogue: "Why the hell do people call out a criminal for being a criminal and then turn their back on the criminal? OBVIOUSLY they're going to get clocked by the bad guy!" (this literally happened TWO EPISODES IN A ROW). We briefly appreciated that, aside from two obviously hunky leads, some of the firemen were less conventionally good-looking. Then we realized that every single female character is ridiculously, insanely, stupidly hot and were mad all over again. 

Eve said when she started out her foot was shaking so hard it was impossible to maintain a constant speed - "It was, like forty-eight! thirty-seven! fifty-three!" I remember from singing exams how frustrating it is when you are actually unable to control your body. Once she got over that, though, the instructor said she aced everything else. Her parallel parking was flawless, apparently. 

I was completely calm and positive and supportive on the drive there, and then when she drove out of the parking lot with the tester, I lost it. I texted Jody (HI JODY) from my picnic table and told her I was freaking out and she CALLED ME immediately and talked to me until Eve got back and got out of the car and yelled I DID IT, and this is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me. 

We had read that the route in Cornwall goes by the Dairy Queen, so I said "good, bring Lactaid, we'll go to the Dairy Queen to celebrate when you're done." And we did, except I realized as we were headed there that it was only 10:20 a.m. and it might not even be open yet and if it was it was a weird time of the day for ice cream.

Did we let that stop us?

Reader, we did not.