I'm Two Timin Ya Red Bird

My Pathfinder has started to feel a thousand times more comfortable. And what's wrong with SUVs - huh? What if you ACTUALLY have a lot of cargo...what's a girl to do? Bikes, kids, crap, cats....dogs. Dog actually. A 15 year old dog that shits himself silly just looking at the car. The vet comes to us now. He has never been a car dog. He drools long streams of spit, and smacks his toothless gums together and shifts from foot to foot nervously when he sees the "towel" come out that we normally put in the back. And the cats have not seen the inside of a car since their harrowing drive home from the Humane Society. Ok, so maybe I am reaching. But as we get closer to October and the "turning in" of our reliable, comfy, BIG car I am gettin a little, well, nervous. I mean, 7 seats, CD player, DOOR PANELS - hell, it even has seat belts. I said casually to CJ the other night while pretending to root around in the fridge "so, I, uh, park next to that new Jetta wagon at the office. It is cool looking." He says nothing. "It's the diesal." He looks up. "Oh yeah?" He smiles. I know what he is thinking. The beamer is mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! I can lower, raise it, put big tires on it, small tires on it, make it sound really, really LOUD. Maybe he wasn't really thinking any of that - but I think I am pretty close, I know how this boy thinks. I have to take a running start to get in his truck, and the other day he announces he needs new tires. And he might get "bigger ones." Jesus, we might as well move back to Petaluma. So, I digress. This is another story. But, I admit it. I have been eyeing "other" cars. Checking out the competition. I worry. A lot. I know I will lay in bed worrying the car won't start the morning I have a meeting I cannot miss. But Red Bird was a family car. It carried kids around just fine. I made it through my childhood in a Datsun 510, rolled down the windows and waited patiently for my mom to unlock her door with the actual key, get in and reach back and unlock mine. We are not better people for being able to get somewhere seamlessly because the pretty electronic voice in the car is telling us (in just the right amount of time I might add) where to turn, left, right and "destination on the right!" It is just so darn convenient! But we have mapquest. I can think ahead. Don't worry Red Bird. We're never gonna let you go.

Knocked out by a burrito in Denver

My friend Melissa has a blog. I looked at the headline where she wrote she feared she had nothing to write because nothing happens in her life. Funny, I had clicked "new post" and was staring at the empty box...title and text almost blindingly white. I was thinking exactly the same thing. What the hell, besides nothing, happened last week?

Plus, I hate Sundays. There. I said it. I shouldn't hate them. I seems really stupid to say you hate Sundays. It is like saying you hate Santa Claus. How can you hate them? They are usually lazy days, filled with lots of warm coffee and warm kids with sticky maple syrup hands that want hugs all day long. But I suffer from PTSSPTTWW. That is pre-traumatic-stress-syndrome-prior-to-the-work-week. I have always had it. I even diagnosed myself. Of course my PTSSPTTWW is at it's worst when I have had jobs and bosses I have strongly not liked - even very, very very much disliked (we are trying to not say the word HATE in this house, so I am practicing) but even when I have had jobs I have loved or a business trip I was looking forward to, it is there. The whole day has this kind of cloud over it - summer or winter, hot or freezing, the cloud is there. The "work tomorrow" cloud makes fries taste not so great, wine slightly sour, the beach just too damn sandy....it is just - there. Take today for example. The day is just - off. The kids are sitting in a kind of Blair Witchcraft trance in front of the TV show Full House. John Stamos has an epic mullet with tall feathered bangs complete with a 3/4" sleeve blazer and a button down underneath with the collar up so far it looks like it is affecting the way he moves his head. The middle kid - you know, the one who became the meth addict later in life? She looks all sweetness and light, sunshiny blond curls and cute-as-button little face. How did that cute kid land on the cover of People talking about her severe drug addiction? I stare at my kids angelic faces and get a little shiver of fear for them. On a good day that show gives me the heebies - hurtling me back to when I was the pudgy kid with frizzy hair embroiled in the psychological vortex of my 12-year-old youth. On top of the Sunday weirdness, when woke up I googled my dad - for no apparent reason. I woke with a pit in my stomach, back was that little ache of pain that seems to grow and then wane, and then when it returns it hurts extra bad. I don't know what I'd expect to find on google. Would his face pop up under a bolded blue underlined descriptor? When I clicked on it would a note say: "You finally found me! I have been stuck in google! Release me and I will come back to you and your mom and David and the kids and everything will be back to normal!!" But instead, I saw all these pictures of some 40-year-old-ish English chap that wrote all kinds of articles about creepy religious/emotional freedom crap. It put me in a funk. At least I stopped calling his cell phone. It would just ring. No out of service message. Just endless ringing. CJ, on the other hand, spent the better part of the week checking out a new ambulance in Ohio. That, and a bad burrito in the Denver airport, put him in a funk. Shit, that'd put anyone in a funk.

But thankfully, today, CJ came in the house, covered in grease and grinning ear to ear. "The car runs SO great!" He announced. "Can I drive it??" I said. Minutes later, I was buzzing up our street in the Red Bird. A respite from the rain, and a soft, sunny wind made it a perfect ride. Aside from the two front seats, it was basically interior-less. But it smelled more like a car, and less like a grease trap. It drove more like a car, and less like a go cart. And most importantly, it took my serious, extra-bad case of PTSSPPTTWW and left it at the curb for a whole five minutes.

Ode to the Island Car

Oh, poor ol Red Bird. She sits soggy and waterlogged under a sagging car cover- rained out for 10 straight days. Colin is back to singin his tired 'ol ditty: "Oh, I need a garage, my last garage left me for another owner....pooooor me, poooor meeeee" Same song, different day. Those long, agonizing couple of days spent spittin out swear words and battling a hand-in-a-vice-grip pain to get the windsheilds installed was well worth it...no leaks! Locked up in all this crawling-the-walls rain, I embarked on another fabulous winter task: tax preparation. Right up there with child birth and cleaning up cat barf, this was not something I looked forward to. I half-heartedly dug through the stacks of papers we had squirreled away in closets and on the top of counters. The electronic babysitter was blaring Spongebob Squarepants for the 9th time, and I needed to just get this done. Furiously looking for W2's and 1099's, my mood was careening rapidly downhill. In the myriad of junk mail, pictures the kids brought home from school that I couldn't throw away and other documents I swore I would take to the shredder but never did, I found this picture. Just randomly stuck on the back of a State Farm Insurance calendar from that soul sucking year that was 2009. This picture caused me to sit down on living room floor, criss-cross applesauce style, the heaps of papers and file boxes around me forgotten. I just stared at for it for a while.

I bought this car while I was living in the Caribbean after I promised my dad I would stop hitchhiking to get to where I needed to go. Most days I was out on a charter boat working as a cook, so I didn't think I needed a car. Hitchhiking was very common, but my parents didn't like the idea. And it got be a real pain in the ass on laundry day anyway. Staring at this picture, I got lost in the memory of days that were spent shoeless in shorts and a bathing suit top where the biggest decision I made on my days off were weather to go diving or read. I could leave the key in the ignition when I parked, often for days, and no one would bother it. It could get dumped on in a surprise tropical downpour, shake it off like wet dog and start right up. Off charter, nights out consisted of stopping at a roadside stand for conch fritters and an ice cold Heineken. We'd play Trivial Pursuit at the Pub or just sit in a chair, feet up on a rope railing and stare at the sea playing backgammon. My salary went right in my pocket in the form of wadded up cash tips, and I spent it on new bathing suits or dive gear. I did get a marine plywood top made for this car by the guy that was the previous owner. He owned a windsurfing place on the east end of the island and was a little cantankerous. He marketed himself as being sort of a craftsman, and touted his side job of outfitting these tops for many of the roof-less island cars. After a particularly difficult charter babysitting a bunch of airline pilots from Buffalo that REALLY liked to drink, I decided to spend some of my hard-earned money on a new roof for my little car. What this "so-called craftsman" made was something akin to what my five year old would construct. It was a giant box with a big slice in the top to flip back to make a sort of sun roof. He seemed pleased with himself, but I was horrified. It didn't even appear to look like it would stay on when I started driving. But he was a crabby old English guy that kind of scared me, so I said nothing, plunked down the cash and started down the road. If I went faster than about 15 miles an hour (which is about as fast as I could go in that car anyway) the top halfway opened and closed intermittently. Surely I looked like some sort of motorized Venus fly trap. I got used to the thud, thud, thud as I drove - and most days just flipped it back and avoided the sound altogether. This car was actually considered an SUV by Gurgel, the Brazilian company that manufactured it. When Gurgel first started manufacturing cars in the early 1970's, they would plop their Fiberglass bodies on a VW beetle chassis, so they were pretty popular in their time. Sadly, Gurgel went out of business in the 1990's when Brazil opened up their car market to foreign cars -if that ol car if it isn't a wreck dive by now it is someones collectors item. But this little trip down memory lane was a nice diversion in the middle of a cold January day. Reminiscing about my life when I swam in the clear blue sea multiple times a day and could decide last minute to eat fresh lobster, well, cause there is a kid that just tied up his dinghy full of fresh lobster. My life back then was a lot like our little Red Bird: the opposite of complicated. No GPS, no crazy bells or whistles. No bigger, better, faster. Just a pretty little car that you unlock with an actual key, start with an actual key and the only thing to fiddle with is the clock when the time changes. There is a lot to be said for nice, easy and uncomplicated. By the way, we are collecting more o that, if anyone's got it...

New Year, New Headliner

I have been getting a lot of flack for not updating the blog lately - but with two kids out of school for two weeks, being back at work with all the "refreshed and ready to start the new year!" crooning co-workers and a bad bout of tonsillitis - things like blogging, running, reading or anything else that requires a few moments spent solo have not been in the cards. I have not even read US magazine in weeks! I don't know if Tiger has surfaced, why everyone keeps talking about Conan, or if Brittany's fat, creepy hair-plugged husband actually off'ed her. It has been a bit dire. Excuses, excuses....blah, blah blah - I am back. The delay is not for lack of progress on the Red Bird though. When CJ and I first started dating, he was a Reserve Firefighter (which means he worked the same hours as he does now, without getting any dough - a little bit of a lifestyle cramper) so he worked as a mechanic on his days off. He had sore, oil stained fingers and told me funny stories of disgusting cars that he'd have to work on. Think of the show "Hoarders." This is California - every one's got a ride, not everyone cleans up. The Red Bird restoration has given him the same oil stained fingers, and after the last two projects of putting in the headliner and both windshields he's been popping the advil like crazy for his sore hands. I shall never take for granted the headliner of a car again. Look at your own car - that is some serious skill! Pulling that material taut, cutting the edges perfectly. Attempting it your own is kind of like making a bed with that infuriating fitted sheet where neither end looks like the right end. You put it on each corner of the bed and pull tight, tight....tighter - willing it to be the right side up. When the corner of your mattress starts to curl upward - you know you are toast, you must start over. Breaking a sweat, getting pissed, you begin again. Flip the thing around and try not to swear too much. Hannah charges me a quarter each time I am caught, and I'm not proud, but I owe her about $8 bucks. When the headliner costs you $200 bucks (not including shipping) - there is no starting over. No re-configuring. No trial run. You just kinda go for it. I decided I'd wait for Colin to tell me it was done, popping in to "see how it is going" on projects like this is not received well. I could just tell when he came in the house, or I called him from work that the project was not tons of fun. Finally, he said it was done, and to come take a look. He stared at me hopefully. My mom was over and wanted to see too...ouch, this could get ugly. Before I could open my mouth he said calmly, almost with warning "it is as good as it is going to get." I was catching the "keep your mouth shut woman" vibe he was throwing down, but why I never learn to just be silent in situations like this is astounding to me -even as it is happening. "But - what about this end?" I ask, hating myself. He explained he didn't know how much material he'd have to reach the other side - so it ended up a little....um, baggy, on one end. Now, no one would ever notice this. But for anyone that knows me - and this man knows me - I notice. Fixate. Things have to be "just so." I have learned/tried/pretended to be flexible. I have kids, and they destroy everything. It still takes some doing for me. When things are new and pretty and fresh out of the box - I want it to fly to the car like in a Disney movie carried on either end by two little birdies and magically place itself perfectly in it's rightful place - no puckering, no crookedness. The reality is - no birdies, 2 days, lots of coffee, lots of beer, lots of advil later - the headliner is in. And "as good as it is gonna get" is just fine. Hey, both windshields are in without being broken - so we celebrate the small the victories. Almost all of the exterior trim is on, including the front bumper complete with O'Neill Santa Cruz license plate frames...the Red Bird looks real, drive able, RED....ours.