Suzy Says

The belated tree

So I finally decided to put up the vintage 1950s Christmas tree. I was helped in this decision by Rob coming up with a stand for the tree. I should have taken a picture of it for you before I installed the tree and covered the stand up with a towel, but you’ll just have to take my word for its ingenuity.

As usual, it was made out of found parts. It has a wide base to keep the tree steady and withstand kitty attacks, while having an opening narrow enough to hold the svelte tree.

As you can see, the tree is kind of minimally decorated. There are lights on the banister and outside the sliding doors where the tree is, so it seemed a little too Vegas to light up the tree. Then someone told me that if cats eat tinsel or icicles, it can kill them, so that was out. Rob said he might make me an origami star for the top, and Megan and I might string popcorn and/or cranberries for it. Or not. We’ll see. In the meantime, the halls are about as decked as they’re going to get.

Tonight my brother is coming over for dinner with a friend who is visiting from Syracuse. Syracuse, the city of my birth but otherwise undistinguished, has been rearing its sooty head lately. It turns out that our friend Clayton, who kindly put us up during Rob’s surgery this summer, also hails from that eastern town, and at our Christmas lunch on Friday, I learned that our CEO went to college there. Small world, no?

Our friend Lichen doesn’t do Christmas. This is hardly surprising considering that he was brought up on a Mormon commune by parents who tried to “beat the gay out of him.” Also not surprisingly, they didn’t succeed.

But what is surprising is that Lichen had never seen “Sex & the City”, and Megan and I decided it was high time we remedied this shocking oversight.

Megan was the hostess with the mostes’, picking up two packets of blueberry pomegranate martini mix and making Dad’s famous honey-mustard chicken, rice and roasted asparagus with lemon caper sauce for dinner. My contribution was vodka for the martinis and pitchers to freeze them in. And my sparkling presence, of course.

Somewhat embarrassingly, I ran into Mark on my way back home, carrying a giant family-size (and bright blue) bottle of vodka at 2:00 in the afternoon. We mixed up the martinis the day before and let them freeze overnight into grown-up slushies.

The mix came with blueberry flavored sugar to go on the rims of the glasses. It kind of made the martinis more SweeTart-like, but we have a boatload of it left over. I’ll have to ask Erica for bright ideas on how to use it up. Sweetening huckleberry pie? Weird sugar cookies? Who knows?

Lichen cut our hair before we started imbibing the martinis, so we looked fabulous for Carrie and friends. Lichen liked the show and found it funny, but was also repelled by the late 90’s conspicuous consumption and shallowness. It reminded him of why he stopped being hairdresser to the stars in Beverly Hills.

It was a great evening, and I set off for home around 11:00, flashlight in hand. Before I had gone halfway down Megan’s driveway, I realized that I didn’t need it. The moon was flooding the path with silvery, magical light. I was charmed by walking home on moonbeams, though I had no idea of the amazing experience in store for me in just a few hours. It was enough to just be in the moment, after spending a wonderful evening with people I love.

This morning, Audrey woke me up about ten minutes before six. I went downstairs to let her out, put on the outside lights, and ventured out into the chilly, pre-dawn darkness.

One of the few good things about my old nemesis is that it makes it possible to see about 1000 times more stars than you can in the city. Sometimes there are so many stars that they are a huge hazy galaxy instead of individually set sparkling diamonds.

This morning, however, the sky was studded with about a million and a half stars, the perfect setting for the eclipsing moon, which I could see through the black trees.

The moon was a rich, luminous orange as it reached the total eclipse. As I gazed in wonder, a shooting star streaked over it, leaving me gasping in amazement. A little white trail briefly lingered, and then vanished into my heart and memory forever.

I stood there stunned for a little while, hardly able to believe what I had just seen. Hours later, I am still deeply moved. Something happened to me on this early winter morning, as night turned to day. But I don’t have the words to express it. I just have the feeling. And the memory of something incredibly special.

Where did the week go? Suddenly, it’s Friday, with nothing blogged. All work and no play makes Suzy a non-blogger.

I haven’t even started my Christmas cards yet, probably because I lost my address book back in June and am still in denial, meaning that I have addresses on Post-Its and in my email, but that’s about it. So I’d have to round them up, write them in an address book, and then write them on a card and send it. I ask you, does that sound like the Suzy you know and love?

Maybe I’ll skip it this year and see if the world comes to an end.

On the other hand, I put up all the lights and have been acquiring things for stockings. There’s an impressive array of boxes and bags and things and stuff in the studio/cold storage. I’m considering putting up my fabulous vintage Christmas tree this year, though there are a couple of problems with that:

1. I still don’t have a holder for its broomstick-slender trunk (I think it may actually be a broomstick); and

b. There are three cats in the house.

But I love the idea of having a fake tree in a place surrounded by real trees. Also, it’s pretty and sparkly.

On Wednesday, I came home from work in the semi-darkness and noticed that a light was on inside the house. I wondered if I’d left it on all day (eep!), but it turned out that Rob had come over to turn on the heat and a couple of lights to make the house more welcoming for me. Isn’t that nice? OK, he was doing some laundry, too, but still.

We hung out a while, and he asked me if I had any projects for him to do. He is planning to fill in the hole in the concrete under the laundry room door, and also make a custom hole for the giant extension cord which will hook up my house to the generator Jonathan gave me (which I still don’t know how to use) so it will be a little less drafty in the cold storage area of the house.

I’m pretty sure I can convince him to make me a Christmas tree stand.

Yesterday when I was hauling the hose around, it occurred to me that it might be fun to compare how the garden is doing now that summer is over and things should be going to sleep for the winter.

I wish I could put these pictures side by side. The comparisons really surprised me. Come on and take a look!

Remember the little rose that could? The one I thought was dead until it put out a single blossom:

I dug it up, re-potted it, and now look:

The red bush is a little less red than it was:

But it’s way bigger, and has lots of little white flowers:

The fuchsia still has buds:

And the petunia, which usually hangs above the back porch with the fuchsia, got benched because it was in the way of the Christmas lights. It’s still blooming away and seems pretty happy in the company of the euphorbia and a couple of orchids:

The passion flower vine has somewhat incredibly gone from this:

to this:

Not to be outdone, the neighboring purple honeysuckle has gone from this (in August):

To this, in early December:

I notice that the geraniums have grown like crazy. As has the potato vine. Then:

Now:

The garbage-concealing pink jasmine still has a long way to go, but when you see how it was a few months ago:

and how it is now, you can see the progress:

There you have it. As a novice gardener, I am beginning to guess that every gardener wants to do more and more. Here’s my wish/to-do list:

• Get Rob to give me the vintage truck flap with “Ford” on it, place it in the garden (I know just where, near the passion flower vine), and have lavender flanking it on both sides, one of them planted in a pot Rose made which looks like a tree trunk;
• – Plant orange nasturtiums to cascade over the window with the purple honeysuckle. I’m leaning toward Climbing Spitfire;
• – Finally get rid of the horrible eyesore that is the non-functioning hot tub, though Audrey may not approve of this plan, since it’s basically her outdoor couch:

  

• – Sow that clover/ground cover stuff that my neighbor J has been telling me about;
• – Plant little shrubs by the house to conceal the unattractive space between house and ground; and
• – Add a little path between shrubs and clover to walk from the front of the house to the back.

Obviously some of these won’t happen any time soon, and some may never happen. But a girl can dream. And I do think this place has come a long way in the two years I’ve lived here so far.

Just another postcard day

This is how the Village looked yesterday. It still looks like this today. In fact, it’s looked like this for so long that I actually had to water the garden today, and I even left the sliding glass doors open most of the day.

A peek at the weather reveals no rain through next Friday. Despite the unseasonable weather, I put up the Christmas lights today and hung my wreath.

The balcony:

Here’s the banister:

And the wreath on the front door:

Maybe it looks a little weird, having the hanging plants and the wreath.

This year, I added blue and clear “icicle” lights to the back porch:

Amazingly, I teetered on the ladder, applying the tiny cup hooks to hold the lights without actually falling down. Or breaking anything. Yay, me.

Other than that, it was a pretty busy day, doing my regular job, making a new recipe (curried chicken meatballs with rice pilaf, anyone?), and interviewing the owner of Dogs at Camp for an article I’m writing for the Dogs In Canada website. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering which Me I am when I call someone on the phone.

Well, my fabulous week continues!

I was woken up by a power outage at 3:30 am. You may ask yourselves how a power outage can wake up someone who sleeps with ear plugs and a mask in the depths of the country, and it’s a good question. I’m assuming it’s a combo platter of my family’s innate inability to sleep through the night, the hum of the appliances turning off, and the crazy gene. Maybe even in your sleep you know things have changed?

Also the kitties were clearly confused and running around.

Fortunately, I had the flashlight by my bed (and another one downstairs), the emergency buckets were full outside, and there was a full Brita pitcher of well water as well as several bottles of water. I found my cheap plastic travel alarm, replaced the battery, and set the alarm. Also a little bit of coffee left over from yesterday. Hallelujah!

I could see my breath in the house, it was so cold. The heater needs electricity to turn on and off, though it runs on platinum propane. So it, like my computer, was a big pointless plastic box at this point.

I called the PG&E outage line – sadly, it’s programmed into my cell phone – and the recording said that it should be fixed by 1:00 in the afternoon. Not much help to me.

To further complicate things, I had a conference call scheduled for 6:30 am. Originally my boss was supposed to join me, but last night he called to say he couldn’t, but would email me the materials for the call. He didn’t send them by the time I went to bed, so I had to wing it on the call, which I did by the light of a flashlight, huddled in a blanket while desperately hoping my cell phone battery would last.

I tried to go back to sleep between 4:00 and 6:00, but it was hopeless. So I got up, heated up the remaining puddle of coffee on my gas stove, and did the call. Megan came by to see if the call was over so we could go to aquafit, so I rushed around in the dark, grabbing my swimming things and getting dressed. On our way down the Ridge, we could see PG&E hard at work on the downed power lines near the firehouse.

On the way to class, Megan told me that Monica invited me via early morning text to an emergency Daisy Davis meeting at 5:00 this evening. I finish work at 4:00, so it’s going to be a long day. It actually already is.

Megan dropped me at work and will pick me up tonight so we can go to the meeting together. I’m sure we can find a way to kill an hour. Maybe some Christmas shopping?

It’s not even 7:00 am and it’s already been a really excellent day so far.

My excellent day started last night, with a triple feature of nightmares. Have you ever noticed that when you’re having a great dream and get woken up from it, you can never get back into it when you go to sleep, but if it’s a bad one, no problemo?

Rob says that dreams come from things you see during the day, but these were: a tsunami where I was in the Fontana Towers* in San Francisco; a repeat, where I was climbing to the top of a building in Chinatown via fire escape to escape tsunami re-run; and being trapped in a high school with a bunch of other people.

Sometimes I really worry about that crazy gene.

I woke up to the alarm clock flashing and could not believe it was time to get up and masquerade as a responsible adult after that marathon of terror and weirdness.

I went grumpily downstairs to find the boys hunting a mouse. Not even a mouse hunt could stop Audrey from catapulting out the front door into the darkness, and as I put the outside lights on, I saw that it’s very foggy out. Great. Worst. Driving. Ever.

Back in the house, I made coffee and the boys caught the poor mouse. I opened all the doors and tried to shoo them outside. Eventually they went out, at which point the coffee was hardly necessary.

It’s going to be a great day!

*Home of Eddie Fisher. John worked with a guy who met him in the elevator and invited him to a party, but the guy didn’t go. Talk about a missed opportunity! Worth it for the Liz Taylor gossip alone.

Star showing off her skills

I’m pleased to announce that Star passed her American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizenship test. With flying colors! On her first try! It’s all the more impressive considering her past. Sometimes I’m still amazed by what a happy, loving dog she is after all she went through, and how much she has changed in the year and a half since Megan and I rescued her one beautiful spring day.

Megan has worked really hard with Star, including the eight week class that led up to the test. The test is given nationally, so every dog in the country who passes has met the same standard. You can read more about the CGC program here.

If/when Megan gets a new (to her) car, she’ll sign Star up for advanced classes, but for now, it’s enough to have the yellow bandanna and the accreditation. A gold Star for our Star!

In other dog-related news, Megan and Monica were on the radio last Thursday morning, talking about their work with Daisy Davis Pit Bull Rescue. The radio station doesn’t stream on computers – what else do you expect in a place with no cell phone service? – so Rob and I huddled in the car with the radio on and listened together.

The girls did great, both sounding calm and assured, a real feat for poor Megan, who had just finished the last of four consecutive 12 hour shifts in the ER and showed up at the radio station in her scrubs. “I just hope no-one bleeds on me tonight,” she said to me the night before.

The DJs were so impressed that they invited them back, and, best of all, gave them a check for $150, inviting listeners to match the donation. I am so proud of Monica, Megan, and Star.

The enemy

I thought I had cured my life-long fear of the dark at Phobia Boot Camp, aka living in a tent in my sister’s garden for six weeks while helping to take care of our slowly dying mother. Being in total darkness once you turn off the flashlight and hearing the various animals sneaking around in said darkness all night is like those immersion classes where you learn a new language by being surrounded by it and unable to escape.

Eventually, I got used to it, and now am practically like our father, who had to sleep in total darkness after years of blackouts during WWII in London. Even here in Hooterville, it’s earplugs and sleep mask for me. The light from the clocks, etc. bothers me.

So I figured I was over the fear of the dark thing. But it turns out that I’m really only over the fear of the inside dark thing. The outside is another matter.

It’s hard to explain how dark it is in Hooterville at night unless you’ve actually experienced it. There is no ambient light and no streetlights. Sure, it makes it possible to see millions or even zillions of stars, but it also makes it challenging to drive or walk in. At least, for me. Even with high beams on, you’re driving in a little puddle of light with blackness pressing in on you from all sides. And if it’s foggy, you can’t even use the high beams, since it just reflects back the fog.

“High beams” have been the biggest disappointment in my adult life since the discovery that painkillers do not kill pain.

Also? The moon can be incredibly bright in the sky, but no help at all.

So Megan decided to help me with remedial darkness driving. Knowing her sister as well as she does, there was a carrot at the end of the stick: the lesson ended with a drink at the Little River Inn’s bar. As I drove slowly through the darkness, it occurred to me that much of my life is remedial these days: swimming lessons, driving lessons. Will I ever be a real grown-up?

Sure, there are some drawbacks to taking the truck to town. It’s a gas guzzler, for one thing, but the gauge doesn’t work properly, so it’s like it has an eating disorder, secretly consuming huge amounts of gas without your knowing.

Also, you can’t open the doors from the inside. You have to roll down the windows and open the doors from the outside, much like British trains of the past. The kind with compartments which can be found in old movies, or the memories of vintage girls. But if you roll the truck windows down too far, they get stuck there. No bueno.

And then there’s the minor annoyance of the windshield wipers just being there for show.

But it’s fun to be up high, and you can see so much further. And it really makes us feel like country bumpkins going to the big town. I practically feel like I have straw in my hair.

Going to swimming lessons and then the library on a Saturday morning reminded me of being a kid again, when these activities occurred almost every weekend. I was lucky that the libraries of my youth were so wonderful: the historic Southworth Library, recently renovated, during the school year, and the elegant Jesup Library in the summer. I can still remember the wonderful library smell and the echo in the hallway, especially at Jesup, where you entered a little marble floored rotunda before arriving at the galleried main room. I still find walking up those spiral staircases magical. And looking back in the golden haze of nostalgia, I feel lucky to have grown up when and where I did.

Public Libraries: the Roots of Democracy!

In keeping with the cloud in the silver lining of my life, the quite splendid pool where aquafit and swimming lessons take place is experiencing serious financial difficulties.

At first, the Powers that Be said it was going to close completely. Then, not. The whole thing dragged on for months, in the way things do when they are being run by a committee, without any decisions being made.

Now, it appears that they have decided to close the warmer, shallower pool – the one with the lazy river and the water slide – and keep the lap pool open at severely limited times. Our brother, who swims four days a week and inspired us to start swimming again, can no longer go due to the irreconcilable differences between his schedule and the pool’s.

Aquafit at least has been spared for now.

Our swimming class, formerly on Saturday mornings*, may or may not be on a Thursday morning two weeks from now. Megan gets home from the last of her 12 hour night shifts on Thursday morning, so there’s no way she can go. I could go, though the thought of driving to the Big Town for a fourth day in a row is less than appealing, and I don’t want to go without my sister. We’ll have to see if we can work something out.

*It was the perfect Saturday morning: going to swimming lessons and then to the library, which is now only open three days a week. When we took Rob’s truck, we felt like the bumpkin girls going to town.

In contrast to the snow back East, we’ve been experiencing a string of sunny days and starry nights. It may well have been like this all month. Rob borrowed my thermometer for some project, so I can’t tell you exact temperatures, but it’s been somewhere in the 60s during the day. Warm enough to have the doors open after the chill of night/early morning (basically indistinguishable at this time of year) has worn off, anyway.

Nights are chilly, always the case when they are starry – and you should see all the stars around here! Everything in life is apparently a trade-off. It’s about 50 degrees in the house when I get up in the morning, so it’s somewhere in the 40s outside.

The kitties are much easier to get in at night now. Even Audrey usually shows up by 9:30. The boys are sleeping with me more – Clyde on my head, Roscoe curled up against my chest.

We’ve been lucky to have such a beautiful fall, especially after such a great summer. Yesterday, I went to hang out my bathing suit and towel on the balcony after swimming class, and thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of my bare feet on the sun-warmed wood. I thought, “I’d better enjoy every sunny day we get this time of the year.” The winter rains will start soon enough.

Meet Turbo!

One evening, I was just putting on the outside lights for the kitties when I heard a noise.

Peeking out my front door, I saw…a horse.

Of course.

A beautiful red horse with a white blaze on his face. In the gloom, I finally saw Mark, holding the horse on a tether. He smiled and said, “I wanted you to meet Turbo!” Turbo is two years old, and has a leg injury so he can’t be ridden, at least for now. Turbo’s previous owner gave him to Mark, I guess rather than deal with the injury.

I petted him and he made soft horse noises, smelling sweetly of hay as he took a piece of carrot from my palm (always hold your hand flat when feeding a horse). I think I’m going to like my newest neighbor.

Today marks the second anniversary of my moving to Hooterville.

What better way to celebrate the occasion than a walk with my sister and Schatzi on the headlands of the Village?

Come on, let’s go!

Here’s the Village. If it weren’t for the cars, it could be the 1800s:

Here you can see the remains of a dock. Because of the rocky shoreline, loggers and visitors had to basically zipline from the ship to the shore, standing on a tiny wooden platform. I’ve seen pictures of Victorian ladies doing it with an air of surprising insouciance.

Schatzi wasn’t quite as interested in the view as I was:

I tried to capture how her brindle looked like the fall grasses in the sunlight. Also her beautiful smile:

I feel so lucky to live somewhere so beautiful:

And to share my life with such wonderful family, friends, dogs, and cats.

Beauty Sleep(s)

Really, is there anything cozier-looking than a sleeping cat?

Even if they are responsible for The Plague.

Last month, I noticed that Audrey was scratching a lot. I also noticed that my legs, never my best feature, looked as if I were experiencing a third round of chicken pox*, itchiness and all.

I spent about a million dollars on Advantage – hey, it made a change from spending money on the car – and applied it to the cats. Their reactions to the cure were the same as their reactions to the cause. Audrey: scratching and furious. Roscoe and Clyde: whatever, dude.

Then I took the bed apart, washed everything that could be washed, and hung it out in the clean sunshine to try while I sprayed the bed, featherbed, and carpets with some stuff that is supposed to kill fleas and keep them that way for 140 days.

Toxicity all around!

Problem solved, I thought. But, as usual, I was wrong. Besides being death-defying, these fleas seemed to be some kind of mutants, equipped with Super Itch**. Even after I scratched the bites until they bled, they still itched. They still itched when scabbed over. I had bruises from the scratching. Audrey was super scabby under her soft fur. The boys: nothing.

One evening, I actually saw a flea on the bed. I crushed it, and ordered more disAdvantage on line. Exactly a month after the first application, I gooed everyone again, hoping for the best. So far, so good. Let’s hope that the fleas are gone for the rest of the year. Pretty soon I’ll need to spend my flea allowance on propane.

*I got it when I was nine and again when I was 15. I got out of mid-terms the second time. Woohoo!

**One of life’s enduring mysteries is why anything that drinks our blood leaves an itch behind. They’d be welcome to the blood if they were itchless. Definitely a design flaw.

Stand back – this car thing seems to be catching.

About two days after Miss Scarlett’s belt melt, Megan’s car started making sounds that more like the Waltons’ truck than ever, along with other, even more ominous sounds. There are about a quarter of a million miles on that car, and those have been rainy/dusty/dirt roads/barely paved roads/potholed and serpentine miles. These things are very ageing for a car.

Basically, it’s the Keith Richards* of cars.

Unlike Keith, though, the car has been benched for the moment. Or possibly forever. The main problem is that we lack the money to get another used car (no-one in my family has ever bought a new car. Or even thought about it).

Astonishingly, in these dire economic times, used cars are surprisingly expensive. At least, used cars with less than 150,000 miles on them which have not starred in fiery accidents. Anyway, they are pretty much out of our price range, unless we get a loan from a friend which we won’t be able to pay back in the immediate future, thus jeopardizing said friendship.

So it looks like two choices: buy a beater which may last a year or two, when we’ll be back in this position again (not, you’ll all agree, a pleasant place to be); or fix the many things wrong with the original car for about the same cost. In both cases, we’ll be hoping that there will be no expensive and Walton-esque encores.

What, you are asking yourself, about Rob’s trusty truck?

Well, Rob’s truck is only somewhat trusty. It’s more than 30 years old, or 250 in car years. When it’s damp – yes, on the Coast, land of fog and dew – the brakes stick and act up. The windshield wipers don’t work and are not fixable by the boys (or they would be fixed). Then there are minor annoyances, like the fact that you have to open the door by putting the window down and opening it from the outside. But don’t put the window down too far or it will stick there. Fortunately for you, it won’t be raining.

Unfortunately for us, though, there has been early season rain, so Megan and I have been sharing Miss Scarlett. We work the same days, but she works night and I work days. So I get home at 5:00 pm and take the car to Megan’s. She gets home sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 am and brings the car to me.

The nice thing about this is that we can catch up with each other and the car is already warm and the windows unfogged by the time I set off, a definite bonus. Yesterday it was foggy and rainy, a horrible combo which made me wonder why rear window wipers are not on every car.

So I guess we’ll see what happens. Hopefully something will come up.

*Sometimes I worry that I’ll wake up one day and my dissolute youth will have caught up with me and I really will look like Keith Richards.

So, yeah: swimming.

There was a free swim clinic last month at the same pool where aquafit takes places in the cold, early morning hours. Megan and I went, thinking to improve our swimming skills. We learned as children, and swam every summer, in the chilly Atlantic and the (relatively) warm waters of Maine lakes. I figured it would be easy to get up to speed. For Megan: yes. For me: no.

I’m good at finding things I’m not good at.

Everything was going fine until we had to put our faces in the water. Suddenly, I felt like a steerage passenger on the Titanic. My body was horrified, and both of my brain cells immediately agreed, even though there was a lifeguard right there and I could have stood up and breathed at any time.

Logic is not my forte. Call me the anti-Spock.

I kept trying, even though breathing in the water through my nose and mouth gave me instant post-nasal drip without all the bother of having a cold. The more I did it, the more I hated it.

Megan, the former scuba diver, was happily splashing around like a fish and bemoaning her lack of technique. See what a contrast we are? When she was a little kid and told me, “I’ll catch up with you, you’ll see”, she failed to add “And I’ll pass right by you and leave you in the dust”. Or the pool water.

At the end of the class, they told us that we could take 6 more lessons for the reasonable price of $36. Megan immediately signed up, while I flipped through Glamour and enjoyed breathing the air.

The next day, she took Star to her first Canine Good Citizen class. One of the things they address at the class is fearfulness, which dogs express by growling and barking, and Suzys express by crying (at least inside) and/or running away in horror. The teacher said that petting dogs when they express their fearfulness is rewarding the fear and the behavior, and just encourages them to keep at it.

I realized that not going to swim class with Megan was rewarding my fear. So I signed up, too.

I’m still struggling with the breathing. My brother, who swims 45 minutes without stopping four days a week, tells me that he doesn’t put his face in the water, and if he does, it really affects his endurance. Another friend who is a good swimmer told me the same thing. So it’s not just Me.

Also it’s hard to remember all the instructions (keep your chin down, feet floppy, thumbs should hit the water first) while struggling with the panicky, oxygen-deprived feeling of the breathing. Megan says I’m doing better, but I’m not so sure. I wish I had more time to practice. But I’m glad that I’m trying to face my fears. It’s a lot easier to do with my sister at my side. Like everything else.

The saga of the car has been long and spendiferous over the past month.

First, I took it to Mike the mechanic, who made the transmission run better. Miss Scarlett, like me, needs a little time to get going in the morning, but she’s always up to speed by the time I reach the next driveway down the Ridge, and I can live with that.

However, there was a sort of shuddering going on when I braked downhill, a not uncommon occurrence on the curvaceous roads around here. So I brought it to another place to check the alignment (Mike doesn’t have the car lifting thing or the specialized tools to do this kind of thing).

They told me that I needed to have two things fixed before I could have the alignment done. I checked with the boys, and they also couldn’t fix it for me, having a Mike-esque lack of expensive and specialized tools. So the fixing, along with the alignment, cost about $300.

I still noticed the shuddering, so I brought it back in again. It appears that there had been some miscommunication and the mechanic hadn’t understood what I meant, possibly because I don’t speak Car. He investigated, and this time, it turned out that I needed the rear brakes replaced and something done to the rotors. Cost: $400.

Since brakes are important and the boys can’t measure and sand down rotors, or whatever it is that had to be done, I said OK. Goodbye, paycheck. It was nice almost knowing you. And that was before I replaced the two front tires, which were 7 years old (150 in tire years). Cost: about $200.

A few days later, I heard a high-pitched squeeing noise in the car, even over the Ramones. I stopped in at the mechanic’s and asked him to listen to it. He said he thought it was a leak in a vacuum hose and not critical, so I left a rambling message for my brother, asking if he could fix it on Thursday.

The infamous belt incident happened on Wednesday. The consensus of opinion between the boys and Megan is that any mechanic should have known what that noise was. I certainly will if I ever hear it again, which I hope I never do.

On the other hand, it only cost about $70 in parts for Rob to fix it. Working on my second thousand dollars of the month, baby! At this rate, I’m going to need a “Car” category for this blog.

Well, today did not go exactly as planned.

I left the house at the dark and starry hour of 6:30. By the time I got to the store, the sky was brightening, and even at that hour, the ocean was blue. The ocean was also feeling particularly frisky and beautiful today, and it was so hard not to stop and just watch it for a while, especially at Van Damme beach, which may well be my favorite view around here.

As I pulled into the parking lot at the pool, I suddenly couldn’t steer. The steering wheel was locked, and an ominous red battery sign was lit up on the dashboard. Uh oh.

Fortunately for me, I meet Megan on Wednesday mornings for aquafit, and she was already there waiting for me. I was so glad to see her! She managed to maneuver Miss Scarlett into a parked position across two spots. Then we noticed a strange smell, and smoke curling from the left side of the hood. Never a good sign.

Closer inspection showed that the belt had come off its moorings, and had melted slightly in its unmoored state. I grabbed the towel I keep in the back seat to mop the morning fog from the windows – this time, to extinguish the smoldering belt goo on the hood roof.

Megan called Jonathan and woke him up, and then called Rob and woke him up. We decided that the best thing was for me to go home with Megan, and Rob would take Megan’s car back in to town to fix my car. On our way home, Megan and I bought a replacement belt.

When we got there, Rob was drinking coffee and waking up. Undoubtedly he was once again considering the “for worse” part of his wedding vows twenty years ago and remembering several in law jokes that now had an alarming ring of truth.

Megan went to bed, Rob went to fix my car, and I went home to get some work done. Clyde decided to welcome me home by climbing up inside the painting again, this time bringing it down on my unsuspecting head. Surprisingly, no-one was damaged, though Clyde broke the wire holding the painting in place and now it’s leaning against the stairs. He wisely disappeared for several hours after that.

Rob just called and said that he replaced the belt and whatever went wrong was the simplest thing it could be under the circumstances. When Megan goes to work tonight, she’ll drop me off to get Miss Scarlett. Hopefully, we will get home in one piece.