EastGirlsWest

Goodbye

This photo was taken yesterday. That’s my car, begin towed away from me forever. How’s that for some not at all subtle end of year symbolism?

I donated the car to KPBS, partially because they told me to, every five minutes on the air. By the time I heard the “donate your car” spot for the one thousandth time this year, it transformed into mind control. Donate my car, you say? Well of course! Here it is. Take. My. Car.

The other reason I donated is for a big fat tax write off. Oh, and just sheer generosity, of course.

I try not to get too sentimental about things, especially cars. But I have to admit to some tears hitting my cheeks as the tow truck pulled away.
This car was my I-can-parallel-park-like-a-rock-star in Chicago car.
It was my aren’t-you-jealous-of-my-seat-warmers car.
It moved me from the midwest to southern California, making it over the Rocky Mountains with a UHaul trailer in tow. At $10,000, it’s the most expensive thing I have ever purchased. It’s one of the few remaining vestiges of my pre-San Diego life. And it’s given me years of both freedom and reliability.

But letting go of the car has given me a different sense of freedom. I stood in the middle of the road yesterday, watching the car get smaller as the tow truck moved down the street, feeling energized by the combination of a significant deacquisition and the start of a brand new year. The 2008 slate now has a little more blank space. And I like that.

I don’t know what my next car will be, or exactly when I will buy it. In the meantime, The Husband and I are going to attempt to be green(er) for a few months. We’ll be sharing one car, and no doubt countless conversations and negotiations about who will use it and when.

I experimented with taking the trolley to work last Friday, and aside from the fact that it adds an hour each way onto my 20 minute commute, it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps this is the reading time I need to keep up with my New Yorker subscription?

A homeless man is sitting on the sidewalk on my way to lunch. He’s holding a sign that says:

Please help. Spaceship needs new parts.

“Without sex, a relationship is just two people running errands.”

“I am so behind on reading my New Yorkers. It’s bad.”

“Yeah, you really need to hit the unsubscribe button on that.”

“NO! I just need more time. And maybe a reading buddy. How about you start reading them too, and then we can discuss our favorite articles?”

“NO! I see what you’re doing here. You’re just trying to shoehorn more relationship into this relationship. I’m not falling for it.”

I hate to put up two depressing posts in a row, but the fact is we’re sitting at home today, watching multiple fires storm mercilessly across San Diego county. I can’t complain about the low-grade burn of smoke in my lungs when I’m sitting in my safe, intact home, watching destruction just miles away from the comfort of my couch. My fingers are crossed for everyone we know who has a home in the path of the flames, and I’ve bitten my fingernails watching the stories of those who have already seen their homes disintegrate.

Seems this is part of life in the west. I always thought about earthquakes when I moved here, but not the fires. My life experience with weather disasters has been limited to snowstorms and hurricanes. Single digit humidity combined with gray skies and air that hurts to breathe is not something that ever entered my mind when I moved here.

The Husband just saw the address of his childhood home crawl across the lower third of our TV screen, part of a list of residences that burned. I never thought I’d ever wish so hard for the wind to subside.

Tay picks me up at work. We drive to the smoothie place, and she runs over a pigeon when we get into the parking lot. The pigeon does not die, but in the rear view mirror we can see it pointlessly flapping its wings, scampering across the pavement, going nowhere fast.

She cries in the car. There are tears while we order and wait for our smoothies.

We drive to Tay’s new apartment, which is quiet and mostly empty, still waiting for her to inhabit. Our only effort to spruce up is to quietly hang a temporary shower curtain - just a liner, really - while we drink our smoothies.

We leave Tay’s apartment. On the way back to my office, a monster pickup truck rolls through a stop sign at an intersection. We are headed directly towards the pickup, at a normal rate of speed since we don’t have a stop sign. I scream. Tay slams on the brakes, and the car skids and squeals and uses every bit of restraint it can muster to come to a stop about .5 inches from the pickup. We are terrified, holding our breath, not blinking. The pickup driver doesn’t flinch. Or stop. He turns his head, looks right through us, and keeps driving.

Two blocks further she drops me off. Lunch hour is over.

“Well, forty is the new thirty. And fifty is the new forty.”

“Yeah, right. And cellulite is the new tattoo.”

“I can’t believe you’re working this many hours! Are you getting paid overtime?”

“Yeah, right. It’s more like undertime.”

“We’ve been married for almost three months!”

“Hmm. Really? It feels longer.”

“I just can’t believe people. I mean, people we don’t even know! They have no problem just blatantly asking us if we’re going to have kids, are planning to have kids, want kids. How do they think it’s appropriate to ask? And what possible answer is there?”

“I’m just going to start telling them no, we can’t have kids, because I have penile leprosy.”