"I think being a woman is like being Irish." — Iris Murdoch

My right arm hurts a little from driving.  I don't use our car very much... I want to work and tend to avoid using the car because parking in the city is such an immense headache.  Nelson is the one who drives, and just two days ago he told me that the brakes are in very bad shape.  They scrape -- this horrible metal-on-metal noise.  I had no clue that there was anything wrong with them at all, and now it's so bad that he's avoiding using the car at all.  Since he's about to go on a trip, I have to arrange to get it fixed.

Coincidentally, I've had to use the car several times in the past few days.  I tried driving slowly, then remembering my days driving a stick shift, thought about using the gears to slow down.  Well, that's a stupid idea in an automatic, but it led to me thinking about the hand brake.

So I started using the hand brake to slow and stop the car.  It actually worked pretty well, but that's why my arm hurts.  I guess it doesn't have the same servo-mechanism (I love that word) that makes the brake pedal easier to push.  (Is there one?)  Maybe it's just easier to push with your foot than to pull with your arm.