A New RED Car

Skully says the color is Arrest-Me red because red cars get noticed by the cops. JJ says red cars get hit in parking lots and on the road because red gets noticed. I don't care, I finally have a really red car. Not black cherry, not maroon, but R-E-D red. I've named her Beverly, don't know why, it just sounded right. I'm also happy to have cargo space rather than a trunk because it's hard to lift a tank and SCUBA gear into the trunk, it's easy to put them into a hatchback. I spent yesterday morning on the phone to get registered for my writing class and the afternoon getting the HHR checked out by my mechanic's shop, then picking up Durwood to go adopt her. I spent a lot of time schmoozing with the car dealer years ago when I bought my first car from him and we've bought 2 others since then, and I knew and liked his (diver) dad whom he adored, so he gave me nearly twice what my old car was worth on trade-in. My eyes bugged out of my head when I checked the value of the Malibu on the Internet, and then the blue book on the HHR was nearly two grand higher. A good deal all around. See? It pays to make a personal connection. Then we went to the grocery and on the way home decided to stop for supper at a local cafe. It was a "bad breathe-y" day for Durwood. That's what he says when the particulates in the air or some meteorological condition makes it hard for him to breathe, so he didn't feel like cooking. It was twenty bucks well spent. And he finally got a callback from the woman who wants to rent the other side of the duplex. We were about ready to call the other people but we'd rather have a single person than a family with 2 small children (which I think is too many for that tiny place anyway but you can't discriminate). He'll meet her to get the security deposit to hold it and she can move in April 1. That's a load off our minds--and why I got to go adopt Beverly. Good thing I did because Joe the car guy was about to call a woman looking for a car and tell her about the HHR. I love it when all my karma fits like a glove like that and everything falls into place right where I want it to.

February 21--Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid." They were always playing make-believe. Alice and Robert and Catherine had no end of imagination, and the attic was stuffed with trunks and dressers and boxes of old clothes and props like hats and canes and brollies with ruffles or fringe. They spent hours up there rummaging around until they'd found costumes for their latest production. Their mother believed in setting no limits on her children's reading materials so they could as easily be pirates or the "heathen Chinee" as lords and ladies. Alice was the ringleader, she was the one who sat with her notebook and pencil writing out the parts. When they staged their skits out in the garden, their neighbor, Mr. Lewis Carroll sometimes attended. He always had his own small notebook that he wrote in throughout the entire performance.

I was tickled to see a picture of the "real" Alice in Wonderland. I have a book that was at Grandma Stephan's when I was small with Alice and Through the Looking Glass in it; I remember loving it. She looks like an interesting child. Now I'm off to do whatever it is I do on Wednesdays (work) and swan around in Beverly when I do. There'll be a lot of "oomsheah-ing" going on while I drive, even if only in my own mind. (Oomsheah (oom-she-ah--accent on the first syllable) is a word Great-grandpa Gerst made up for when people strut around showing off.) See where I get it from? There are generations of storytellers behind me, snickering I'm sure. Now I have to go commune with Beverly--after I eat my cheerios and prunes. Mmm, prunes, I've loved them my whole life. I get that from my Grandpa Angermeier, he used to share his with me after supper. None of the other grandkids like them, only me. No shit.
--Barbara