In the never-ending search for ways to de-stress, I find myself driving my car more and more. This has not been good for my diet or my pocketbook, since I keep making up reasons to drive places and the only reasons I can usually come up with are getting food or going shopping. But, like I said, it's not the destination these days so much as it is the journey. Part of this is because, living in a shared apartment, my car is usually the only place where I can truly be alone, to sing or rant or blast music however I want without disturbing anyone. Living in a shared apartment (and working in a shared office) also means that my car is the only place besides my bedroom where any mess is totally my fault and any cleaning is totally my responsibility. Sounds strange I know, but we're working on three weeks since our kitchen and bathroom were last cleaned (by guess who) and even though it's driving me nuts and I really, really want to take a vacuum and mop to the whole thing, to do so completely lets my other roommate off the hook -- again. So it's really a control issue, my Achilles heel; I control the mess and no one else.

But it's actually a lot of fun to drive around here, traffic jams not withstanding. (And even those aren't bad if I'm not headed anywhere particular and there's good music on the radio.) I live in an area where several different parkways intersect and there are lots of nice curves and hills to glide around. Of course, it was terrifying before I knew my way around, but now I enjoy it. I always said, if and when I moved into the city, I would have to give serious thought to whether or not I should keep my car. I still will, but especially if I'm headed for another shared apartment, it might be hard to give up my one sure place of solitude.