cars

I Have a Sunroof!

September 21, 2010

It was time. A moment of silence, please.

After 17 years, we’ve traded our car for a new model. Who knew you don’t have to crank the engine to get it started anymore?

We have a just-turned 16-year-old in the house, and few things are scarier to a parent than turning a young driver loose for the first few times. We tried to keep the old car long enough to pass on to our son, but it had become, shall we say, quirky. Lots of little things were amiss, not worth fixing on a car that old. The final straw came when the oil light flashed on repeatedly and the mechanics were unable to fix it or really say why it was coming on. I didn’t want my young, inexperienced driver out on the road breaking down. Plus, the car had virtually no safety features, and frankly, it worried me. I’d cocoon my son in bubble wrap when he’s behind the wheel if I could.

Despite the expense of insuring a teenage boy on a new car (can you say, “astronomical”?), we decided it would be best to buy now, while we could get a decent deal and before I had a waiting room chair named after me at the auto shop.

Ta-da!


The new car is sooooo much nicer than the old one…smoother, quieter, more features. I’m inventing errands just to have the chance to drive it.

If you want me, I’ll be on the road.

P.S. Does anyone name their cars? I never have, but I know a few people who do and it seems like fun.  Any suggestions of a moniker for the new wheels?

Everyday adventures

When Things Go Wrong

September 17, 2010

Last summer, my friend Kerri introduced me to a song called “What About Everything?” by Carbon Leaf, and I can’t get it out of my head. (It’s a great song to sing along with in the car.) I love the progression of thoughts the singer goes through, and how he finally comes to the conclusion, “I am not in need.”

That song ran through my head when I waited at the mechanic for my car’s AC to be fixed for the second time in three months. (Here in FL, working AC is second in importance only to football.) It ran through my head when I had to drive 20 minutes back into town because I left my purse in art class. (Don’t ask me how.)

Sure, annoyances and problems matter. My relatively minor problems make me uncomfortable, and they even hurt sometimes. (See: Helmet Required.) But I always come back to that line in the song. “I am not in need.”

As Sarah Vowell writes in The Partly Cloudy Patriot:“….my motto in any situation is ‘It Could Be Worse.’ It could be worse is how I meet every setback. Though nothing all that bad has ever happened to me, every time I’ve had my heart broken or gotten fired or watched an audience member at one of my readings have a seizure as I stand at the podium trying not to cry, I remind myself that it could be worse. In my self-help universe, when things go wrong I whisper mantras to myself, mantras like ‘Andersonville’ or ‘Texas School Book Depository.’ ‘Andersonville’ is a code word for ‘You could be one of the prisoners of war dying of disease and malnutrition in the worst Confederate prison, so just calm down about the movie you wanted to go to being sold out.’ ‘Texas School Book Depository’ means that having the delivery guy forget the guacamole isn’t nearly as bad as being assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as the blood from your head stains your wife’s pink suit.”

Thank you for your concern and good wishes following my fall off Tank—I really, really appreciate them, and I’m healing up nicely. I’m so grateful it wasn’t worse, and that I had the resources to get treatment for the injury. (I had a massage today...it was almost worth falling off the horse…) Despite this little hiccup in my smoothly-running life, things are about back to normal.

I am not in need.

Horses

Helmet Required

September 13, 2010

Last week was…unusual. I finished some writing for SheKnows early in the week, and then took my first riding lesson in a couple of months. It went pretty well, except that near the end, my horse decided there were horse-eating monsters in the woods that border our jump field. He did a nifty spin move and tossed me into the air. It wouldn’t have been too bad if it hadn’t been for that tree stump…

Ouch.
Nothing broken or torn, just a bruised shoulder and some whiplash. I’m pretty much recovered now.

As I lay in bed the night after the fall from the horse, evaluating what hurt and what didn’t, the thought occurred to me that falls are pretty much inevitable. (As one T-shirt I’ve seen proclaims, “The hardest thing about horseback riding is the ground.”) I don’t think much about falling off, I always wear my riding helmet, and I’m a careful rider. My horse is gentle, obedient and generally quite mellow, though like most horses, he will occasionally spook. You can minimize risk, but if you ride regularly, it’s pretty much not a matter of if you will come off the horse, but a matter of when.

That’s true of life, too, isn’t it? There’s risk in everything—driving to the grocery store, riding bikes with the kids, even eating bagged salad! If you thought too long and hard about what might happen, you wouldn’t be able to leave your home.

Falls in life are inevitable, just like they are in horseback riding. All you can do is minimize risk. Buckle your seat belt, wear your helmet, thoroughly wash the greens...live your life.

(But I especially recommend wearing your helmet.)

Happiness

From One Sentient Being to Another

September 03, 2010

“If you live your life as though there is a fixed amount of happiness in the world, it’s easy to fall into an embittered, resentful state of competition with others. But happiness isn’t a limited commodity that has to be rationed or hoarded…. There’s no chance that someone will get the last of it. Happiness, like love, increases when it is shared. When you feel truly happy for others, your own happiness increases, along with, as Patanjali reminds us, your peace of mind. What’s more, when you share happiness or love with all sentient beings, by the very nature of your own sentience, you are included!” (Frank Jude Boccio, “I’m So Happy for You,” June 2010 Yoga Journal)

Wishing you all a happy, relaxing Labor Day weekend!

Simple pleasures

This Little Piggy

August 30, 2010



Cute, isn’t she? Penelope the Flying Pig hangs from a shelf on my desk. She’s a symbol—representing whimsy and creativity to me. I don’t go so far as to call her my muse, but she watches over me while I work at my desk, and makes me smile every time I see her curly, pink tail.


We also have a flying pig in our foyer:


My husband purchased this one on a family trip just after we sold our business. This little piggy represents freedom. After years of working long hours in our insurance business, he finally felt free from stress, free from having to be somewhere all dressed up at eight (or earlier) in the morning, free from problems with clients or staff.

We only have two flying pigs in our home, but we have no fewer than five variations of bicycle objets d’art (including a bicycling pig). I don’t know what the bicycles stand for yet. My husband is an avid cyclist, but we started picking up the bicycles before he started riding regularly. Perhaps they also represent freedom—the ability to ride away if things get tough? Or maybe they symbolize the excitement of exploring or going on adventures? (Clearly I have too much time on my hands if I’m assigning hidden meaning to articles of household decoration. Maybe they’re just bikes.)

Is it just me, or do you have any objects in your life that are more than just decoration? Objects that speak to your heart and soul for some perhaps unaccountable reason? Maybe it’s a trinket brought back from a family vacation, or an item picked up at a flea market because it called your name.

When I see the pigs, I think of vacations (I bought Penelope while on vacation, also), freedom, playfulness, joy. My heart lifts, even if it’s just for a moment. I think we need these unexpected hits of happiness in our daily lives—little jolts from a special item or a photo of a happy occasion placed where we see it often during the day.

If you have any items that serve as symbols for you, what are they, what do they mean to you and where do you keep them?