Skip to main content

A Dream Deferred


My first car was a lightly used silver Scion XA that I absolutely loved. I happily drove Bobby for ten years and he never gave me any trouble and always got me where I needed to go safely. Knowing that someday he would need to be replaced, I kept half an eye on vehicles and settled on a bright green Scion IM as my preferred next vehicle.

But you can't fit three carseats in the back of an IM or an XA, so four years ago Bobby went to live with a professional cleaner who needed a reliable car with good gas mileage and a back hatch that didn't require propping open with a broom handle and I ended up with a van. Morrison was exactly what we needed and the kids loved him, but I did not particularly enjoy driving (or parking) something so big.

Deciding that we didn't need two gas guzzling vehicles and in preparation for a job that was an hour drive away, my partner traded in his big pick up truck... for a Corolla Hatchback, which is what IMs became when Toyota absorbed Scion five years ago. In bright green. I was a bit salty that he got "my" car and I had a bus to drive, but I did get to use it for weekend errands.

Last summer while he was out of town for work, Morrison started making a concerning sound. Adam had carpooled to his destination and his car was at his office, so I went to just see if I could pack us all into it. I could. And when he got back and replaced the van brakes (the source of the noise) we never traded back.

Since the kids and I could just fit in the car but not all five of us, we decided it would make the most sense to replace the van with something smaller than it but big enough to be comfortable, so Morrison was recently replaced with Ar-Too the Outback.

As soon as it came in, I trotted outside with a scrub brush and a cup of soapy water and scraped off the stickers he'd put on the car window and put some of my own on, and replaced the Arkansas Razorbacks front plate with a more appropriate one. It's just like a used version of the car I wanted ten years ago, and this way I know it's had all its oil changes and things. He was renamed Elton (to follow my convention of naming vehicles after singers: Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elton John) and our first proper adventure was driving through a blizzard to an art night event.

I've got some travel plans for this summer that will be much more enjoyable in a vehicle half the size, with half the miles and twice the mpg, so I'm looking forward to future adventures!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3.3 - Forage

I recently looked up the rest of the Mary Oliver poem that ends in "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" because that was the only part I had ever heard, and it turns out the rest of The Summer Day  is about going for a walk and lying about in the grass. That's what she planned to do with her one wild and precious life. I feel like it gets misapplied a lot. As the weather grows cooler, I've been thinking about foraging, as a concept. I am a terrible gardener. Even as a child I loathed getting up early and tramping through the dewy grass to the dusty garden to water and pull weeds. As an adult, I stumbled onto the one plant that likes the climate of my front windows but claim no personal credit for their flourishing. If we ever move I may have to leave them here, to ensure their survival. There's also a pot of mint by my front step that survives on rain water or when one of the kids points out that it's a bit crunchy. Plants...
1 comment
Read more

Reading and Writing

  #attunedpracticetuesdays: where we share the rituals and routines that are aligned with our sense of peace and wellbeing A couple of months ago, while working on a commission project , I started a new practice. I was listening to audio books while working since the project required my eyes but not my full attention, and since it was fairly labor intensive, I took the weekends off (not something I would normally do). Lacking something to do with my hands, the first Saturday I decided to put my speedy reading to good use and read a novel in one sitting (my preferred method, anyway). Then I read another novel the next Saturday. And now it has becomes a weekly thing. The only rule is that it has to be fiction - I read enough non fiction that a novel a week isn't going to hurt anything (and it wouldn't anyway, reading is reading). Helping out with Paper Heart Books and attending a bring-your-own-book-club meeting last week helped restock my dwindling supply. I like to get hard cop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Festivals and Fairs

October is the Month of Fun Outings. The weather is generally pleasant, many things are less crowded than they are in summer because school has started back, and there are also an array of local events. We try to make the most of it, since I got used to not getting sick while we stayed in for a couple years so now we ride out the germiest months at home. But before that, we frolic. We'll miss our favorite fall festival due to scheduling conflict, but there will be a small one at my eldest's dance studio, and we're all going to the state fair this year. There are street fairs and at some point soon we'll go and each choose a pumpkin to stack on the front step five deep, and my littlest will name each family member while pointing at their pumpkin every time we go in or out the door.  I've started leaving windows open at night, and sometimes it's been cool enough to have them open during the day, too. My desk candle has expanded to three candles on a cheese board b...
Post a Comment
Read more