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New (Rental) Car for Mama
The other day I walked out to get into my car and spied a yellow piece of notepaper stuck under my windshield wiper. Immediately my heart sank. It could be a secret admirer note I guess but that doesn’t happen that often to me.
On the bright side, it wasn’t the small white $49 parking ticket for failing to park on the other side of the street on street-sweeping day. I got one of those the other day and that did NOT make me happy. I must be getting old or something because suddenly FORTY-NINE DOLLARS seems like so much money to me! I could park on the wrong side of the street for two months and buy myself a very small used car for that price! Sheesh.
However, a parking ticket would probably be a lot less hassle than the impending doom that this note held. Just as I suspected, it was a hand-scrawled message from a really nice girl named, Mimi, saying she had accidentally side-swiped my parked car. I looked down at my left front fender and sure enough there was a nice big four-inch crinkle. Not just a scrape but a good ol’ dent and a scrape.
I knew Toby wouldn’t be happy. You should hear him go on about how and where I am supposed to park this car so that it doesn’t get dented or scraped. I hate to say it, but this car is a prized possession in this family and we are fools to have bought it before we own a house with a protective garage. Every nick and dent has taken a year off my life I think. Sometimes, I wish I never got rid of my ratty but dependable old Honda Civic.
The good news was that Mimi had a conscience and left her phone number. God bless Mimi. What a sweet girl. Nobody ever leaves a note when they scratch up your car in this neighborhood. I will be eternally thankful to Mimi and her insurance company. She has definitely got some good karma coming her way.
We made the call and Mimi turned out to be just as sweet as her note. She quickly and efficiently got us in touch with her insurance company and they took care of the rest. I dropped off my car at a body shop yesterday and found myself in a brand new Kia-something-or-other rental car.
It smells like an ash tray and has really weird blind spots but it’s not that bad. Not nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I thought sure I’d get stuck in something turquoise and plastic with big bumpers and mush for a gas pedal. What can I say, I’m a bit of a car snob.
I’ve been driving my small red sports car for three years now and I love it with a passion. No minivan for this mom. (Yes, I admit that not all minivans are bad, Bethany, and no, my small car does not have a dvd player that will occupy my kid on long trips but…) I just love small cars.
I love being close to the road, feeling every curve and bump. I love that my car could easily win a street race if I ever felt inclined to lay down some rubber. I love that I don’t have to worry about rolling it when I take a curve at 80 miles an hour (well, maybe not that fast but I could). I love the comfortable leather seats that hug me snugly and never give me a backache on long drives. I just love everything about it.
So yeah, I’m probably going to miss my small red car for the week that it is in the body shop but I have to say I am getting a kick out of this Kia thingy. The windows are giant and the back area is a hoot. Bug thinks it’s her new playhouse and she cries when I make her get out of the car and come into the house. I plan to take it out to the sticks later this week. I’ll let you know how it drives.
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hot gritty sweaty
Summer is upon us and the heat has been oppressive. I know I can’t complain since we live at the beach and it’s probably a zillion times hotter in other parts of the country. It’s just that we don’t have air conditioning in our old broken down apartment and sometimes I find myself wondering if winter ever existed. And if it did, why did I complain so much about being cold?!!! I would take that cold any day right about now.
Do you like my makeshift curtains? I knew that crocheted blanket would come in handy when I swiped it from my mom last year. I swear it drops the temperature on the couch about five degrees which is really wonderful when the weather feels like hot dog’s breath.
I’ve been daydreaming about Paris again, as I’m wont to do when the sweat is rolling down my back. It’s my happy place I go to when I’m hot and hating my ugly stained carpet. I like to think about the old broken down apartments I saw when I was there. Window ledges were crumbling, paint was peeling, walls were cracked. Life wasn’t all clean and modern and air conditioned but it was still beautiful in that gritty, these-walls-have-been-here-for-hundreds-of-years sort of way.
My apartment might not be a hundred years old but it feels like it sometimes. So I’ve been trying to see the beauty in it. Not just in my hot sweaty apartment but in life all around me. You know, just ordinary life. Just like that famous photographer said, if you look hard enough you’ll find a picture.
Actually I’m quoting that all wrong. It was Stieglitz who said, “Wherever there is light, one can photograph,” But in my mind I paraphrased it to be something like, “There is a picture everywhere, you just have to find it.” I love thinking that. I love trying to find that picture. Sometimes I have to bend over backwards to find that weird odd angle but it’s there.
Today I tried to find that picture at the laundromat. It made laundry day a lot more fun. Maybe they are mundane photos but life is mundane. Personally, I don’t have a lot of pictures from my own childhood. I’d pay a lot of money to see photos of myself helping my mom do laundry back in the 70’s and 80’s. (Did I even help my mom do laundry? I don’t think I did.) We’ve got lots of pictures of my brother and I at Sea World and camping in Yosemite but not a single one doing something ordinary. I’d love to go back in time and see what that ordinary looked like.
I wonder how much different it is from how we do things now… I find these mundane details way more interesting than say photos of a mountain or a pretty lake. Of course I love photos of beautiful scenery. But it’s the people who change, the fashions, the moments, the little things… that’s what I want to capture. I wonder what Bug will think of all these photos when I’m old and gone. Will there be so many of them that she’ll find it all exhausting? Or will she treasure them?
As you can see, laundry time ran into nap time but I chose to stay at the laundromat and fold my clean clothes there. Why? Because the swamp cooler was blasting out a nice humid breeze and the oldies were playing. I might even say it was pleasant. Which is a first for me and laundry day.
