Suzy Says

Audrey relaxing

It’s a beautiful, sunny day here in Hooterville. Audrey is basking on the back porch – surely a grandiose name for a bunch of unfinished wood slats nailed together over the dirt – in the sunlight. No-one knows how to relax like Audrey. And look good doing it.

We all had a good Thanksgiving, even the kitties. It already seems so long ago, even though this morning, I was using up leftover cranberries by making cranberry mustard (excellent for turkey sandwiches).

Jarrett arrived on Thanksgiving afternoon. One of the great things about traveling on Thanksgiving Day itself is the fact that almost everyone else is already where they’re supposed to be, already in a turkey-induced stupor. We eat dinner at a civilized hour, holidays or not, so we were still conscious and happy to see Jarrett when he arrived.

Dinner turned out great, though, as usual, I didn’t want to eat it once the time came.It must be smelling it all day that puts a girl off. However, the boys pitched in to make up for that, and I did try everything. The beans were good, though it made me laugh to think that we took the only healthy thing on the menu and fried it. The batter was really light and crispy, and I’m already thinking of other things to fry in it (Zucchini! Shrimp!).

There wasn’t even a mess to face the next day. My kitchen is so small that you pretty much have to clean up as you go along. I have seen New York City apartment kitchens that are bigger. So we all piled into Miss Scarlett and headed out to the annual craft fair in the Village. We did our best to support the local economy and get a jump on Christmas shopping.

We persuaded Jarrett to stay one more night, so we happily ate leftovers after the craft fair and he headed back home on Saturday morning. It was great to see him, and he’s planning to come back for Christmas. It should be a good one!

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.

Fall Colors

When I got home on Wednesday evening, it was so warm that I was just wearing a t-shirt and had the car windows open. The sky was a clear blue. But the whethermen were predicting rain starting at 11:00 that night, so I persuaded Megan to take Miss Scarlett to work instead of Rob’s truck, which has non-operational windshield wipers.

It was a good thing she did, because it was still raining when she brought the car back on Thursday morning. It was also surprisingly cold. Usually when it’s rainy here, it’s a little warmer because the clouds act as insulation.

Something about rainy days – and cold ones – seems to inspire me to cook. I decided to make Dad’s famous honey-mustard chicken for dinner, and while assembling the ingredients, realized that it was just as easy to make enough for Megan and Rob while I was at it. I have fallen out of the habit of making Thursday night dinner for my hard-working sis – maybe that should be a new year’s resolution for next year.

While putting the casserole together, I noticed two aging bananas in the fruit bowl and decided to make banana bread. I lit the oven* and went to get the pantry ingredients – add to my wish list a pantry that’s actually in the kitchen – and remembered that I had lent Megan the sugar.

A dilemma! I didn’t want to wake her up, but I had everything else and the oven was already heating up. I decided to risk it. I sneaked in through her garden and went in the back door to her pantry (also not in her kitchen**) and grabbed the sugar. I sneaked away unobserved by dogs or humans, no small feat.

The banana bread safely in the oven, I dished up some turkey chili for my brother. When the banana bread was ready, I took a couple of slices and the chili over to surprise him. He’s been having a bad time lately, between losing the fabulous pool and politics and drama at the firehouse, so it was nice to surprise him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said, hugging me. “You’ll never find out,” I answered.

Later I called Megan to tell her that dinner would be served around 6:30. She was surprised and delighted in a way that warmed my heart. I put on my hat from the County Fair and grabbed a flashlight. As I walked back from her house, Clyde came bouncing out of the woods and accompanied me home, like a little dog. As we went into our cozy little house together, I realized that I had fed my whole family that day. It made me happy. I have to do it more often.

*My wishes seem to have become more modest over time. Now all I want is an oven that lights without matches; a bathtub of any kind; and a hose reel. How the glamorous have fallen!

**Can you tell our houses were designed and built by a guy? Erica calls my place “the man-cave”>

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.

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.

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.

The patient

On Saturday night, I was watching “The Hoodlum” (with Lawrence Tierney, on a brief hiatus from jail, and his real-life brother, Edward) with Clyde cuddled up to me. Clyde’s cuddling style is to stare at me, then jump on my lap, climb up my body, and collapse with his head on my shoulder, giving a big sigh before starting to purr.

Both he and Roscoe like to be rubbed under their chin. But this time, something was wrong. There was a huge bump. I felt the other side of his chin. Bump-free. Uh oh. However, it didn’t seem to hurt him and he was acting normally.

In the morning, Megan investigated and said it was an abscess. By then, Clyde had scratched at it and it was wet and much ickier-looking. Being the excellent sister she is, she also called Dr. Karen on the dot of 9:00 on Monday morning, when I was arriving at the jobette. She not only got him an appointment at 11:00, but also caught him and took him there.

I am proud to say that by all accounts, my brave little Clyde did not complain or fuss while having his chin shaved and getting an antibiotic shot. Dr. Karen was impressed with his courage and cuteness. Apparently both were remarked on often. My little guy weighs 8.7 pounds!

I am supposed to keep him in today as well as yesterday. When I came home yesterday, Clyde was sleeping on the bathmat and Audrey was sleeping nearby on a (white) towel she had pulled off the holder just for this purpose. Roscoe, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

The house was like an oven, since all the doors were closed except the sliding glass ones in the living room. Rob installed a found screen in that one last summer, so that was open. I had to put the fan on in the sleeping loft, which becomes unbearable if it’s over 60 degrees outside and the balcony door isn’t open. Naturally this is the warmest part of the year, and it was the warmest day we’ve had in a while.

Clyde was pretty sleepy all evening. Today he seems like his old self and I’m not sure if I can make him stay in all day on such a lovely, sunny day. Stay tuned!

A beautiful day for a fair

First things first: happy birthday to Rob! He stopped by this morning and when I wished him happy birthday, he looked surprised. I hugged him and told him I was glad he was born. He took a couple of things to repair and vanished after he hugged me back.

We’ll have a birthday barbecue next weekend. This one was busy! As I write, Star is at her second Canine Good Citizenship class (she did great last week). And yesterday, Megan and I went swimming (more about that later) before we went to the county fair.

A quick review of my blog shows that I haven’t been since 2008, so it was about time. As you can see above, it was a beautiful day. Megan found a secret parking space, and off we went.

It was hard to decide what to do first, so we had some garlic fries while we walked around and scoped out the possibilities. We made a mental note of the sno cone truck for later:

They really are the most refreshing drink you can eat. Though, disappointingly, they did not have blue raspberry. Even though everyone knows that blue is the best flavor for anything frozen (other than margaritas).

Sno cone in hand, we went to admire the livestock and the kids who handle them. This little dappled cow with its freckled girl was my favorite:

Did you know? Cows are covered with a sort of pomade at these shows, which makes them look all shiny and pretty, but makes your hands instantly filthy and kind of gross. Worth it, though. Also, there were hand-washing stations everywhere.

I resisted the temptation to run my hands through these sheep’s curly fleece:

And I kind of had a crush on this handsome boy:

Ever wondered how to shear a sheep? Now’s your chance to learn how:

It was strange being in the building with all the fleece and hand-spun yarn and beautiful scarves and things without our Erica*. And not seeing any of her work entered for prizes (and winning them). But I got over it long enough to buy a hat, which turned out to have been made by a woman who lives about two miles away. She spun the wool herself, knitted it, adorned it with a unique abalone button, and voilà:

It was hard to believe I’d ever need that hat on a sunny day in the 80s, but I bet I will be glad I got it in a couple of months. And I got to meet a new neighbor!

Some apple (and cider) tasting later:

we were admiring quilts:

flower arrangements:

and some of the biggest pumpkins I’ve ever seen:

The day flew by. Suddenly, it was time to head home, full of fair food and happy memories. Until next year…

*We had a great chat today. They are definitely coming for Christmas. And Jessica loves her new school.

So I have kept up with aquafit, even though the year has clearly turned its face resolutely toward winter and it’s now dark when I leave the house at 6:30 am.

The splendid pool where aquafit takes place has been struggling to stay open, so they have slowly decreased the water temperature to about 79 degrees in the interests of saving money. It was 84 when I first started going, and I can tell you that you feel the loss of every one of those degrees early on a foggy morning. Although I would find 84 on the warm side in the air, in the water is another matter.

I love the teacher and the class, though. Many of the ladies are vintage and they are all delightful. In the locker room, we discuss the latest plays and art shows in San Francisco, as well as the (usually lamentable) performance of the Giants the night before. One of the ladies has a relative who works at the gym where the Giants’ beloved catcher, Buster Posey* is rehabbing from the terrible injury which has sidelined him for most of the year (and which I think was the beginning of the end for the team this year). She says that Buster is as charming in real life as he seems to be on TV, and is hoping that he’ll be back next year. Let’s hope so.

Megan has started meeting me at the Wednesday class, after her long night shift, and she told me that when I was in Napa, everybody missed me. It was nice to hear. Along with the exercise, I love the company of my sister and the Pool Ladies, there in their jewelry with smiles and an encouraging word early in the morning.

About halfway through, one of the ladies calls out our imaginary breakfast after our workout: a big burrito and a Margarita! Nachos and a beer! Her husband just gave her a yellow Porsche convertible to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. That’s the kind of girl she is.

*Surely one of the best names in sports.

Mugshot

Megan was getting ready for work when she discovered that she couldn’t find her handbag.

In all fairness, it must be said that she is a little careless of it at times. Mostly it lives on the backseat floor of her car, just as her keys live in the ignition, except when she’s at work. How else would you know where they are? And when it’s sunny, she often leaves the car doors open so the car doesn’t get too hot inside.

We knew she had her bag when we were buying the last-minute items for our brother’s belated birthday barbecue, but we couldn’t remember seeing it after that. She and Rob scoured their house-ette and the car while I called the store.

No luck. Megan was late for work, so she had to leave after borrowing some money for lunch – when you work a 12 hour shift, you have to eat twice while at work, so planning is necessary, especially in a place where everything is closed overnight.

After she left, Rob was watering the garden when he stumbled over something.

It was Megan’s wallet.

Then he came across the little pouch with her hairbrush, etc., in it. Eventually he found the bag and the rest of its contents, including a now-empty treat bag. We had taken Star to Big River and used the treats in a training session, and Megan had left them in her bag when we got back to the car.

We know it wasn’t Star, because she was in the house. Remembering the sunny day and the open car doors, Megan realized that Schatzi had taken the bag from the car and brought it into the garden to eat the treats. Whenever you give her a treat, she always takes it back there to enjoy it.

So there you have it. You can teach an old dog new tricks. She can sneak out of your brother’s house at the dead of night and go home, or jump out of an upstairs window without hurting herself, or help herself to your handbag in the back of a car.

It takes a Schatzi!

And in the “never a dull moment” department…

My brother woke me up at 1:00 am on Saturday night. Oddly, when the phone rings late at night, I still instinctively think “Mom”. Once I wake up a little more, I think “Rob”. In this case, it was Jonathan, who got a fire call for our address, making sure I was OK. I was, and so were Rob and Megan.

It was Mark, our neighbor and landlord. He had suffered an epileptic seizure and was unconscious. By the time Jonathan called me, Megan was already at the scene and EMS was on its way. Not for the first time, I was impressed by how quick and how good our little volunteer fire department and our little hospital’s EMS staff is.

They took Mark to the hospital, and he was home in time to celebrate his younger daughter’s birthday yesterday. He has a lot of tests ahead of him, and can’t drive for six months. Apparently it is unusual for someone over 40 to start having seizures, and lately he’s had migraines and very strong memories of his childhood – he feels like he is reliving certain moments. Apparently this is also not a good sign.

He seemed fine when I spoke with him yesterday, so I hope the doctors soon figure out what is wrong and can fix it quickly.

Last night, we belatedly celebrated Jonathan’s birthday with a barbecue in the chilly fog. His friend Carrie was visiting from the city, with her daughter Miranda, and Lichen was there, too. He cut my hair while there was still enough light. Yay! We had a wide variety of sausages, grilled zucchini, pesto salad made from basil Jonathan grew and pie made from huckleberries Carrie and Miranda picked around the property. It was nice to sit by the fire as darkness fell, laughing and reminiscing.

Ready for fun. Or trouble. Whatever comes first.

I really thought I’d get more blogging material out of the trip to Napa. I guess that’s what happens when you plan a trip around an event, rather than a place. No wonder I’ve never done it that way before.

I find it interesting that I blogged more often when I spent most of my time in Hooterville. You wouldn’t think that much happened around here.

Here’s a couple of things you missed:

I am slowly learning the wily ways of wildlife. One day, I was driving down the Ridge in a fog (inside and out), and suddenly, a young deer loomed in the mist. I stopped, and it ran into the woods. I waited, because there’s never just one, and sure enough, its buddy came prancing out, stared at me in the regulation manner, and then took off.

Megan one-upped me as usual by telling me about the time she was stopped in her car at Point Cabrillo Lighthouse* and a deer ran into her. Literally. The deer’s head plunged into the car’s open window, its huge black eye just inches away from Megan’s own. It’s hard to say who was more startled. The deer ran away in horror, leaving no sign of what happened other than fur stuck to the car door.

Recently, Megan and I were walking Star on the property when she flushed some quail. Both Star and Schatzi love to chase quail. I called out, “You’ll never catch one, Star!”, but she surprised us both by doing just that. I told Megan that I thought Star had a quail. She went into the bushes and flushed Star, who had a strange look on her face. One wing tip was sticking out of her mouth.

Megan told Star to drop it, and she did, opening her mouth. The quail beetled away like a wind-up toy, and Star cocked her head to one side, looking at Megan as if to say, “Not good?”

*When you come to visit, I’ll take you there. Great whale watching place, and the setting is amazing.

Almost as disappointing as the discovery that painkillers do not in fact kill pain is the discovery that cars do not get fixed and stay that way. Also more expensive and inconvenient.

When I first got Miss Scarlett back in Oaktown, she was already vintage, but her previous charioteer had practically ignored her, only putting about 5,000 miles a year on the odometer in 11 years. So I figured that with such light use – before we moved to Hooterville and both of us were consigned to eternal dirt roads and rutted, rough, curvy paved ones, that is – that the car would stay in pretty good shape.

As usual, I was wrong, and things and stuff seem to have gone wrong quite a lot this year. Thankfully the boys have come to my rescue on these occasions. But there are some things, requiring specialized and pricy equipment, that they can’t do. Hence my maiden voyage into the world of Hooterville area mechanics.

Up first was the only transmission place in town. The transmission is slow to engage, though it’s usually fine by the time I get to the next driveway down the Ridge. The Transmission Guy did a test drive and then informed me that in order to figure out what was wrong, he’d have to pull it apart for a labor charge of $700, not including the actual fixing after pulling it apart.

Also? A new transmission is $2,500.

The whole car cost $3,500.

A survey of friends turned up Mike the Mechanic. He gave me directions to his place, north of the Big Town. When I got there, it was a metal shed behind some stores. Hmmm.

I asked in the store, and they said, yes, that’s Mike’s place. So I left the keys and the car there and hoped for the best.

Mike called me and said that he’d like to change the transmission fluid and filter and pour in some goop that would make the pumps work better. He figured this would cost between $120 and $160, so after conferring with the boys, I said OK.

When he called me to say it was ready and doing better, I asked how late he’d be there, since Megan was going to drop me off after we went to aquafit that evening. He said to just put the money in the cast-iron frog on his porch.

Small town.

It turned out that Mike was there, so we actually got to meet him and give him the money in person. It was $120. So far, Miss Scarlett seems to be doing fine as far as the transmission goes.

There is still the front end shimmy to deal with. The diagnostics place said that there were a couple of things that needed to be fixed before the alignment could take place. I brought the estimate ($407!) to my brother, who said that he could fix the two things and then I could have the alignment done for a mere $60.

Hopefully that will end the saga of car repairs for the rest of the year, though I have to buy two new tires to replace the two 8 year olds before the winter rains start…

One of my favorite pictures of my favorite person

One of the problems with flying in the face of convention and WordPress by freeing myself from the tyranny of the post title is that using the date really makes you think about the date. Especially when it’s the Evil Eighteenth, aka the most dreaded day of the year.

Here it is again, and this year marks the tenth anniversary of my father’s death. I can hardly believe it’s been an entire decade since his life ended and mine changed forever.

I still remember my sister’s voice when I picked up the phone early that morning – evening for her; she had already lived through a day of horror by then – sounding small and stricken.

I still remember my brother grabbing my hand painfully hard with his work-roughened one as we headed to the airport together, his blue eyes, so like Dad’s, gazing tear-filled into the horizon as he said, “Let’s do it.”

I still remember wanting to run down the street screaming outside Dad’s funeral,and how seeing the resplendent Indian wedding across the street – something he would have loved, he who loved beauty (and India) so much -somehow gave me the strength to go in there.

I still remember my sister and I holding hands across Dad’s coffin before it vanished into the flames, the pallbearers holding their top hats over their hearts and bowing.

But I also remember waiting for him to come home from working at the lab when I was a little girl, the familiar chemical smell of his white lab coat as he swept me up into his arms asking, “How is my pixie today?”

And I remember riding on his shoulders through the woods in springtime, while Dad called the birds and they answered him. He knew all their names. And he could make clouds disappear, mostly on days with a breeze in the air…

And I remember coming icy-cold out of the chilly summer waters of the Atlantic and lying down on his sun-warmed back as he read the New York Times on a beach in Maine.

He never complained.

He was the best father and friend a girl could ever have. I was lucky to have him. Though the grief is the price of the love, it has also given me the strength to get through this first decade without him, as I’m sure it will in the decades to come. As time passes, I spend more time thinking of the happy memories of my father and less time thinking of the sadness of losing him. I think that would make him happy.

I love you, Dad. Always.

Another thing I never told you about the Surgical Mystery Tour in San Francisco was that I lost my address book. I still have no idea where. But it’s gone.

As people often say in these situations, it was old and the time had come. But it had also been given to me by my father, who has been gone for ten years this month. A decade!

It was from the National Gallery in London, blue and patterned with Raphael’s drawings of clouds. It was held together by a rubber band at this point in its long life, and it was full of Post-Its and scribbles and dead people.

I delayed getting a new one, since I wouldn’t be able to write Dad’s name in it, or my stepmother’s, for that matter, and the thought made me sad. I guess it’s always hard to face the truth, or reality, or whatever you want to call the unpleasant facts of life. And I am an excellent procrastinator.

But the time has come, the Walrus said, for you to email me your addresses and phone numbers, so I can send you Christmas cards and random postcards, as inspired by the lovely and creative Lisa*. It’s sjpeakall AT gmail DOT com. Don’t forget the J!

To further complicate this address book revamp, I just got my own post office box last week. Sharing one with the sibs was getting too crowded, and stressing out our ever-crabby postmistress**. So I got my own, a bigger one, too, with a wet bar and a pool. And it’s even in the same neighborhood.

My new PO box is 128 instead of 61. Everything else is the same. Make a note, and try not to lose it!

*I use it for a bookmark, so it makes me smile every day.

**But we bonded during the PO box rental experience, because she had her dog there, which I recognized as a pit bull mix. We happily talked about what great dogs they are as I filled out the paperwork, and I told her that my sister does pit bull rescue and activism, so hopefully she’ll get some of the new and improved attitude, too!

The cause of all the trouble. Seen here in the surprise snowfall in February.

As I mentioned, my hard-working and long-suffering brother was not able to attend the social event of the season, aka Erica’s and Jessica’s farewell barbecue, which also marked the first time in months that I hadn’t pulled up to his place only be told that there was something tragically wrong with my car.

But I was not to escape so easily…

When Megan, Rob, and I went to see the Harry Potter movie last week, we took my car, partly because it has more room than their Saturn, and we had two propane tanks to fill and Star with us, and partly because their trunk has been on strike for a couple of years, and we were getting two households’ worth of groceries.

Needless to say, I let Megan drive (Rob is still on restricted driving), and she noticed that Miss Scarlett’s brakes are not all they should be – not something a girl wants to hear when she drives serpentine local roads three days a week or more.

I don’t think I ever told you that when we were in San Francisco for Rob’s surgery, we drove some of the steepest hills in the city, with a post-surgical Rob in the car. My brother inspected the brake fluid after we got home and found it was low, apparently something that should never happen. This discovery left Miss Scarlett marooned at his house until I could buy and apply brake fluid.

I tried not to think about what could have happened in the city. And I’ve been checking all the fluids every two weeks ever since. I even have an oil change lined up for this afternoon.

After I get home, I’ll take the car over to my brother’s, Rob following in the truck. I’ll leave the car at Jonathan’s place, and then drive home with Rob in the truck. Jonathan will then install the $169 worth of brake parts which I bought yesterday on my way to work, list in hand. I could even answer the questions they asked at the car parts store. Admittedly, only the make and number of doors, but still!

I’m so lucky to have the boys around to fix things. I can’t imagine what a mechanic would have charged for fixing my brakes.

Well, actually, I can.

Well, Erica and Jessica are settled in their new (to them), century-old house, merrily ordering delivery dinners. Jessica has already made friends with the kids on her block. It makes me happy to know she’s going to grow up like Ramona the Pest, in a happy neighborhood with lots of kids and adventures to be had on her very own Klickitat Street.

Besides the farewell barbecue for the Dynamic Duo, it’s been hard for us to fit in seeing the new Harry Potter movie, even though we’ve been looking forward to it since Part I ended. Typically, we fit it in between errands on Friday. Rob tagged along, though in the way of many men when confronted with extended periods of shopping, he tended to bail on us when we were actually in the store.

We went to Safeway before the movie, loading up Miss Scarlett’s trunk while Star patiently waited in the backseat. She also had to wait in the car during the movie, but I think that dogs would rather wait in the parking lot than at home, since being in the car means a) being with the people; and 2) the possibility of fun. Also, Star hasn’t read the books.

Our timing was perfect, though: we arrived in the theater just as the last trailer ended, and the opening credits started just as we took our seats. I noticed that there were only two other people in the theater besides the three of us, and that was almost certainly a unique experience among viewers of this movie.

I enjoyed the movie very much, despite the darkness noted by critics. The one thing I really didn’t like was the epilogue, which I also disliked in the book. I think the three friends should have been left at the end of their victorious battle, on the brink of adulthood with all the rest of lives before them, rather than having their dull domesticity spelled out for us.

But that’s just me.

After the movie, we emerged blinking into the sunshine to take Star for a walk in a nearby field. Then we finished our errands, came home, and unloaded the car. Back to reality. It was nice to have that little break from the real world. That’s the magic of movies – and books.