Venting

Ok here goes.

We live in a somewhat rural area outside of a large city. I say "somewhat rural" because there's a Target, grocery store, Radio Shack, etc right down the street, but there are also fields with horses and farmland with corn. It is an odd mixture.

There are lots of people here who have moved from different places. Some from Florida, some from California and many, many, many from New York and New Jersey. Some of our best neighbors are from NY.

Now I am not one to stereotype, but the driving around here is crazy. Keep in mind that I used to live in Houston where traffic was horrible. But the driving habits here are worse. I don't know if it is a particular group of people or not. Many blame the bad drivers from NY and NJ. People cut each other off. No turn signals. Ridiculous tailgating. Running red lights. Ignoring stop signs. Driving on the curvy country roads at high speeeds while talking on a cell phone and veering into the other lane. Keep in mind that I don't even drive in the high traffic areas. The above mentioned things happen right around here. I've never claimed to be the best driver in the world, but I do try to be safe.

Case in point: Wednesday Luke and I are driving home from the grocery store. It was a rainy day and the streets were a little wet. We were on one of the main roads around here. Just a straight two lane road with several side streets. All of those side streets have stop signs because the main road has the right of way. I see a man in a van heading to the stop sign on one of those side streets going kinda fast given the fact that he was supposed to be stopping soon. I just continue to drive. I don't speed up. I don't slow down. I'm just driving the speed limit. He slams on his brakes and flips me off. Wait. What? He flips me off? For what? I'm generally a nice person. I guess he was planning to roll through the stop sign and get on the main road. Since I didn't slow down for him, he got angry. Or maybe from his perspective I sped up so he couldn't pull out (I didn't). I just don't get people sometimes. Then it makes me sad to think that he may have so much stress in his life that his only outlets are bad driving and flipping off moms driving SUVs.

You will be happy to know that I resisted the urge to look in my rearview mirror to check out his license plate to see what state he was from.

Ok. Rant over.