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one bite

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.


I love the above African proverb. The first time I heard it was in middle school. I thought it was dumb, along the lines of a first grade knock-knock joke. You know the kind, where the kid comes up and the joke makes no sense whatsoever (Knock-knock. Who's There? Orange. Orange who? Pineapple.) but the kid doubles over in laughter and then says "Isn't that the best joke EVER?"  But then I reached adulthood. And now I get it. 

So today I'm just going to share one bite of life. Not quite two weeks ago Bobby went to get the oil changed in his van. The young man decided to squat and drive with the hand controls (as opposed to using the folding chair I keep in the back so I can drive with the foot pedals when people block us in). Bear in mind this vehicle has zero resistance steering (meaning the slightest touch makes the wheels turn) and one hand control manages BOTH the brake and the gas. While Bobby is watching, he hears the van VROOM  (it's much funnier to hear him make the noise, unless he's talking about me driving his van), and then plunge off the edge of the mechanic's lift and into the wall. The mechanic was okay. Bobby's van, not so much. The funny thing is he's been able to drive it the first week while we waited on all the parts to come in before taking it Monday morning and no one has noticed there was anything wrong, despite several thousands worth of damage. We're in a rental van until the repairs are all done, which means I've been driver. And today was Rules Review Commission day.

Thankfully it was a short meeting, and while I found it very interesting and educational, I found myself wanting to verbally comment on a few situations that happened. Yes, I am Marie Guyton's granddaughter. But I refrained, and peppered Bobby with questions on the way home. (And for those who will ask, a state agency had a delay in following all the required steps for submitting rules, and there was a disagreement about allowing an extension for a subset of their rules or not. It's more detailed than that, but that's a very simplified summary.)

So we're now back home, and hoping the van will be ready tomorrow. I've really enjoyed driving a new van with new features, but I've also really missed Bobby driving. We laugh sometimes because I forget he can't open the doors on this van and I've stood there a minute or two waiting for him to open the lift and get in. The tie downs in the new van are SO much easier to use than when I have to drive our van. I'm seriously tempted to call and see just how much a set of the new ones cost or if they'd do a trade-in between the levers we have and the new kind. But hopefully he will continually to do well and there won't be a need for me to drive his van again for quite some time.

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