Carnundrum or Why I Miss Saturn

So there is nothing more stressing than trying to buy a new car. Jeans? Bathing suits? Yes, please. I would rather suffer the indignity of trying to squeeze my ass into a pair of Gap skinny jeans than deal with the car situation. I recall the first time I went out into the big, bad world to purchase a new car. I was 22. It was the mid '90s. A grown up friend of mine recommended a Honda. I liked the look of the Mazda whatever. I test drove two cars. I hated the feel of the Honda and was overwhelmed by the pushy nature of the Mazda salesman. I could not do it. Then I heard about this wonderful car company. There are reasonably priced cars. Nice sales staff. No pressure. No haggling. Just go buy a car. It was the miracle I needed at the time. I decided against buying outright and opted to "smart buy" which was step up from leasing somehow. It was likly a scam, but it did not feel like one. That was all I cared about. I did not want to feel dirty after buying a car or talking to the sales person. And I didn't. And so my love affair with Saturn had begun. I had a wonderful routine. Every 3 years I would turn in my Saturn and upgrade to a nicer, newer model. Soon I had their small SUV which worked out perfectly. I could stick two dogs in cargo area and still have room for people. I was spoiled by leather interiors, heated seats, and sunroofs. It was perfect and then it ceased to be. Saturn was no more. My last "smart buy" SUV contract ended and I walked away carless. Well, I wasn't walking home or anything. I was left with the Saturn Ion coupe that we had actually bought used for my husband. Yes, we were sharing a car that could not comfortably seat more than 2 people. Sure, I could stick the kids in the back in carseats. They don't need legroom. I can stick a dog in the rear seat but he is inevitably trying to get in my lap and drive. But it worked. I told myself it would be for a limited period of time. Then I would return to the lap of SUV luxury. I would once again be riding tall, taking my friends in the car, driving the dogs the vet withour endangering us all. That was two years ago? In the meantime, I have done my best to find the next perfect car. I simply keep falling in love with the wrong car or car company. I have a killer crush on the Volvo SC90. It has the lush leather interior. Can comfortably fit friends, family, and dogs all at the same time. It is super safe and reliable. Unfortunately, it will not work. Sure I could almost afford it. I could buy one used. Stop going out to lunch ever. Let my hair turn grey and mousy brown. I could pay for premium gas and get like 13 mpg to and from work. But I would not be able to look myself in the eye with any sense of respect. Come on?! Mousy hair!! I therefore established a set of clear, practical criteria for my next vehicle. I thought this would be the best, less emotional response to meeting my needs and maintaining my self-respect. So my criteria: 1.) Safety first - must have a minimum of 4 star overall safety rating with a bunch of 5s throughout. 2.) Must fit people and dogs at the same time. So cargo area must be reasonable 3.) Must get a decent MPG rating and not need premium gas. 4.) Must be reliable and easy to service 5.) Must be affordable I have scoured the essays of Cars.Com for the better part of a year. This is so difficult. I originally wanted to buy an American car to support the US Auto Worker. Unfortunately, we don't build safe, reliable, affordable SUVs. I had great hopes for Ford's Escape. But its MPG and safety ratings are subpar. I fell in deep like with Subaru. Their commercials appeal to me in the same way the old Saturn ones used to. It is a lifestyle I can get behind. There is always a dog in the back. It would be perfect. But their mpg is a bit low and more importantly, I cannot have it easily serviced. The nearest Subaru dealership is in Lafayette. So it remains on the edge. Desparate, I started looking at the Korean car companies. They seem to have reliability, affordability, and safety under control. I like the Korean people, even have an affinity for them having lived there for four years. I could get behind that. I just can't get excited about them. I then thought about the ugly cars: the Kia Soul, Honda Element, Scion, Nisson Cube. I thought about them like ugly dogs. Ugly dogs hit a thresshold whereby their ugliness somehow makes them cute. Well these cars are so ugly but their affordability and practicality make them appealing. Unfortuntately the only one that can fit a dog in the cargo section is the Honda Element which is no longer made. Come on Kia Soul, can't you add just a foot to the cargo bed? And there is the unavoidable fact that I cannot drive a car that won't accelerate quickly enough to keep me from being killed on the interstate. None of these practical, ugly cars can meet that standard. While, I did not explicity state it in the list above, I include it in my mind with safety and reliability. So here are all of the cars I have considered so far: Volvo SC 90 and 60 - too expensive LandRover Range Rover - too expensive Jeeps (all of them) - not safe or fuel efficient Mazda, Nisson SUVs - kind of pricey Chevy/GMC SUVs - not as safe and fuel efficient as I would like. Ford Escape: ditto Honda CRV - ugly back end, not fuel efficient Honda Pilot: expensive and not very fuel efficient Toyota RAV4 and Higlander: same as pilot Lincoln and Cadillac: you must be joking Scion, Kia Soul, Nisson Cube: no room for dogs Honda Element - no longer made Hyundai and Kia SUVs: still a possibilty (no spark) Mitsubishi Outlander: in contention (just not excited) So I continue onward, hoping to fall in love again some day.

New York New York

I have not been to NYC in a few years. The last time I was there was just for an evening and we spent our time in SoHo. How pretentious does that sound? Well it is about to get worse. This time I actually stayed the night (well three to be exact) in Chelsea at the Hotel Indigo. I had a wonderful time. There are things about the city that I love but for the most part, I frickin hate NYC. There I said it. My relatives (my mother's side goes back for generations in NY) are spinning in their graves (to be fair, they were still spinning from me marrying a Southern protestant AND choosing to live in the South). My mother's family was old NY money (not Vanderbilt old, but Irish old) - they had what today would be a mansion complete with wrap around porch in Riverdale. They finally moved out to Long Island and then dispersed as the money had long since run out. If I lived there, I would soon run out of money as well. So I was in Chelsea. It is a cute little neighborhood rich in history and well situated to everything from Herald Square to Broadway to Penn Station and the Empire State Building. You can get to everything fairly easily. We walked to Chelsea Pier and back in the rain. Lovely time for real. What I hate are the rats, the fact that our hotel room was the size of my bathroom at home, that Central Park smells like bum piss and has rats instead of squirrels, and that everything is so crowded and confined. After traveling thru airports and being on an airplane, I nearly had a panic attack when I got the hotel and there was no sprawling lobby space and our hotel room had room enough for an almost king sized bed and a chair. I need space. And I need green. The only thing that saved our street was the fact that there were a bunch of flower shops on it and one exotic plant store that had its wares out along the sidewalk. Otherwise I may have lost my mind completely. Too many people. Way too many rats (I like mine dead or at the very least completely out of sight). Way too little space. And $60 for two drinks is outrageous.

I Hate Helicopter Parents or Why Gen X Should Not Have Had Kids

I work at a University in the South. I was born in the early 70s. I have witnessed first hand my generation go from disenfranchised slackers to insane helicopter parents. It is a sad and frightful thing. My generation should have not had children. It is a simple thing. We (and I use this term to own up to the fact that had I had children in my 20s I might be this sort of person now)felt so neglected and alienated from our own parents that we coddle our children to the point of unhealthy enablement. They cannot ride their bikes unescorted down the street. They cannot go out without GPS enabled on their cell phones. Yes, we were all scared shitless when little Adam was kidnapped from the shopping center and this traumatized us to the point that we become uber-protective. I will allow that children ought to be protected. I think children should be coddled and feel important. However there is a line and that line is the magical age of 18. Cut the apron (and purse strings) Gen X parents! Sure we were shoved off into the scary world all on our own without direction. Sure we wondered around experimenting with heroin and bathing in our ennui. So what? Every generation has to find themselves and that is messy. Let your children wander free. Disengage. Their lives are not yours to run. Find a new hobby. Perhaps train a dog in agility? Build a kit car to tool around town in. Stop hovering over your grown children. They need guidance from afar when requested. You do not need to hold their hands through college. And you certainly do not need to call their places of employment and advocate on their behalf. Let your kids fight their own battles now. They are grown up physically. They will never emotionally mature if you continue to run their lives!

I Understand You Are a Dirty Hippy

Look, I understand that you are a dirty hippy. You can still smell like a civilized human being and not a Big Mac. Yes, you have a hipster persona that you must maintain. You don't want to poison your temple of a body with toxic antiperspirants. Fine. I get that. I am not happy about the aluminum in my Secret. However, I must interact with other humans and I don't want to offend them by smelling bad. You know, like you. There are many options that you should explore especially since you live in a swamp and it is June. You don't want your dog think it should roll around on you instead of the dead squirrel carcass in the back yard because you smell worse. Here are my suggestions: 1.) Get rid of your hippy soap and regularly wash (twice a day during the summer please) with a stronger soap like Dial. 2.) Invest in wet wipes. Scrub those arm pits periodically throughout the day (especially while at work) 3.) Buy some deodorant. It does not contain the poisonous chemicals of an antiperspirant. 4.) Try to keep fresh and dry by applying baby powder to those trouble areas. I want you to succeed hipster. But more importantly, I want to be able to stand next you without my eyes watering.

Embarrass Me

So I was doing a portion of my grocery shopping at Albertson's this weekend. For the record, I buy most of our groceries at Whole Foods. I buy toilet paper(because softness has not been fully achieved by green products), peanut butter (we only eat Peter Pan Peanut Butter), paper towels, detergents, cat litter, coffee (because it is cheaper), sausage, cheese sticks, and any other major brand items that WF does not carry. That said, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and purchase several pregnancy tests so I would have them on hand (see Peter Wentz post for rationale). Albertson's keeps pregnancy tests in a locked glass case along with every other embarrassing thing you would ever have to purchase (bar hemorrhoid cream): yeast infection cures, condoms, female birth control, ky lubricants, fresh wipes for down there, douches, etc). So if you are an Albertson's customer, you have to ask someone to unlock the cabinet and pull out what you need. As a customer I find this really inhospitable. So I find a friendly female staffer and ask her to unlock the case. She of course cannot do so. She has to contact the manager. The manager sends a fifteen year old boy to open the case. That's right, some pimply faced youngster would get to know the state of my vagina and/or sex life. I would have to admit to him that I was feeling less than fresh, needed some lubrication or was battling a nasty yeast infection. Customer service win! I explained that I needed some pregnancy tests. Whew! Dodged a bullet there. He went to open the case and the key broke off. I suppose some portion of their clientele must be too embarrassed to even bring these items to the counter so they steal them. You have to be confident (or desperate) enough to face a teenager to ensure you don't rob them. I went to CVS where you can buy products more discreetly.

Of course the real issue with buying pregnancy tests is that the cashier always feel compelled to comment. They don't comment on anything else. You never hear, hope you feel better soon when you stock up on cold/flu products but every time I buy a pregnancy test I hear, "Oh, I hope the result is what you want" or some derivation of that. It just seems intrusive. But obviously buying these products is some sort of public statement that simply cannot go unobserved.

Inspiration

When I was 17, my dad took the family to the coast of Maine. We stayed at the family home of Bob Buck. It was built in the early nineteenth century and was steps away from the beach. We spent an entire week without AC and without TV. I spent my days with my brothers and sisters walking the coastline, frolicking in the water and wondering about the lives of the people in the nearby mansion up the hill. I read classic gothic novels and Bob introduced me to Sarah Orne Jewett. He gifted me with a copy of Country of the Pointed Firs. Jewett spent time in his family's cottage working on the piece.

I learned some important lessons that summer: I never wanted to have to rely on a septic system, lobster tastes better in Maine than in New Hampshire, and I found my voice as a writer. Even now when I need to escape or seek inspiration, I take myself back to that magical place. I recall the isolation, the wet black rocks, the brush of the long grasses as we cut a path to the beach. I recall the ebb and flow of high and low tide coming in and going out. I see the small rocks and crustaceans beneath the clear grey water.

We never returned to Bob's house as a family. But I return there in my mind whenever possible. Rest in Peace Uncle Bob. And thank you.

DISCONTENT. (St. Nicholas text)

Down in a field, one day in June,
The flowers all bloomed together,
Save one, who tried to hide herself,
And drooped, that pleasant weather.

A robin who had soared too high,
And felt a little lazy,
Was resting near a buttercup
Who wished she were a daisy.

For daisies grow so trig and tall;
She always had a passion
For wearing frills about her neck
In just the daisies' fashion.

And buttercups must always be
The same old tiresome color,
While daisies dress in gold and white,
Although their gold is duller.

"Dear robin," said this sad young flower,
"Perhaps you'd not mind trying
To find a nice white frill for me,
Some day, when you are flying?"

"You silly thing!" the robin said;
"I think you must be crazy!
I'd rather be my honest self
Than any made-up daisy.

"You're nicer in your own bright gown,
The little children love you;
Be the best buttercup you can,
And think no flower above you.

"Though swallows leave me out of sight,
We'd better keep our places;
Perhaps the world would all go wrong
With one too many daisies.

"Look bravely up into the sky,
And be content with knowing
That God wished for a buttercup
Just here, where you are growing."

Endings

We said a very tearful good bye to Cixous a week ago yesterday. I still tear up thinking of it. After not eating and not wanting to walk for a couple days, we decided it was time. I scheduled her appointment. Almost immediately she took a few nibbles of food and walked the block. It was only a few nibbles and she stopped every 10 feet of the block to catch her breath. It was time. It didn't make it any easier. I still look for her every morning and the weekend was really hard. I swear I hear her. It will get better. She had a great life and made my life better for sharing it with me.