The Parenting Files: Driveway Real Estate

We have a new driver in the house.  Yesterday Miss Mischief became the proud bearer of a Victorian Probationary Driver's Licence.  She came home, sent texts to the people she wanted to tell and then promptly got into her little itty bitty car  (whose wheels are half the size of mine!) and went over to a friend's house.  Just like that.  I'm here to tell you that maiden voyage is the scariest, hardest, worst moment of my parenting life.  It's so much easier when you are in the car with them, which is saying something.  Supervising learner drivers is certainly no picnic.

With the procuring of that precious little piece of paper comes the real issue.  Driveway real estate.  We have a two-car carport...and four cars.  The girls have been coming up with all kinds of solutions to this problem:

1. Rip out the garden on one side and widen the driveway.
2. Remove the picket fence so they can park on the front lawn.
3. Remove the entire front garden area and make it parking space.

I think the solution is that we will be moving cars about a lot.  There is room for the four, with two in front of the carport.  It's squeezy but adequate.  In winter you can bet we'll all want to be under cover, rather than enduring icy windscreens and wiper water sprayers that freeze up.  Maybe Dh and I can start our own little real estate business and charge exorbitant amounts of rent each time a P Plated car ends up there?!  Actually the more pragmatic part of myself tends to think the first one out in the morning needs to be in front.  Under those circumstances I may never see the carport again.  Last year I was the first to leave almost every day.

I think I can wait a long while until Mr Busy joins the ranks of licence drivers.