Adventure at the Wiener Crossing

The miniature dachshund was so small, it took a second for my brain to register that this was a dog. It jumped off the curb into a busy four-lane highway directly in the path of my car.

Luckily I had just enough time to be able to signal the car behind me and brake. I immediately regretted honking to scare it back onto the curb when it started and looked like it might dart into the lane next to me.

“NOOOOO!”

Fortunately that smart little dog listened. It wavered, looked worried, stopped guiltily, clearly wondering what it had done wrong. It had presumably been enjoying an unexpected adventure until I’d started making horrible noises at it. I waved an apology to the man behind me and dove out of my car. The man behind me signaled back, “Yes. Get the dog.” With a kind smile.

That was when I realized the thoughtful driver next to me had stopped as well, immobilizing the southbound lanes of rush hour traffic in order to help protect the little dog. The young man got out to help. “Whatdya do?” he asked me.

I didn’t know. If I’d been heading toward home, I would have put it in my car and checked for tags. Driven around. Asked people. But I had somewhere to go. Fortunately the little wiener dog finally understood that the direction it was heading was upsetting a whole lot of humans. It wheeled around and bounded for home in that determined, ear-trailing, stubby-legged gallop that only a dachshund can achieve. That was when I looked behind me and realized it had a partner in crime—a little brown dog several cars back attended by a group of women who were making sure it didn’t continue its little doggy-holiday alone.

It wasn’t until I turned back to my car that I was able to appreciate the rows and rows of traffic as far as I could see that had come to a halt for two little dogs on a spoiled adventure. All of the nearby drivers were out of their cars and actively engaged in a joint dog-herding venture. Not a single one was looking upset about anything but the fate of those pets.

We hear about people who are cruel to animals. I thought I would pass along what was for me a pleasant reminder that most are not. It took a whole lot of strangers gathered on the highway, united over their shared love of another species, to send me a nice message I needed: My own species has its moments as well.

What a paradox that we connect with God, with divinity, with our flesh and blood and time and space. We connect with God in our humanity. ~Anne Lamott, Stitches

Succinctly Yours Week 203: Maybe Not Quite So One-Sided

Thank you to Grandma’s Goulash for hosting Succinctly Yours, a delightful little meme in which we are driven by Grandma’s compelling photo to come up with a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer. The bonus word was “jagged.”

She snuggled into him, her breath jagged with anticipation. His Pierce Arrow had struck her heart just as surely as if it had been fired from Cupid himself. 129

Her eyes might have been on his face, but her jagged heart was on the horizon, her hand ready to steer if he got out of line, and her foot ready to slam on the brakes if need be. 140

She leaned in, inhaled a jagged breath and gazed up. She couldn’t believe her heart could be filled with so much love! Plaid was her life, and his hat was exceptional.  137

Yet there was nothing jagged or rocky about their journey: when they were out of the car, it was his adoring eyes on her.  98

Oh sweet mercy! A lime green hatchback! It’s a thing of beauty! ~Cars.com commercial  

Succinctly Yours #156: Not So Bright Idea

Once again it's time for SuccinctlyYours at Grandma's Goulash. The goal is to use the picture and bonus word to come up with a caption of 140 characters or 140 words. Mine this week is 137 characters, and the bonus word is loathe. 

To fair goers, nothing seems more manly than a mud derby. But to those manliest of men—firefighters who loathe cleaning up—it's nothing but a dirty car trick. 

Oh I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay

I sleep all night and I work all day

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, 

I go to the lava-try....

~Monty Python, The Lumberjack Song

Catastrophic Non-Failure

Every now and then, I seem to go through a period of time where so many things break, I am sure someone out there is sticking pins into tiny replicas of my possessions.

I recently ran across a scrapped blog post from last year where I complained of having several blinds break along with my lawn mower, sump pump, coffee pot, and a drill.

The most recent rash of failures included my computer, modem, router, lawn mower (yes, again), phone, and the little plug-thingie in the bathroom sink. Also my printer died a slow and agonizing death and then came back to haunt me. When my hair dryer shorted out in my hands with a tiny explosion, once the small fire was out and the shaking in my hands had subsided somewhat, I found myself laughing at the absurdity.

I was hoping those little fireworks were the finale to this round, but it turned out that was just an introduction to some of the big stuff. My garage door broke along with a door lock, my washer and dryer gave out, leaked, and shorted out. Now my computer has another virus. In spite of thousands of dollars’ worth of preventative maintenance, my car has a light that comes on, but the little scamp goes off as soon as I take it to The Car Guy.

Regardless, I am lucky they are just things.

My ex-husband used to pretend that it took some sort of skill to do home repairs. Really I find they just take time, money, the proper tools and often some physical strength—none of which I have in abundance.

But necessity really is the mother of invention. When my son was in high school, his car happened to get a flat tire in our garage. I can never remember where the jack goes, so we looked it up on YouTube. The whole incident became quite a blessing in disguise—not just for the mother-son bonding it inspired, but because of the way that one incident seemed to spark my son’s passion for internet-taught car repair. Now he’s the person I consult first when it comes to car problems.

And I find it pays to be sort of anal. It took me hours and hours, but when I recently replaced some door hardware, I was pretty excited that I was able to use poultry sheers and art supplies to fix a previous mistake. Now the door closes considerably more smoothly than before.

Right now I am tired, sore, behind on everything (as usual), wounded all over the place from various wrench accidents, and considerably poorer. But I’m also a little stronger, I own a few more tools, and I have a few more skills under my (tool) belt. I might be girly, but it doesn’t mean I can’t figure out how to change a spark plug. I’ve met some amazing people (such as the total stranger who just repaired some electrical work for me on a Saturday, and free of charge), and these breakages have sparked some wonderful conversations—with my children, with friends, and with acquaintances. As always, I am touched and inspired by the kindness of total strangers. Funny the way these things work: what you lose in stuff, you gain in a different set of resources. I am so, so blessed.

Take that, voodoo-ers.

You live you learn, you love you learn
You cry you learn, you lose you learn
You bleed you learn, you scream you learn…. ~From “You Learn” by Glen Ballard and Alanis Morissette

A Window Opens

I’ve mentioned my smelly car. One reason this is so extra-tragic is that I have a freakishly strong sense of smell. So for the first time in years, I’ve been driving around with my windows down. When did I start keeping them up all the time, anyway, and why? I’m sure it was to keep my hair from being a mess, but lately I’m thinking that messy hair might just be a small price to pay sometimes. I’m almost a little bit grateful to the RBO for reminding me what I’ve been missing.

Years ago, someone gave my family tickets to box seats at the circus. No question it was cool. We had our own little suite with private bathroom and everything. But it made me realize it’s not always so bad to live among the common folk. There were some things I genuinely missed while being hermetically sealed in our little Plexiglas room in the sky. I sort of missed the down-and-dirty earthiness of the experience that is the circus I remembered from my childhood: the smells of elephant musk and popcorn and excitement. The guy with change in his apron hocking “Ice Cold Coke!” from the dark auditorium stairs and people waving sparkling souvenirs-on-a-stick all around us. Breathing and bodies and clapping and peanut shells. That disco ball light thing that showered the audience in stars so that we could look down and see the actual circus lights touching us, just like the magic all around, making us a part of it in one sparkling moment.

Driving with my windows down is a little like that. I find myself wanting to drive faster just for the exhilaration of it. There are whole new layers of experience coming in those windows. The sounds rush in my ears, and as the visual scenery flashes by in a blur of houses-stores-signs-fields-trees, so flashes the olfactory scenery in a blur of backyard grill-fast food-cut grass-mimosa. And the humid wind is cool-slick on my arms and swirles my hair in a mad summer frenzy.

For a while I am back in my big sister’s orange-and-black 1969 Camaro convertible with the top down. Or even my own first car with the broken air conditioner.

The smell is much, much better, by the way, thanks to your suggestions. The thing that really seemed to do it? The coffee grounds. Was going to try the apple, but it turned out someone had eaten it. Which was okay, because I got a new one at the grocery store and used it to get rid of the coffee ground smell, which it turns out is oddly out of place in a car. It actually smells good in there now. Thank you so much!

Still, I’m going to try to remember to roll down the windows. Just sometimes. I’d forgotten there’s magic out there in the summer air just waiting to swirl in.

All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so much of its own nature.

– William Law

Improper Poll: The Beast

I recently discovered a new recipe by accident. It goes like this.  Heat one trunk to 150°.  Add one pound ground beef and cook in a sealed garage all weekend.  This is a recipe for The Beast. This recipe is the pot-potpourri equivalent of manna...from hell.  Because it will serve everyone within about a 12 foot radius.  Indefinitely.

The ground beef was double wrapped, too, so it's not like anything leaked out.  Still, Holy Cow Guts, does my car stink.  So I sprayed everything thoroughly, first with one product and then the other. Both are anti-bacterial air purifiers that promise to kill the source of the odor. But I guess since my ground beef was already dead, it refused to die all over again. Almost two weeks later, it reminds me of my favorite Seinfeld episode about the B.B.O. But this is G.B.O. Or maybe R.B.O., because it’s rotted. Either way, it really is The Beast.

The R.B.O. has sent out airborne molecules to infuse, like microscopic zombies, into everything in my car. Another car parked next to it in the same garage had its windows rolled down, and now IT smells of R.B.O., as does my garbage can (long since emptied) and the garage itself. Should I be washing my hair in tomato sauce? I keep asking random people to do smell-checks.

I went to a car parts store and asked them what they recommend, and now my car smells like chemically-infused-cardboard-jasmine with strong R.B.O. top notes. Gak.  Left my car outside with the windows down in the hot sun. Threw out the cardboard box that the R.B. had fallen into when it first began this invasion of O. molecules. A neighbor (who obligingly performed The Smell Check, and I don't even know her very well)  suggested baking soda.  It sort of amazes me who will smell you if you ask them.

I admit it—I haven’t had my car steam-cleaned yet because I keep thinking surely The Beast will give up the ghost, as it were. Move on to greener pastures. Something. Should I sage my trunk to clear out evil spirits? Call in an exorcist?

Have you ever done battle with a horrifying odor? If so, do you have any suggestions?  Other than driving my car into the city and walking away?

Improper Poll: Road Rage

Last week I enjoyed your comments so much, I’ve decided to do another traffic one. I knew you would mention my other traffic peeves, and you sure did not disappoint!

Last week I also mentioned my Sad Head Shaking gesture that I use in traffic and how it once almost got me attacked. I realized the effectiveness of the Sad Head Shake when I was a teenaged driver and did something stupid in traffic. I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember the way a man sadly shook his head at it.

It was a shaming gesture, and I was much more horrified than if he’d behaved angrily.

From then on I promised myself I would A.) drive more carefully, and B.) use the Sad Head Shake myself whenever the opportunity arose.

That opportunity has arisen many times since then. One of those times was when I was taking my son to pick out college bedding and supplies. We had to make a left into the bedding store, so I was in the left lane and driving exactly the speed limit. My son later corroborated this. But it was clear by the way the guy behind me was riding my bumper that he wanted me to go faster.

Normally I’d just let him pass, but I don’t usually drive in the left lane without a reason, and my turn was coming up. So the kid—who was somewhere around my son’s age or early twenties—screeched into the slow lane, passed me on the right, then angrily swung back in front of me.

I did the Sad Head Shake. I might have laughed a little, too, because my son made a funny comment about people who drive like idjuts.

It was right at that point that I pulled into the left turn lane, and so did Screeching Guy just ahead of me. And then this boy who was so anxious to get somewhere slammed on his brakes, parked his car right there in the turn lane, and got out and started heading toward my car.

Have I ever mentioned that I seem to attract crazies? I do. Always have. And this was not the first time a crazy guy has come after me in a car, so I’ve had some practice. I put my hand on the horn and left it there. It was the middle of the day and traffic was fairly heavy, so we were attracting a lot of attention. But it was when my son was obviously calling police on his cell that the kid thought the better of it and went back to his car and left. At least he didn’t appear to have any weapons that we could see.

So we opted not to call police. In the big picture, it was almost worth the bonding experience with my son; we talked about it for ages. “Remember that crazy guy…?”


Powerful stuff, the Sad Head Shake. Do you have a favorite traffic gesture? And have you ever experience road rage?

Improper Poll: Driven to Distraction

I’ve been feeling somewhat peevish, so I’ve decided to cover peeves in the next few weeks. Is that exciting, or what? So allow me to begin with Traffic Peeves. Sad to say I have only too many of those, but this one is inspired by something that happened Friday on my way home from work. Then in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be moving on to General Public Peeves and possibly Grammatical Peeves. So prepare your peeves!

This Traffic Peeve actually has three parts. No, wait—four. Part I is that the sirens on police cars in my area really are not audible until the cruiser is right next to you. Ambulance and fire trucks are audible, but police cars seem not to be. However, those redblueredblue lights are visible, and that’s how I first detected this one, flashing in my rear-view mirror in the other lane several cars behind me.

So I pulled over to allow him to pass. By the way, this was at the start of rush hour, since rush hour seems to start so early these days. But here’s Part II of the peeve: no one else pulled over even when he was right there and they could obviously hear the siren. In fact, it looked like no one was even willing to pull into the slow lane to let him pass. And there were a lot of cars.

I’m not being holier-than-anyone, either. Honestly, I almost didn’t pull over myself just because no one else did. I hate to admit that, but for a second it actually crossed my mind that maybe someone had changed the rule and I’d missed it.

But here is Part III of the peeve. When I did pull to the side of the road, the woman behind me honked. At me. And she kept it up until after the cop car had passed, so it couldn’t have been that she didn’t see him. This was no little honk, either. This was a what-the-heck-are-you-doing-you-idiot honk, accompanied by flailing arms. To which I flailed back even more angrily. I pointed to the police car. I pointed to the side of the road. I shook my head sadly (which has been my favorite traffic gesture ever since someone used it on me when I was a teenager, but which once almost got me attacked in a genuine instance of road rage; but that’s for another time).

I have to wonder if her own mistake finally hit her, because I noticed she abruptly stopped gesturing and honking. Then she actually stopped riding my bumper after that.

Or maybe she was afraid I’d come after her. Part IV of my peeve is me. I should have ignored her or maybe just done the Sad Head Shake. I don’t like it when I allow other people’s stupidity to have any effect on me.

What’s your worst traffic peeve?

Being True

I am driving to the college, my car packed so full that we had to make portholes between pillows and piles of clothing. I amuse myself by wondering with what profound words I can leave this child. It seems necessary somehow to have an important parting sentiment.

I think about Polonius’ famous parting words to his son Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true/And it must follow, as the night the day/Thou canst not then be false to any man." And I think about what I’ve tried to get across to my children their whole lives: Respect yourself and others. Seek balance. Play fair. Look at the big picture. Make good choices. “Make good choices” became a joke among us. A half-joke. We were kidding but we meant it.

You’d think with all of the goodbyes I’ve said in my life, I would be better at it. Most of my married life, we moved a lot. Every time I had built a life that I loved and lived in a house that represented all I had built, we moved. And every time we’d drive away from a place that one last time, I would mean to turn around and look back so that I could store that memory in my brain like a photograph that I would take out and reminisce over. At least that was the plan. But what happened every time was that I was always too busy to look back.

Which was okay. Sometimes it’s better to look ahead.

In the end, we hug somewhat awkwardly, and I say something that is not remotely profound. The words of wisdom I blurt out are, “Have fun.” Like I say, I am bad at goodbyes. Have fun? What kind of lame thing is that to say to your teenager? Do I really want that?

Well, yes, yes I do. Of course I do. Not the kind that hurts anyone, of course, but I do want my children to have fun, happy lives. Are my parting words really that bad? Who knows. These are responsible people who do, by the grace of God, make good choices. Now is not the time to teach them anything I’ve never taught before. So I drive away, thinking of the tall, wonderful, surprisingly self-possessed young person I’ve marveled over lately, and while I am smiling over that, I forget to look back.

And I realize as I am driving away that I’ve just left a person whose job it is to find their own wisdom. Which is, of course, what it’s all about, anyway.

Navajo proverb: “We raise our children to leave us.”

Book Blurb Friday #17

I was excited about Book Blurb Friday, so I’m posting a wee bit early.  For this meme from Writing in the Buff, Lisa Ricard Claro posts a picture of a fictional book cover.  The challenge is to come up with an accompanying blurb of 150 words or fewer.  I loved this week’s picture the second I saw it.  Yes, it was like a big old carrot dangling in front of me, and yes, I obediently followed…with 122 words. 

And welcome to Susan! Susan, I’d love to see your blog but can’t find it. Am I that technologically challenged? Definitely.

~The Sort of New Adventures of Really, Really Old Christine~

By Steve King

The last time Christine fixed her own dents and chugged her way out of the junkyard, she realized her fenders just couldn’t take much more.  Could it be true?  It was.  Killing young boys just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. It was time to drive herself down to Boca.  Maybe buy a little garage and play some Mahjong with some Cadillac Coupe de Villes.  

Relax with Steve King’s less scary sequel focusing on Christine’s retirement years, during which her radio plays e-z listening tunes such as:

I Lost My Grille Climbing Blueberry Hill

Highway to Purgatory

Tow Truck to Heaven

Ain’t Killin’ Nothin’ But a Few Hound Dogs

Baby Got Trunk

Come On Baby, Rub My Tires

Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, about a romantic weekend she’s planning: “I’m taking underwear that isn’t gray!”

Book Blurb Friday #9

As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t always see blog photographs (whether mine or those of other people), or I see them and then they disappear. For some reason I still can't see Writing in the Buff’s pretend book cover for this week’s Book Blurb Friday. Horrors! Fortunately our beloved Southern hostess, Mizz Lisa Ricard Claro, was kind enough to send it to me personally so that I didn’t have to suffer. And I’m so glad she did, because I think this one is very close to my pretend book—that is, the one I pretend I am going to write someday. Here it is, three words under the 150 word limit including...ahem...the rave reviews.

~Rhoda’s Trip~

Once brilliant Rhoda Homewood of Grand Island, Nebraska had stuffed her wild side into a suitcase when she married, forcing herself to become the perfect wife, mother, and art teacher. Now her youngest child was leaving home, and Rhoda’s life was turned upside down by the discovery that her husband had been funding breast implants for a miniature golf instructor named Echo. Rhoda’s old suitcase flew open—and the conservative trip to Hilton Head that she had been planning with her husband turned instead into the road trip of a lifetime with her former high school best friend, now a radical librarian, and her neighbor, an accountant by day and female impersonator by night.

What this trio of middle aged misfits discovers along the way is almost as much fun as the trip itself.

“Saucy satire…absurd humor.” ~G. I. Journal
“Comic and absorbing…but with heart.” ~ Savannah Sun

When a woman steals your husband, there is no better revenge than to let her keep him. ~Anonymous

Not so Random Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, a very dear friend was over for lunch when my teenaged daughter backed out of the driveway and hit her car. My daughter was mortified. Certainly she should have looked to see what was behind her, but I know only too well how we’ve come to concentrate on dodging my son’s car which is parked on the driveway while he’s in college.

Fortunately for all of us, my wonderful friend was as sweet as could possibly be throughout the whole thing. And of course I felt awful for everyone. Later my friend commented that it was nice that I wasn’t mad at my daughter. Anger never occurred to me. This is a child who has done blessedly little in life to make me angry with her, and she certainly didn’t mean to do this. I am grateful for her every day of my life. In fact, she’s had so little experience making mistakes that I truly felt horrible seeing the look of shock on her face that captured a harsh reality: sometimes in life, in spite of our best intentions, we make mistakes.

I hugged my daughter and told her something it’s taken me a long time to learn: Don’t waste your energy trying to be perfect or worrying when you’re not. We’re better off spending our energy trying to be good at being imperfect. Simply do the best you can and work to handle your mistakes intelligently and graciously. It’s the best we can do.

If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter. ~Saint Theresa of Lysieux

I Can See You Shining in the Sun

I had inadvertently parked next to it at the grocery store: an older model, white Cadillac with a blue top.

For a moment I stood there and just reminisced. It looked conspicuous in the Wal-Mart parking lot, stretching absurdly long like a small yacht in a sea of rowboats. It even glinted in the sunlight, looking far cleaner and more perfect than the much newer cars around it. The hubcaps bore the Cadillac insignia, which has always reminded me of the crest on a country club blazer.

I knew this car. My soul knew this car. La voiture d’une grande dame. It was exactly the car my mother would have owned if she were still alive.

My mother died when I was thirty, but for at least as long as I was alive, her signature car was a blue and white Cadillac. The most memorable one was her ’54 Coupe Deville convertible that she kept over twenty years. It was white with a blue top, although she always claimed it was really an extremely light gray. And she would’ve known, since she always had a little jar of paint with which to do touch ups. She would go out to the garage and dab carefully with her sable artist’s brush at any imperfections. It was no joke to say that Mother was outside working on her car again. She was reputed to have been quite an artist at one time, but sadly, the only thing I ever saw her paint was her car.

When I think of that car, I can’t help but picture my mother’s brown arm rested carelessly on the window in summer, a Salem menthol balanced chop-stick-style in between pink, frosted nails. She rarely put the top down, but…oh...when she did, it was an ecstasy of wind and sunlight that swirled my hair into a face-whipping frenzy.

I remember those slick leather seats and the way we children used to catapult forward when she stopped too fast—because of course we were never buckled in. In fact, I remember often standing as she drove. If she even had seat belts, they were probably tucked neatly away so as not to detract from the light blue leather.

It may have been from a different era, but it was undeniably a more glamorous one. My mother kept her car shiny and spotless and elegant. Although the Mean Kid in grade school once referred to it as “that big old tin can,” he came across as merely jealous. Far more often, strangers at stoplights would look over and ask if it was for sale.

My smile lingered long after I went inside the grocery store. Later on, rounding the paper goods aisle, I heard her. “Oh, my goodness!” she laughed, wrestling with the direction of her cart, as if maneuvering a cart were an adventurous and slightly exotic thing, exactly as my mother would have done. She managed to right it just before I could get there to help her. She was slim, neatly dressed, and well-preserved enough that it was hard to say if she was in her seventies or eighties. Not too different from anyone else, yet she was somehow conspicuous in a Wal-Mart aisle. There was no question in my mind who she was.

I didn’t ask her, though, imagining that it might scare her momentarily; she might think that someone had scratched it. So I just kept going, but I knew. I smiled, but the lump in my throat knew.

A little voice inside my head said, ‘Don’t look back, you can never look back.’ I thought I knew what love was/What did I know? Those days are gone forever/I should just let them go ~Don Henley, “Boys of Summer”