Car talk

01 February 2010

...And though dogs rush to bury their owner's radios in the backyard when they hear it: this [could have been] National Public Radio.

Click: Hello, you're on Car Talk!
Me: Ahh- yeah, hey, I just want to say I love your show, guys-- I've been listening since I was three,
Clack: Ah, I see they're startin' to brain wash 'em early these days!
Click: What can we do for ya?
Me: Well, my family has this van--
Click: Ah! the family van!
Clack: Do you remember driving around our old woody?
Click: Remember?! I still have nightmares about that old jallopy-- hunkachah, hunkachah, hunkachah!
Me: Yeah, that's the problem.
Click: You have nightmares about the family van?
Me: No the Hunkachahs-- our van makes this horrible racket like we've got the whole scrap yard INSIDE our van.
Clack: As opposed to the whole scrap yard that IS your van?
Me: Exactly.
Click: Now, what sort of van are we talking about-- have you got one a' those suped-up Asto Vans on hydraulics?
Clack: Are you kidding me? She's been listening to NPR since the cradle! I bet she drives a Volvo.
Me: A Dodge Ram, actually, and I'm not sure what year, '95, '96? but it's older then half the kids. And it's a 12-passenger.
Click: You COULD have the whole scrap yard inside! [chuckles]
Clack: You MIGHT! Ever thought about poking around back there to see? [cracks up]
Click: No but seriously [calming himself a little], what sort of trouble is it having?
Me: Well, besides the creaking and clanking of all the loose nuts and bolts, and the hideous paint that is slowly giving way to rust, it sounds like a time bomb to drive it. When you accelerate it sort of sounds like, well first it sounds like an airplane taking off--
Click: Ah, the typical 747 Syndrome,
Me: --and then, you know when you tape a business card to the fork of your bike so it makes that flip, flip, flip, flip against the spokes? That's what it sounds like when you really give it gas.
Click: Let me get this strait- you drive your kids around in an enormous scrap heap that sounds like a 747 with business cards in its spokes?
Clack: That's a lot of business cards. [chuckles]
Me: Yeah, except they're not my kids-- I'm the kid
Clack: And your parents are making you do the car repairs?
Me: Repairs? This van is beyond repair! I need your help convincing my parents to get rid of the thing!
Click: Mutiny! [chuckling again]
Clack: Well for starters, call the local scrap heap and found out how much they'll take for a ton and a half of scrap metal!
Click: You're going to assist this uprising?
Clack: Of course! It's the family van! Kid, you should sell it on e-bay! [chuckling harder]
Click: Hah Hah! Yeah, call it a vintage collectible!
Clack: Or tape cardboard wings to it and see if the Smithsonian wants it! [snorts]
Click: Or tape cardboard wings to it and sell it on e-bay! [cracks up]
Me: I don't know if my mom will go for the fake airplane on e-bay plan.
Click: I know! Shuttle the whole soccer team back and forth until you track enough mud in to make a giant planter! Get some flowers growing in there or somethin' and park it on your front lawn! You could get those crawling vines to grow out the windows! [cracks up again]
Clack: And all the rusted through parts will be great for aeration!
Click: Kid, what you've got to do is sit your parents down and just tell it like it is.
Clack: [chuckling] Yeah! 'Mom, Dad, our car sounds like a 747-business-card machine.'
Click: Honesty is always the best policy.
Clack: Let us know how it goes!
Click: Yeah, and I'll be keeping my eyes open for that airplane on e-bay! [chuckling]
Me: Uh, yeah. Thanks guys.
Click: Ah, Poor kid!
Clack: Yeah, honesty is the best policy, except for that one time when you...

Ride UTA

27 January 2010

Tuesday was lovely. A deep fog curbed the icy crisp of gray snow that had been melting and freezing and melting and freezing for a week now. Daddy dropped me off on his way to the office, 5 blocks west of my regular bus stop. An older woman stood by the wet, grimy bench in gloves and a few scarves, her cargo pants tucked into short snow boots. I 'goodmorning'ed and she smiled quietly back.

'Pretty amazing this fog, huh?' I prodded her silence.

'Yes,' she nodded.

She looked the part of a quiet grandmother: gray hair and thick glasses that ought, in such a case, to be respectfully called 'spectacles.'

We waited and even our silence was muffled by the still, white fog that swallowed the world all around us.

Two canvas bags hung from her arm, and 'Teaching English to Spanish Speakers' was tucked haphazardly into the bag decorated with puff-paint daisies and a singing sun.

'Oh, do you teach Spanish?'

Stupid question, I know, but I have found the obvious questions to be poor conversation starters.

'No,' she smiled again, 'I teach English to Spanish-speaking parents of local students.'

I smiled, encouragingly.

'It's actually an amazing program, started by the Ford company...'

Now it was my turn to be quiet.

To a boy

16 January 2010

You sat across from me in the LRC once. The headphones pressed against your ears barely muffled the heavy beat of music pumping from your i-pod. The tapping of your pencil against that desk's edge was nearly lost in the clicking typing of so many concentrating students.

But then, for perhaps one can only contain so much music, suddenly your lips parted and out came loud and clear a few bars- unaccompanied and unrehearsed, a concert for the 4th floor. Did you know just how much you wanted to sing along?

I laughed then, at first quietly in my head, and later louder to my friends, but now I'm waiting at my bus stop, singing along with the Rob Thomas that no one can hear but me.

I understand now. Sometimes you just can't keep it all inside.

Flurries

09 December 2009

The first snow of the year teased us from the mountains all morning. I checked the weather in my usual way-- hand against my window, testing the glass's temperature. It felt like a glove and scarf day, and a purple sweater day, a toast for breakfast and hot chocolate day.

It didn't stick, that first snow, and it would be several weeks before a real blanket of white would clothe the grey trees and muddy the roads. But this first dusting was just enough for a snow angel in the front yard.

And that's what snow is really for anyway, right?

Inspiration: stream of conciousness

02 December 2009

Sometimes, when my listlessness has oozed into the very tips of my fingers and begins to itch just beside my nose, I like to click through my favorite blog: Design*Sponge. She is everything I want to be someday, a thrifty, clever and no doubt beautiful San Franciscan who fills her charming apartment with decoupage, home decor, and crafts for my kids.

She lives in Pottery Barn Land, where all the rooms are bright and cheery, the table cloths are always pressed, the kitchen is continuously spotless and all the children are above average. Sometimes I pretend I live there: I have such plans for that exciting day when I am making my own life in my own home with my own things, I usually think about this as I wash and dry and sort the dishes in my dim little apartment kitchen.

Sometimes I forget that now will always be Now and my Someday will never start if I always expect it to start Tomorrow.

Martin Luther said, "This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise; We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified."

Which is why I made a Star Chart to hang in my room: to count the ways that I can grown and to measure the things I am learning.

I think I will decoupage a frame for it.

The girl in 261

13 November 2009

I sat next to an artist today. Late for class, I slipped in the back and into an empty seat. Dr. I. was explaining the implications of Apple’s new (imaginary) invisible i-phone on the current markets as I pulled out my notebook. The girl next to me was already scribbling away in hers—in long broad strokes of pen on heavy paper. I watched, enthralled, as the lines bent and converged into a girl in a trendy polka-dot dress, coat thrown over her arm, hair flouncing as she walked.

Inside, I longed to make my pencil strokes come alive like these. In fascination I watched her fill the page spread with doodles of dancing models in chiffon dresses, silk pants suits, taffeta party dresses.

I was sad when she closed her sketch book and tucked it into her pink backpack. She was unassuming, even plain, and no one would particularly notice her walking across campus. But I knew there were dancing pictures hidden in her grubby bag, and in her stubby fingers, nails cut down to the quick, there was real magic.

1st grade

12 November 2009

Ms. Ord walked around the room checking her student's work,

"You guys are such good sentence writers. When you get to high school, your teachers will be so proud of all your good sentences!"

"I don't want to go to high school." someone piped up.

Apparently, there were very strong feelings on this subject as everyone had something to say,

"I don't want to go to high school either!"

"I don't want to leave Ms. Ord's class!"

"I want to get baptized!"

"My cousin never left kindergarten!"

Ah, to be in 1st grade again. Those kids are in for a treat-- it only gets better from there!