A small sample of the cars that were at the car show.
Question - now that some of these "antiques" are much older than my parents & not much older than me, are my parents "antiques"? Am i?
My FIL Tom didn't bring his car up for the show. But this looks a lot like his 57 Chevy. Well, in my memory it did. Now that i compare the two, maybe not quite so much.
Tom's 57 Chevy at our wedding 6 (almost) years ago.
Just some pretty shots. I think the green trees against the blue, blue, blue sky here is simply beautiful & i never get tired of looking at it.
My cats are relieved my ILs are gone as well. Tom likes to tease them & they don't appreciate it. Jazz, in particular, gives him a wide berth. About 3 years ago he was visiting & threw a shoe at Jazz (long story) & Jazz has never forgotten it.
We are getting some sprinkles this afternoon. I can smell the ozone. Mostly it has just raised our humidity. It is up to 37%. I thought we were on the slide to the fall, but the slide seems to have a bit of a bump in it. Yesterday's high was 81F, & today was almost 80. The low last night was 51 & i didn't sleep but with a sheet all night long. The winter weight duvet now seems ridiculous, but after a week of temps in the low 30s it seemed the thing to do!
Seems like i had more to say, but i've forgotten. ;)
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Well, it is official. This is the week we switch from the "winter car" - Duane's Subaru - to the "summer car" - the Honda. Because of gas mileage. Although, Duane's Subaru has been getting an average of about 30 MPG, & currently the Honda just got 31.65 MPG. But that was almost all city driving. I'll have to check again in a couple of weeks to be sure it goes back to "normal" - about 38 MPG - when we're doing freeway driving again.
The conference center where i will be this weekend is an older place with a lot of quiet walkways between the buildings & a lot of water. Duane took these 4 years ago when i was there (he joined me the last day/night as he is going to do this time). Even at the time i thought the place was rather over-priced. I'm not staying there this time. There is a Motel 6 in walking distance (it is "Hotel Row" there with lots of hotels, but most are too far away to walk).
But, just to check, i called this place to check their price. They quoted me $150/day, if i want breakfast $160/day. Parking is $12/day, & if you want WiFi, it is an additional $10/day charge. I think this is outrageous. I remember the place, it is nice, but NOT high end & i see nothing to justify these high costs. (I found later that they should have only quoted me $110/day, but i still think this too high.)
The Motel 6 is $50 for Thur, $60 for Fri, &65 for Sat (they charge a bit extra for Duane to stay). Free parking & WiFi. Of course, the reviews of this place are very mixed. Some folks hated it so much they went elsewhere & others really liked it. And someone did have their car broken into. As the Honda doesn't have a trunk & everything in it is visible to anyone walking by, i'm not planning to leave any valuables in it & what i do leave i'm going to cover over so that it looks "junky." I don't want someone to break into our car thinking they'll get something great just to find my dirty laundry. I'm trying to take all things into account & plan for the weekend without stressing/worrying irresponsibly.
It is about 1-1/2 hour drive down tomorrow AM, but there is also traffic to plan around. I've driven in San Diego during rush hour & it is not fun. So i'm going to leave about 6 AM tomorrow. I'll probably arrive way early, but that's better than being rushed.
Duane read me "Jeep Stories" from online this AM & i read him "Cat Stories" from Jessica's blog, & we both laughed a lot.
Need to go. I'll be very busy the next few days.
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Thank you for the support in the last post.
Mother's Day grief for me is not & has never been about not receiving cards or gifts. Nor has it been not wanting others to celebrate it. I'm not offended by it. It is simply the deep ache of knowing that i will never be called "mama" & now the thought - i'll never be called "nana" either. It has always been a difficult day for me as well, as i find it very difficult to desire to honor my own mother. I've sat in too many services where the wonderful & selfless acts of our mothers is extolled, as well as "God choosing the perfect mother for you." Between the two - desire to be a mama but knowing i never will be & the feeling that i don't have one & never did, it is just a not fun day.
Pamela of another blog wrote a guest post here: A Non-Mother's Day. As always (she's guest posted here several times), what i find most distressing & telling is the many ugly comments which follow. (Tho, to be honest, these comments have many more replies from people who understand than those who don't. Some of her guest posts in the past have been filled with really ugly responses to her sadness.)
In case there is any misunderstanding, my sadness is not wanting to remove the honor from other women, or being offended that others have this honor, but simply that God will not "bless" us with children & the sadness that i will never have that joy. (Please, if you are visiting, don't tell me i could "just adopt." We have been down that road as far as we can & we are not able. There are reasons we can not; that is not an easy road.)
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Even as i was in shock about the Trooper, i knew that something would work out. It just is that our budget is rather tight right now & the thought of additional cost of repairs or replacing it - the idea that it wasn't good for much more than scrap - overwhelmed me. Frank fact is that my body doesn't handle stress at all right now, & it flattened me. All week long i've struggled with the aftermath of that stress.
Honestly, after the first thought of "We can't put more money into this vehicle than it is worth" i realized that it might be worth it to put in the repairs. We won't be able to replace the car for less than a couple of thousand. If that amount would keep the Trooper going for us for another 4 years or so, it would be worth it. But it would also be a gamble that something else bad didn't happen to it & need even MORE money thrown at it.
The timing has worked out well, ultimately. Duane has long wanted a Jeep. We've debated the pros & cons of this.
Duane decided to go see our neighbor who has a Jeep Wrangler. His granddaughter has been driving it for a couple of years, but is soon to go to college. Turns out that he had just put it up for sale a couple of days before. Now, personally, i don't think this is our best solution. But i think it is a "good enough" solution for now. The Jeep is a '95 & is an automatic transmission (i haven't any regard for automatics, whatsoever.) Its engine isn't all that strong. It is a 4 cylinder & doesn't go over 60 MPH, tho we won't use it for highway driving, so that's not an issue. But it wouldn't be able to tow much (because it hasn't room to haul stuff we eventually would want a trailer). And, of course, it will be cash out of pocket. (I'm kind of sad to see that money go to a vehicle when i'd much rather put it toward remodeling the upstairs bath.)
However, it will give us a vehicle that we can drive. It is 4WD, so we don't have to worry about that. And, in my mind, it will give us the chance to see if we really want a Jeep or if the idea is better than the reality. If we find that it is what we really want, eventually (in a few years) we can replace it with a more powerful, more useful vehicle.
What is funny, we've known for some time that a large portion of the vehicles up here are Jeeps. But for the past couple of days it has seemed that 50% of what we see on the road are Jeeps (this IS an exaggeration) & that half of those are Wranglers.
Dear friends Jessica & Jerry - (please go visit her new blog His Scribe, she's writing about their love story & about her cats; i love her stories) have a ritual about "snug bugs" instead of "slug bugs" (Jes, you need to write about this).
Duane said, "We've got to come up with a rhyme for Jeep to use when we see them."
Until we started reviewing such words. We came up with asleep, beep, bleep, cheep, cheap, creep, deep, eep (a form of "eek"), heap, keep, leap, peep, Philip, reap, seep, sheep, sleep, steep, VIP (as in "veep"), weep, none of which he liked. I was very tired & rather silly & kept saying "EEP! A JEEP!" & laughing myself silly (you had to be there, oh, no even that wasn't much help because Duane didn't find it funny at all). Duane was sorry he started this. I've now been banned on rhyming words with Jeep on threat of having to walk home. :(
Duane is also sorry he suggested the name "Philip" (pronounced in the French manner of "fileep") as he does NOT want that the name of his Jeep. (I think it is too late.) LMSS (laughing myself silly)
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The CFIDS Association recently published an article about handling fatigue/energy expenditure. The suggestion was to picture your energy like a bowl of polished rocks & that when you used the energy, it was transferred out of the bowl & no longer available. I think they had another suggestion, a possible visualization, as well.
Well, i've decided not to have it be theoretical. I took $6 in quarters & literally have transferred them away as i spend my time. I did it yesterday. Some things "cost" more than others. I probably won't keep doing this literally for too long, but for now it is a good daily reminder of how i spend my time & energy.
That said, Duane & i need to clean out/organize the garage today. That will probably use most of my $6!
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Oh, P.S. - Blogger won't keep me signed in & nothing i do has changed that. At some places i've had no trouble posting comments, but the blogs with multiple choices for sign in won't post my comments & they simply disappear into the ether. For those blogs i can only comment as "guest" or "anonymous" & if anonymous is not allowed, i can't post at all. Just letting you know. If i used to comment at your site & am not doing it now, this might be why. Or if i forget to sign the anonymous post, it might have been me. :p
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The Trooper hasn't been running well since we had it worked on 3 weeks ago. I took it back today; it was not good news. It was going to take $800 just to diagnose the problem (most likely meaning that it would need a new transmission). Then parts/labor??? We just spent $300 getting it legal to drive, now this. I freaked. I totally freaked. The car is worth maybe $1000.
Duane was off the hill & i left the Trooper at the repair place. Dear friend David saw me waiting for the bus (Duane's car was at the Sheriff's station, he'd gone with some other SAR folks to a funeral). He gave me a ride to pic up the car.
I then went & got some Mother's Day cards (5 - 3 mamas/2 grandmas). I've never had a hard time with that before, but i've now spent most of the rest of the day crying. It didn't help that when i finally said, "I've got to just get out of the house" & went to a restaurant to read & be at peace i had to listen to a conversation of a new father about his daughter who is 2 months old & what joy he finds in parenthood. Nor did it help that my niece announced on FB that she got to hear the baby's heartbeat today. (Although she said "babies"? Is she having twins?)
I don't handle stress very well these days. I am totally, completely drained of any energy.
I just wanted to pound my head against a wall. Why now? Why now? Why couldn't this have happened before we sunk $300 into that car 3 weeks ago? (I'm keeping the Simple Dollar principles firmly in my head: the $300 is sunk money; don't throw more money at the problem.)
Ultimately, we had them put more transmission fluid in the vehicle & i drove it home. Which made it clear to me that this car is about kaput. It strained on the hills - & believe me, the ones i had it on were minor.
We were hoping this car would last at least 2 more years, but were hoping more for 4. We really can't afford to replace it. Lord knows what we will do.
Yeah, i know, time will work it out. In a few weeks' or months' or years' time it won't make any difference. Why get all emotional over something that can't be fixed? Take a deep breath & keep on going.
Right.
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