Working Title: License to Flaunt

Possible Alternates: "I'm on a roll", "Wheely happy", "I'm a happy jalopy", "Driving my own Destiny" or my favorite "Finally oh fricking finally I got the same dang piece of paper (soon to be plastic card) that every other kid and their sister and 4th cousin twice removed got when they were 16 and I some how managed not to until I'm 31 but it's all cool now cause they can go suck it and the cars they rode in on!"
Today I drive free.
Today I can go down to the car and slip the key into the ignition and roll smoothly down the driveway with nothing but my own off key humming to accompany me.
Not that I want to, it's just knowing that I CAN. The devil inside, who so often voices it's own opinion, prompts me to admit I suppose I could have done that any time but let me add that now I can LEGALLY. You know, it's a lot like illegally only less nerve wracking and less bail.
Today I got my license and didn't slobber grateful kisses all over the testing lady.
Today I swallowed fear like it was made of cookie dough, jamming it down into the very pit of my stomach where I chained it, lashed it, tied it up with guts and a sprinkling of positive attitude that was 10 months in the making.
Little motes of good thoughts and pink globs of husbandly love fluttered about my head as my cheeks flamed, my lips dried and my eyelashes tried to once again assault my own eyeballs, all part of a scheme to undermine my confidence. But I willed the panic away, I ignored the sweat, I smiled at the other DMV-ers and not a single snarl escaped my lips when we literally waited an eternity for my turn with the tester.
AN ETERNITY, to most it appeared just an hour, but my husband and I know different, it was an eternity. And it was a test beyond the test.
The focus of the day was the behind the wheel test of course but the Universe was also there, testing my will, my spirit and my resolve. I am pretty sure that as the DMV-er's kids shrieked like demented monkeys, running about the front of the building as their parents idly watched, that the universe was also watching me. Perhaps in it's eyes I was the demented monkey screeching kid who should know better than to disobey it's parents. It kept a keen eye on me to see what I was gonna do, was I going to crack and run away screaming...or stay and take the dreaded test?
I saw it, to every one else it was but a single shiny black crow perched on the edge of the DMV building, but our gazes locked and I knew it was actually the Universe. I may not get an officially stamped piece of paper at the end of IT'S test but I would get to wave the finger of my choice in fear's face.
The universe made that eternity, that endless stretch of time happen. Poking and prodding at my fear, seeing if it would grow and blossom into the dark bloom of terror that it has in the past. But it didn't. I met the Universe's test head on and acknowledged what it was doing. The crow cawwwed, a universal laugh of amusement. Muscles will grow weak and floppy like wet noodles if unused, the universe was providing me an extra opportunity for muscle building. Thanks...I think.
Nerves may have stretched but I'll be damned if they snapped.
I don't mind admitting the nerves. In fact to deny them would remove all the awesomeness of my feat from today. My nerves were giant red pulsing things that snarled like monsters and chewed away at my resolve. I smacked said nerves in their beasty faces with a little standard transmission know-how and old fashioned logic. I COULD DO THIS. Nerves can not deny logic.
Once upon a time moving the car mere feet in the drive way caused me great agonies the likes of which the Victorian ladies of by-gone swooning days could have related to.
Once upon a time the idea of stopping the car on a hill and starting again with out rolling backwards for ever and eventually crashing into something made my hands shake and heart stutter.
Once upon a time I navigated through traffic with arms so stiff they ached when we came home and I named my own sore ankles "clutch foot".
But 10 months passes and as my husband said many a time in a constant cheerful tone, an un-wavering will of support, "We're eating an elephant sweetie. One bite at a time, that's all you can do."
So I bit off moving the car and I swallowed it and damned if it didn't taste like the best fudge brownie you never had.
I hauled at the stopping and starting the car on a hill with my teeth, ripping it to shreds until my stomach was full and the drive around town no longer seemed like a series of straight stretches punctuated by hills of fear and incessant praying that the light didn't go red before I got to it so I wouldn't have to stop and start again right there because Lord help me some buffoon actually thinks they get to drive on this road too and actually has the audacity to be right behind me and what's he gonna say when he gets a face full of my fender?
Driving through traffic became less of a physical exercise and I joyfully gulped down long stretches of street, highway and freeway. I sucked them down like vanilla milkshakes and one day, I found myself chatting about all the miscellanea of life to my husband as we navigated through rush hour traffic, chatting idly about the President, food dyes and peroxide powered jet packs. And I marveled at how that could be?
HOW could that be? How can one go from driveway near hysteria to downshifting through the busy intersection on a Friday evening. Because I was eating the elephant. And it tasted gooooooooooooooood.
But the real test, the behind the wheel of the car with a complete stranger who isn't my husband, test was yet to come. And after years of agonizing, worrying and building up the moment to such a momentous mountain to climb...it was over.
OVER!
15 years, 1 week and 13 minutes later and the tester lady was saying that I could practice stopping just a little more smoothly and I was biting my tongue, and swallowing hard to keep down my elephant and finally blurted "Did I pass?"
And she said...."Yes."
Did I hear angels singing and a chorus of otherworldly creatures cheering me on? Or was that just the pinging and twanging of my facial muscles smiling so hard that they popped and sprung free like over tightened guitar strings? (I am sure I will now need a face cast.)
My husband saw me coming, and he knew I passed. Smiles can spread good news faster than a single syllable word.
So we celebrated.
By driving some more of course, for the hell of it instead of practice. We bought arty/crafty magazines and headphones for the ipod. We dined at El Torito because it turns out elephant isn't as filling as you might think.
And every second thing I have said today has been "I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I called my Mom and bragged.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I updated my facebook status message.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I bebopped around the kitchen like I was the first person ever to figure out how to drive a car and be legally licensed to do so. Then I had leftover birthday cheesecake.
By the way, I got my license today.

A little Cheesey...

I used to think cheesecake was some bastardized version of wonderful regular cake with something as odiously disturbing as cheddar cheese added to it. Don't get me wrong , cheddar cheese is a beautiful thing, just not in dessert. I mean come on, CHEESE cake, what was I supposed to think? Plus I was like 6 so give me a break.
Of course when I dared utter these complaints in my childish ignorance I was bitch slapped, metaphorically speaking, in to shape by nobody.
I recall two life altering cheesecake moments from when I was a little girl. Strangely enough each was with a Grandmother. I remember visiting my Grandma Shirley and we'd some times go for jaunts in to town. All I can recall of this one particular jaunt was harsh fluorescent lighting, cafeteria style tables, a lunch counter with glass fronted area, you slid your tray along the counter and pointed at what you wanted.
Grandma got cheesecake, it looked rather ordinary. brown bottom with white stuff on top and brown crumbles to top it off. It wasn't neon red or ice cream so I'm sure I wasn't too impressed. It was a dessert though so I was more then willing to give it a try. My love affair with all things sweets started waaaay back.
Can you see it? A little frizzy red headed girl at a cafeteria table with her Grandma, sliding a fork through a dense, moist layer of cheese cake, scooping up the dark buttery graham crust and having an epiphany. Right there, right there in the middle of the cafeteria at Wool-Co!
It wasn't just good, it was LIFE CHANGING! When you're a little kid cookies are the height of culinary genius for your wee under-developed taste buds. Sometimes pie if you were feeling crazy, always ice cream and anything you could get in a brightly colored packages at the check out counter and had words like Gummi, Fizzy, Gooey or Sour in the title.
If I'd been given my choice of dessert that day, oh how my heart falters at the thought, if I'd been given my choice I might have picked a sundae, an ordinary, uninspiring sundae from a cafeteria. But my Grandma Shirley she picked cheesecake! Oh it was AMAZING! I can't remember much else but the feeling of glorious silky, thick creamy, slightly tangy wonderfulness. Nothing fancy, no fruit or chocolate or anything to muck up the purity of it. JUST cheesecake. I was a changed girl leaving that cafeteria.
Cheesecake wasn't something we had often when I was a kid, actually more like never. For all I know that might have been my first and last bit of cheesecake for a long time to come. But I never forgot it.
The next memory of cheesecake is a little sharper, a little brighter. I suspect it was my second experience with cheesecake, so I was older and ever so slightly more prepared. Of course how prepared can one be when it comes to cheesecake, it's like holding a bright shining star in your mouth and feeling the glory of the universe for an instant. Even if you did that a thousand times could it ever be dimmed, could you ever be truly prepared?
This time I was with my other Grandma, Grandma Prest. Perhaps it was even during the visit when my family were luxuriating in homemade root-beer at home while I was away for a week or two for a summer holiday with Grandma.
I remember it was her birthday and the sun was super bright. I remember that people were coming over, I haven't a clue if it was 2 or 200 but I remember the busy feeling of *company's coming*. Grandma was making dessert in the kitchen. I can see her at the counter putting ruby red slices of fresh strawberries all over a...... glossy white cheesecake. I don't remember the agonies of waiting for a piece, thank goodness things like that do fade in time. I don't remember who the company turned out to be, I don't remember finally getting a piece of the cheesecake. I just remember the tart sweet strawberries and vanilla creamy cheese cake and rich crumbly graham crumbs combination that was even MORE heavenly then the cheesecake from Wool-Co.
I don't think I asked for the recipe. I wish I'd been sophisticated enough to realize I could maybe MAKE this glorious dessert for myself and got the recipe out of my Grandma. I remember going on and on and on and ON to my Mother about this amazing strawberry cheesecake that I got to have at Grandma's. Since our family budget didn't run to cheesecake when ever we wanted I was probably torturing her with descriptions on the cheesecake I got to have and she didn't. Of course...if this WAS during the fateful summer of the best root beer I never got to have then perhaps she got her JUST DESSERTS, so to speak. hahahaha
At some point during my teenage years my Mom got a cookbook from my Grandma Prest. I was well in to my infatuation with desserts then. Some girls save up and buy makeup I bought chocolate chips. Well this one time I was flipping through the cookbook and found a recipe for cheesecake that seemed familiar. The thing that both of these mind blowing childhood cheesecake experiences had in common was the TYPE of cheesecake they were. Unbaked. No eggs, just cream cheese, whip cream and sugar. Oh Mama.
I saved my pennies, and I worked damn hard for them pennies too! House cleaning at a Lady's house every Saturday and I bought myself the ingredients for the cheesecake with some of my earnings. Look I wasn't a total bi-otch about it, I shared, for the most part, with my family.
The first cheese cake I made I topped with slices of bananas. The bananas were pretty good.....but the cheese cake....
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!
There were angels singing and the skies opened up bathing in me in golden light when I tried my first bite of that cheesecake. Well, maybe not exactly but I'm pretty sure there was a lot of "MMmmmmmm MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM"
IT WAS PERFECT! The cheesecake part I mean, you can top it with anything you want but the cheesecake is the essential part. And this recipe was EXACTLY what I was looking for. It was easier to make then I could ever imagine and it started a whole new world of flavors for my family. It was easy to get them addicted to things like that. Sure I spent my hard earned dollars buying cheesecake supplies....ONCE...muahh ahhh ahhh, but after that they WERE addicted, not so subtly hinting "make that cheesecake, what do you need for it?"
A funny thing, this is the only cheesecake recipe I've ever made. It's that good. It's like my husband, why would I stray to another? I hit on the perfect thing first time up to bat so why would I mess with perfection?
Oh, I'm sorry. Were you wanting the recipe? Hmm, all that lead up and nada, zilch, nothing. Just the cold empty cruelty of me denying you your own cheesecake perfection? Don't freak out, I'm not one of those *family secret* kind of gals. Here's the recipe and enjoy. I don't have the name of who originally made this cheesecake but if I ever find it I'll include it here too. I have changed it a wee bit from the original anyways. You can too, sometimes lime pie filling on top, some times lemon, sometimes fresh fruit. Yummers. Customize to your wee precious heart's delight!

Lemon Cheesecake
INGREDIENTS:
For Crust:
1 cup of graham cracker crumbs
2 tbs white sugar
1/4 cup of melted butter
For cheesecake:
1 package of cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/8 tsp of salt
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp of lemon juice
1 small container of cool whip
Lemon Topping: 1 package of Jello lemon pie filling, just follow directions on the box.

DIRECTIONS:
Mix graham crumbs, butter and sugar and press in to 9” square pan, bake in pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
Soften cream cheese to room temperature, resisting the urge to just eat it on crackers and skip the whole cheese cake thing...Stir the softened cream cheese with sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and salt in a bowl till well combined. Fold in the whip cream, dont forget to take it out of freezer before hand so it will be soft enough to fold in. Spoon cheesecake mix on to cool crust. Keep in refrigerator while you prepare the lemon pie filling. When the pie filling is ready, pour hot over the cheesecake and let cool. It’s yummiest if you have the will power to leave the whole thing in the fridge a few hours till it’s good and chilled and set up!

This recipe is one I've played a lot with, you can use lower calorie ingredients, you can make homemade lemon or lime pie filling, home made whip cream etc. Replace regular ingredients with organic. You get the drift, it's super simple and super delicious EVERY time I've made it!