How did we get to DRIVING already?!

Apogae Production. Welcome back to another episode of Am I A Bad Mom?

Podcast?

I feel like a bad mum because we still haven't got a Christmas tree.

Up, and you just had a real moment then you were like, oh my god, everyone's got the Christmas tree.

Because I literally just before we started recording.

Your scroll and then all of a sudden, you're like.

Crack on my phone.

Shit, I don't worry. Look at mine's being dropped. It's shattered all the way across.

Why do we choose the color of our phone and then we have to put a case on it because we drop them all the time.

Yeah, I've even got their child, Like, I think they make these for extra special dropping people because it bounces on the corner.

Extra special dropping people like I drop kids.

I drop it a lot. Yeah No, I like, I can't blame my kids. I drop it a lot.

I mean, if my kids had a device, I would give them also these cases because they just.

Sort of bounce rather than smashing.

I say that and look at my screen as completely smash.

Yeah. Well we're talking about before that Christmas tree.

You're just sitting here, you're having a moment. We were about to like three two one record. She's like, oh, yeah, someone else's got their Christmas tree up.

Yeah, because I had a really quick you know when you just go I don't know whether anyone else does that. I don't know why, because it's not even a moment of boredom, like I'm doing stuff like we're just about to start this, and I quickly own into Instagram, Like I go into Instagram like I'm expecting for something amazing to just pop.

Up, maybe just like oh I just want something to torture me or just open Instagram.

Oh there we go.

Oh I feel bad about myself because somebody's got a Christmas tree up. Now I can carry on with my life.

Am I about mum for not being able to control my nervous system?

Is this about you?

Or the self inflicted sort of nervous system damage that you get from children.

Someone the other day told me that stress is really important. You know, we talk about stress and you know it's going to kill us, Like stress is gonna make us sick and all the rest of it. They were like, no, stress is actually a good thing. I can't remember they worded it better than I'm gonna it was like, but prolonging it so like it's the fight or flight, right, so stress in the moment keeps us safe.

Think of a gazelle.

Someone gave me this analogy. Once a gazelle in a field, right, and it's just eating grass and it's quite happy eating grass. La la la la la. Lion comes along and the gazelle's like freaks the fuck out because the lion's about to attack it. Yeah, and then it gets away from the lion, lion's gone, just goes back to eating the grass again. But we don't do that. We don't have the stress, the fight or flight in the moment and

Anyway. I love that analogy. I think that's absolutely spot on.

Yeah, this topic is about my kids driving. I had a moment where Holly drove herself home from school.

And it's a busy time on that's chaos.

Yeah, it's so busy, and I had a moment of going, how is this legal? How is this legal that I'm allowed to just put my child in the driving seat and drive on normal roads with other.

Cars and I sit there with no dual control.

I don't have any petals, but.

We spoke about this. Have they had any lessons yet? Yeah?

Now, I will say Holly's a great little driver, like I am. Someone pressed listens, she's not a driver that and this terrifies me. But she like goes the speed limit. And when I said terrifies me, I like, I'm like, go lower, goes lower. But you also need to not be if you're on a normal road, you can't go thirty an hour because you're gonna really piss people on that quickly. The amount of people that beep, I'm like, you've been a learner. This is a child learning to drive.

In the car. For what were they for?

You know, like if you're at like a roundabout or something like that and you've hesitated, you've hesitated.

Of course she's gonna hesitate. You're learning to drive. Just be patient.

How badly do you need to get to where you're going that you're going to beep at a learner driver?

Seriously? No, seriously, I wouldn't beep, but I just go around them. Yeah, I mean you'd get annoyed.

If I see even the yellow like the l on approach. I'm like, I'll just go to the other line. I don't want to cause an impact on there because they're learning. But b I'm not getting stuck there because that that can be damaging to my time frame, which is usually stretched.

Because you'll you're late anyway, regardless.

Of whether you're behind, going to hold me up a little bit more. Yeah, but yeah, I get that.

I don't understand people's aggression towards needing to vocalize.

Why to shut the fuck up? Shut the fuck up?

You learn a learner.

One, Yeah, you're a learner and you're still a shit driver, So not my problem.

But just that feeling rate of I guess it's like you're out of control. Yeah, like when you're driving your car. You're in control of your car, right, And I've said to Holly so many times, it's everybody else you have to worry about. Yeah, it is true, because you can't control how fuck her behind you's driving yep, driving in this morning and I was actually driving car next to me. We're traffic lights, and I noticed you's rolling back and I'm like this, he kept rolling back in this car

You do. You do have to worry about other people. That is exactly right. And then the other part is these.

Kids nowadays, they have more distractions because they're so you know, reliant on phones and devices and things like that. In that sense, they've got a few more little hurdles than we did. Yeah, you and I were up against other hurdles. Driving like a manual carve five speed manual. This is me at my first job, like when I'm eighteen and a half, five speed manual, no power steering refidex.

Is that what's called across my lap?

Trying to read the directory like where I'm going, trying to change here?

Is read that change a song maybe a CD. And then I'm still doing all of this.

And I also can't read the repordex unless it's in the direction in which I'm going. So I'm switching that around so I can follow the direction where I was.

I've getting all sorts of the map on your leg like your bunny hopping, because you haven't changed the mate, I'm trying to find the window lighting your cigarette, putting your CD in.

I always drove.

The five speed manu, especially you had no power steering. You had to drive it like a race car driver because you like ripping through gears because you've got to keep the pressure off the steering wheel.

Like I'm talking to all sorts of things here.

I'm pretty sure I only had four four gears, not five speed.

Yeah, you weren't going to be going over a certain speed.

And then I'd go and like flick the ash off my cigarette and then it would come back back through the back window and I'd be like, oh my God, like bending a hole through my clothes.

Even like the no cupholders, I got a cup holder.

I'm just going to keep trying to pull my drink hold. The amount of times I burned my vagina with Coe was it's like, it's up there.

Back to your kids.

Obviously they're up against some really hard tasks, but it's more about what's on the road because there's so many entitlements now, like you've got cyclists, yeah, animals there up against drivers that might be under different sorts of influencers, you know, like so many things.

What I realized this is one of the biggest things to learn is how big your car is. So like when you're driving past parked cars, knowing how far out you've got to be because you're in the right side of the car, you've got to allow for all that space on the left side, depending on how big your car is. That's really interesting, like having that awareness of how much space you're taking up and where you need to be in the road.

But it's terrifying.

When I talk about my nervous system, I'm like literally like I find my mouth is going like oh, like because I'm anxious.

So just quickly to wrap up with the analogy that you gave us at the start about the Giselle. When you get out of the car after driving with your children, do you feel like you're that Giselle just eating grass again in the paddock, after the lines attacked you, after you've gotten away, after your stress releases happened, then you come back, you're just gonna eat grass.

Do you just eat grass?

Do you find yourself just actually you're still on fucking highlight and you're still sprinting through the field trying to get away from nothing. Yeah, there's nothing chasing you anymore, but you're still fucking ridiculous.

You're just thinking that I'm still alive.

It's terrifying. They got auto though. They're not doing manual, are they.

No?

I don't think there's any point in a manual.

There is, there's always a point. I keep bringing it up. You have a manual car, No one's gonna be fucking stealing out because all these kids that are stealing cars right now, they don't know how to drive a manual.

I'm telling you, get manual car.

I don't want them to have a manual.

Just want to know what we went through. I want them to have no power steering.

And I want them to have a sick stack of CD Do they still make CDs?

I want them double? I found a CD the other day.

I went through like this old keepsake box of you know that you keep from your wedding and your kids being born and all.

The rest of it.

And I found some CDs with like I don't even know what's on them, but I really want to listen. I was like, mixed, I've got no way of listening to these. I don't have a CD player.

We still got a CD player.

I don't know how to listen to it.

Elsie has asked me for CDs for Christmas. Where do I get these from? Is there a sanity still open. Amelia has asked me.

For a record player.

Yeah, they are very cool. We've got a record player. We don't use it very often on what is going on now? It's a thing. There's a record store still going strong in Paddington.

Maybe they will need a manual license because maybe they'll come back in passion as well.

Hopefully, don't worry about these electric cars. We're going back to the old

Funny helping down the street.