It's Spring, it's a recession, the planet is slowly cooking to death: thus, more people are biking, at least in my neighborhood.
There is a subpopulation of bikers that is seriously irking me: women biking in skirts and not wearing helmets while doing so. There plenty of other bikers who aren't wearing helmets, but there are not a lot of bikers wearing skirts who are wearing helmets (in a Venn diagram the "skirt/no-helmet" bikers would be smaller and almost entirely within the larger circle of "any wardrobe choice/no-helmet" bikers). Do they head out the door, look at their helmets and think "oh, too bad I can't put that on, since I'm wearing a skirt today"?
Every time I pass one of these women I think about how not-cute traumatic brain injuries are.
___________________________
Driving.
About a block ahead, an oncoming car suddenly but safely swerves partly onto my side of the road. The marmalade cat the driver spared runs hastily back to the curb until the car passes, then sprints across the lanes, low and stretched out, scared. The car in front of me slows; the cat makes it. As I pass, the cat is crouched and staring, fascinated and poised to leap at her quarry: a flock of birds in a vacant lot.
The birds are safely surrounded by cyclone fencing.
Showing posts with label Car talk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Car talk. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Missed opportunity
Tossed over the phone line that stretches across the last block I drive before I park for therapy: womens' knee-high, white, vinyl, platform, lace-up boots.
Gone now.
Gone now.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Through the eyes of the young
Four comments! That's four more than I deserved, after neglecting this blog so long. I'm so glad you're all still reading...I've turned into a serious lurker out there in Greater Metropolitan Blogland, but I am still reading along.
This was the scene Sunday night: A. and I were in DC, driving home not too late after going out to eat for our anniversary. We were at a light on a street well known for being home to lobbyists, windows partway down because it was a pleasant night for a change.
A car full of college students--well, young men, but they struck me as college students--pulled up in the lane next to us, loud music rolling out of every open window like every stereotype you have of black men in their twenties, except somehow more scholarly. I'm not that good on car types, but I guess it was the kind of car that made me think, "studious kids." Still, I turned my eyes back into my car when theirs came to a stop, but eye contact happened first. Briefly, but it was enough.
The young man in the passenger seat proceeded to make a big bid for my attention. I kept my eyes on the light.
Finally he resorted to hollering this out into the K Street night:
"Slightly overweight white woman! I know you aren't going to look at me! But I'm smart, and I'm Nigerian, and I am very drunk!"
This was the scene Sunday night: A. and I were in DC, driving home not too late after going out to eat for our anniversary. We were at a light on a street well known for being home to lobbyists, windows partway down because it was a pleasant night for a change.
A car full of college students--well, young men, but they struck me as college students--pulled up in the lane next to us, loud music rolling out of every open window like every stereotype you have of black men in their twenties, except somehow more scholarly. I'm not that good on car types, but I guess it was the kind of car that made me think, "studious kids." Still, I turned my eyes back into my car when theirs came to a stop, but eye contact happened first. Briefly, but it was enough.
The young man in the passenger seat proceeded to make a big bid for my attention. I kept my eyes on the light.
Finally he resorted to hollering this out into the K Street night:
"Slightly overweight white woman! I know you aren't going to look at me! But I'm smart, and I'm Nigerian, and I am very drunk!"
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Blue Kittatinny Tuscarora Allegheny
Things I learned today:
There are double bathroom stalls on the PA Turnpike that have a full-size toilet and a toddler-size one, and a changing table. (Yeah, I thought that was cool, too.)
A person can get very wet under the gas pump awning.
The midwest is closer than I think.
My hair does extraordinary things when it halfway dries during a downpour and then heavy Ohio wind whips it up around and over my head to finish the job.
I can happily listen to The New Pornographers' Challengers cd six times in a row.
There is a family who already loves Annoying Dog and is happy to have her.
It is possible to be so nice to me that I cry.
There are double bathroom stalls on the PA Turnpike that have a full-size toilet and a toddler-size one, and a changing table. (Yeah, I thought that was cool, too.)
A person can get very wet under the gas pump awning.
The midwest is closer than I think.
My hair does extraordinary things when it halfway dries during a downpour and then heavy Ohio wind whips it up around and over my head to finish the job.
I can happily listen to The New Pornographers' Challengers cd six times in a row.
There is a family who already loves Annoying Dog and is happy to have her.
It is possible to be so nice to me that I cry.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Another year
Last year, I started blogging.
Yesterday, we were back at the Four Seasons for our circa-Valentine's Day High Tea, on yet another miserable mid-February day. The valet opened the car door for me again, and accepted the key to a different, slightly battered Civic Hybrid (the car we drove last year was totaled in May), and this year we had two second-hand carseats in back, one of them not yet installed, because while repairs at the usual building are ongoing, Z.'s daycare has had to move to new digs far enough away from our house that as of tomorrow, we are carpooling to spare the polar bears.*
Last year, I was still making my way back towards music; mostly, the radio was tuned to NPR. This year the front of the car is littered with cd's.
The trash in the seat wells is pretty much unchanged.
Blogging, blogging. Very few decisions have changed my life as much as my plunge into the Web 2.0 world. I went from isolation to abundant connection, and I figured out some seriously important things in this space.
When I began I felt quite urgent about writing, but the place the blog has in my attention has changed a great deal, and my posting has fallen off dramatically. I realize that I am at a crossroads with it. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen. I would like to be posting daily again--given the array of things I'm avoiding dealing with in my unbloggable life, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, but I think that was a good discipline for me--only if daily blogging is a project I'm going to resume, I need to find an approach to content that does *not* use confessional journaling as its model.
This isn't really an announcement of change, though, more like an alert that this is a blog in search of a new mission statement. I'm hoping to figure it out when things settle down. You know, in my next lifetime.
*All credit to Phantom for the concept of teh polar bear points.
Yesterday, we were back at the Four Seasons for our circa-Valentine's Day High Tea, on yet another miserable mid-February day. The valet opened the car door for me again, and accepted the key to a different, slightly battered Civic Hybrid (the car we drove last year was totaled in May), and this year we had two second-hand carseats in back, one of them not yet installed, because while repairs at the usual building are ongoing, Z.'s daycare has had to move to new digs far enough away from our house that as of tomorrow, we are carpooling to spare the polar bears.*
Last year, I was still making my way back towards music; mostly, the radio was tuned to NPR. This year the front of the car is littered with cd's.
The trash in the seat wells is pretty much unchanged.
Blogging, blogging. Very few decisions have changed my life as much as my plunge into the Web 2.0 world. I went from isolation to abundant connection, and I figured out some seriously important things in this space.
When I began I felt quite urgent about writing, but the place the blog has in my attention has changed a great deal, and my posting has fallen off dramatically. I realize that I am at a crossroads with it. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen. I would like to be posting daily again--given the array of things I'm avoiding dealing with in my unbloggable life, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, but I think that was a good discipline for me--only if daily blogging is a project I'm going to resume, I need to find an approach to content that does *not* use confessional journaling as its model.
This isn't really an announcement of change, though, more like an alert that this is a blog in search of a new mission statement. I'm hoping to figure it out when things settle down. You know, in my next lifetime.
*All credit to Phantom for the concept of teh polar bear points.
Friday, February 1, 2008
The news from your daycare co-op
Z. has been in a pulled-together daycare co-op a few days a week, with kids from another class at her school, just until the semi-permanent interim place opens in the middle of next week. I can walk her to the regular daycare location (currently closed for repairs). It's a drive to the co-op. It takes us just long enough to listen to this song twice, stopping the cd once to discuss the state of the snow on the ground, and taking time out between repeats to discuss Kermit the Frog's musical opinions.
Next week, driving to the semi-permanent place, I think we can probably memorize the song in one trip.
I feel almost like a commuter.
Next week, driving to the semi-permanent place, I think we can probably memorize the song in one trip.
I feel almost like a commuter.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Da Storewy of da Tiyeuhr
This is because Z. thought that her aunties Lo and Co "must peuwrhaps want to know how we got into da tiyeuhr."
We were driving along the Turnpike on our way to see baby Jo and there was a tire in the middle of the road. Mommy swerved the car so we wouldn't hit the tire too badly, but she couldn't move too far because she didn't want to hit any other cars, so we did hit that tire a little bit. There was a big jolt in our car and we heard some loud crackles, like plastic breaking, but we were all okay and nobody was hurt at all.
We moved the car to the side of the road so that we would be out of the way of all the other cars and Mama got out to see if the car was broken. It was a little bit broken, but not too much. Mommy called the people who help you when your car is broken and they sent a policeman and a tow truck. The policeman came right away, and he moved the tire out of the road, but we had to wait for a long time before the tow truck came.
When the tow truck came he put a big hook under our car and he pulled our car up and up and up onto the ramp, and then the ramp went up and up and up and we were in the car on the back of the tow truck. The tow truck took us off the turnpike and then it put our car down and we waited for another tow truck to come.
The next tow truck had room for us all to ride in the truck, so we climbed up into the truck and it was so high up it had stairs to climb. Then we drove to where the mechanic looked at our car, and we all went inside and we sat on the couches and we were so glad that we didn't have to be in our car anymore.
After awhile, we got hungry, so we went outside and we walked along the big road to a diner, and it was hard to have to hold Mama or Mommy's hand that whole time we were walking. Sometimes Mommy was nice and gave Z. uppies. When we got to the diner, Mommy had a sandwich and Mama had a sandwich and Z. had fruit and cottage cheese. There were televisions at the diner, just like there was a television at the mechanic's place, but the television at the mechanic's place was showing better TV.
We walked back to the mechanic's place and we were still very, very tired. Mommy read her book and Mama did some knitting and Z. watched television and then after a long time the mechanic said our car was all fixed and we could keep driving again. But it was too late to see Auntie Lo or Auntie Co or Baby Jo, so we went right to Grandma and Grandpa's house and we had some dinner and we went to sleep.
And the next day we visited Auntie Lo and Auntie Co and Baby Jo and even Maggie. So it was okay in the end.
(But boy, oh boy, are Mama and Mommy going to think twice the next time it makes a lot of sense to drive somewhere on shabbos.)
We were driving along the Turnpike on our way to see baby Jo and there was a tire in the middle of the road. Mommy swerved the car so we wouldn't hit the tire too badly, but she couldn't move too far because she didn't want to hit any other cars, so we did hit that tire a little bit. There was a big jolt in our car and we heard some loud crackles, like plastic breaking, but we were all okay and nobody was hurt at all.
We moved the car to the side of the road so that we would be out of the way of all the other cars and Mama got out to see if the car was broken. It was a little bit broken, but not too much. Mommy called the people who help you when your car is broken and they sent a policeman and a tow truck. The policeman came right away, and he moved the tire out of the road, but we had to wait for a long time before the tow truck came.
When the tow truck came he put a big hook under our car and he pulled our car up and up and up onto the ramp, and then the ramp went up and up and up and we were in the car on the back of the tow truck. The tow truck took us off the turnpike and then it put our car down and we waited for another tow truck to come.
The next tow truck had room for us all to ride in the truck, so we climbed up into the truck and it was so high up it had stairs to climb. Then we drove to where the mechanic looked at our car, and we all went inside and we sat on the couches and we were so glad that we didn't have to be in our car anymore.
After awhile, we got hungry, so we went outside and we walked along the big road to a diner, and it was hard to have to hold Mama or Mommy's hand that whole time we were walking. Sometimes Mommy was nice and gave Z. uppies. When we got to the diner, Mommy had a sandwich and Mama had a sandwich and Z. had fruit and cottage cheese. There were televisions at the diner, just like there was a television at the mechanic's place, but the television at the mechanic's place was showing better TV.
We walked back to the mechanic's place and we were still very, very tired. Mommy read her book and Mama did some knitting and Z. watched television and then after a long time the mechanic said our car was all fixed and we could keep driving again. But it was too late to see Auntie Lo or Auntie Co or Baby Jo, so we went right to Grandma and Grandpa's house and we had some dinner and we went to sleep.
And the next day we visited Auntie Lo and Auntie Co and Baby Jo and even Maggie. So it was okay in the end.
(But boy, oh boy, are Mama and Mommy going to think twice the next time it makes a lot of sense to drive somewhere on shabbos.)
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Triggers
Today, the dog bite on Z.'s left hand is pretty much healed, and it's her last day on antibiotics. She may not even have a scar, when the redness fades.
Oh, yeah, her left hand: the same arm that was broken last year. It didn't make me happy to see her favoring it again, though she only favored it for a couple of days. And it shocked me back to the NICU to smell antibiotics in her diaper--the first diapers she ever wore in her life reeked of amoxicillin, too. Not that I was allowed to change those, since they were still attempting to get a urine sample from her at the time and it was very easy to dislodge that little bag, but I smelled them when the nurses took them off. I recognized the smell last week from how it smelled 2 1/2 years ago. I recognized the smell then from my own pee earlier that morning, in the maternity ward across town where I'd given birth and she'd been taken from me. Those needless chemicals passing through our bodies and our separation were just two of the long list things that I hated about having wound up in the hospital to birth her.
And the dogbite itself, well it flipped my mother out, thirty-odd years after I was bitten as a toddler.
It was a week like that. Everything and everyone set on edge. I've been seized by an irrational need to hold Z.'s hand everywhere we walk.
So when I was riding in a friend's car this weekend, and I watched the sequence unfurl as we were hit by another car turning left? It was just the next shoe dropping, you know? It was the thing I'd been expecting from the moment I got in the car, the thing I expect whenever I get in any car. The only thing surprising was that when we looked for damage, there was hardly a mark to be seen: the fender had done its job well.
I only wish every collision left so little to regret in its wake.
Oh, yeah, her left hand: the same arm that was broken last year. It didn't make me happy to see her favoring it again, though she only favored it for a couple of days. And it shocked me back to the NICU to smell antibiotics in her diaper--the first diapers she ever wore in her life reeked of amoxicillin, too. Not that I was allowed to change those, since they were still attempting to get a urine sample from her at the time and it was very easy to dislodge that little bag, but I smelled them when the nurses took them off. I recognized the smell last week from how it smelled 2 1/2 years ago. I recognized the smell then from my own pee earlier that morning, in the maternity ward across town where I'd given birth and she'd been taken from me. Those needless chemicals passing through our bodies and our separation were just two of the long list things that I hated about having wound up in the hospital to birth her.
And the dogbite itself, well it flipped my mother out, thirty-odd years after I was bitten as a toddler.
It was a week like that. Everything and everyone set on edge. I've been seized by an irrational need to hold Z.'s hand everywhere we walk.
So when I was riding in a friend's car this weekend, and I watched the sequence unfurl as we were hit by another car turning left? It was just the next shoe dropping, you know? It was the thing I'd been expecting from the moment I got in the car, the thing I expect whenever I get in any car. The only thing surprising was that when we looked for damage, there was hardly a mark to be seen: the fender had done its job well.
I only wish every collision left so little to regret in its wake.
Monday, July 16, 2007
On parking mores
We were parking in Manhattan:
S. (at the wheel): I can't park yet! These people are coming up right on my butt before they go around! That would never happen in Philly.
A.: Sometimes it happens in Philly.
S.: That people keep coming up right behind you so you can't back up? No. They wait farther back.
A.: Sometimes they go around.
S.: Only if there are two full lanes. And they just don't come this close. Because they think you might have a gun.
A.: Well, you MIGHT.
S.: See? You're a good Philadelphian.
S. (at the wheel): I can't park yet! These people are coming up right on my butt before they go around! That would never happen in Philly.
A.: Sometimes it happens in Philly.
S.: That people keep coming up right behind you so you can't back up? No. They wait farther back.
A.: Sometimes they go around.
S.: Only if there are two full lanes. And they just don't come this close. Because they think you might have a gun.
A.: Well, you MIGHT.
S.: See? You're a good Philadelphian.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Make way for goslings
I really love my drive to therapy. This might have a little bit to do with it being almost the same route that I took to see A. when we were dating, and also almost the same route I took to go to my shabbat group during the two years it met in West Philadelphia. I have happy, anticipatory associations.
Also, the drive itself is lovely, running down the gorge to the river and then along the riverside. It's not as heavily traveled as the other arteries tucked in along the Schuylkill, so traffic is usually smooth and predictable.
Today, cars were stopped where cars should be moving, and in both lanes. A string of Canada geese were crossing over to the river, most of them still fluffy and endearing, a sight I hadn't seen since living in Madison, where stopping for waterfowl in springtime is routine.
I was only one car back from the front, so I had a good look at them--thirty crossed altogether. One of them was much smaller, maybe a foster duckling? The rest of the geese stepped up onto the far curb with nonchalance while this duckling was only a little more than half the height of the granite curbstone. It paced back and forth, not seeing an easier way up. The adult taking up the rear was almost across and cars on my side of the road were starting to move. Facing traffic was not going to see this little guy. I was worried, I really was, but traffic was starting and I knew I'd have to move.
Just at the last minute, it gave a jump, stumpy wings stretched out, and rejoined the march to the river.
Also, the drive itself is lovely, running down the gorge to the river and then along the riverside. It's not as heavily traveled as the other arteries tucked in along the Schuylkill, so traffic is usually smooth and predictable.
Today, cars were stopped where cars should be moving, and in both lanes. A string of Canada geese were crossing over to the river, most of them still fluffy and endearing, a sight I hadn't seen since living in Madison, where stopping for waterfowl in springtime is routine.
I was only one car back from the front, so I had a good look at them--thirty crossed altogether. One of them was much smaller, maybe a foster duckling? The rest of the geese stepped up onto the far curb with nonchalance while this duckling was only a little more than half the height of the granite curbstone. It paced back and forth, not seeing an easier way up. The adult taking up the rear was almost across and cars on my side of the road were starting to move. Facing traffic was not going to see this little guy. I was worried, I really was, but traffic was starting and I knew I'd have to move.
Just at the last minute, it gave a jump, stumpy wings stretched out, and rejoined the march to the river.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
You'd think
...this car stuff would all be done now, but no.
A. got the car yesterday. She had to wait for the lying agent to copy the keys after she got there, even though we specifically delayed picking up the car for a day to give him time to copy them after he failed to do so for a week.
She then collected the car and moved the carseat from the loaner to the newly transmissioned, newly batteried, new-to-us car.
And while she was there on the dealership's lot, leaning into the parked car and adjusting the carseat, what should she feel but a big bump? Well, what she should have felt was nothing at all, but what she did feel was another customer sideswiping our car. The car now needs bodywork. The other customer is in a complicated insurance situation. We need to get an estimate and her boyfriend will pay it. (Lest the word "boyfriend" lead you astray, A. described the other customer as a sixtysomething Main Line lady with dyed blonde hair and flipflops.)
Because it would be too easy to just have a car and drive it.
A. got the car yesterday. She had to wait for the lying agent to copy the keys after she got there, even though we specifically delayed picking up the car for a day to give him time to copy them after he failed to do so for a week.
She then collected the car and moved the carseat from the loaner to the newly transmissioned, newly batteried, new-to-us car.
And while she was there on the dealership's lot, leaning into the parked car and adjusting the carseat, what should she feel but a big bump? Well, what she should have felt was nothing at all, but what she did feel was another customer sideswiping our car. The car now needs bodywork. The other customer is in a complicated insurance situation. We need to get an estimate and her boyfriend will pay it. (Lest the word "boyfriend" lead you astray, A. described the other customer as a sixtysomething Main Line lady with dyed blonde hair and flipflops.)
Because it would be too easy to just have a car and drive it.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
This car stuff keeps dragging on
Today the service guys called--we can come get the car! Hooray! I had to head back to work to help close, but A. and I thought through the intricate timing of pizza dough rising while she and Z. went to get the car. It looked like it would work.
"What about the key?" I asked. We only have one set of keys to this car, plus the valet key. The last time I was there the selling agent made a point of finding me and telling me he'd get another key cut while the car was in.
"I'll call to make sure it's with the car." A. called. And the agent claimed to have no idea that the car was there. Which was a lie.
So the car stays there another night while they cut a key they could have taken care of anytime this week.
"What about the key?" I asked. We only have one set of keys to this car, plus the valet key. The last time I was there the selling agent made a point of finding me and telling me he'd get another key cut while the car was in.
"I'll call to make sure it's with the car." A. called. And the agent claimed to have no idea that the car was there. Which was a lie.
So the car stays there another night while they cut a key they could have taken care of anytime this week.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Driving in our car, car
Last night in the comments on Strangely... E. brought up a point I haven't talked about--the way all this car stuff is not just a hassle to deal with (sometimes a huge one), but is also making me feel unsafe and unmoored. I don't like A. taking left turns, and I don't like taking them myself. Heck, even my mother is being cautious about left turns. And all of this business with rentals and car shares means that I've driven four different cars in the last two weeks, not counting test drives. I don't like all this car-hopping--I don't like always being unfamiliar with the controls and where my wheels are, and these cars have all been bigger than the Civic so I'm not quite sure where I begin and end when I'm parking, and none of them have handled as well as the Civic.
I really don't like not trusting a car we just bought a week ago. It turns out that the little whine I heard when I drove the car home from the dealer was the very beginning of the demise of the transmission. The mechanic at the dealership tells me that it will escalate into knocking and various other problems, so even though it would be good to drive for (he implied) thousands of more miles, they did order a new transmission, all of it covered, not a problem. I don't think he was implying I was fussy--I think he actually was impressed I caught the whine so early and pleased to be able to offer me a complete solution. He was implying that I should come out to the effing dealership again and pick up the car while he waits for the new transmission to be delivered. When I explained how recently we bought the car and how often we've been out there since, he was very accommodating. But I don't want accommodating! I want a car I can just drive and be done with it. It will take me awhile to trust this car, even though it is in almost every way identical to my old car. (The biggest difference is the automatic transmission, which I detest but am resigned to.)
The new transmission, combined with the death of the battery last week, is making me wonder about how this car was treated by its last owners. It's a 2005! It has less than 28,000 miles! It's a Honda! It's certified! That's why we paid more for it. It shouldn't have problems like this. Granted, our 2003 was a little beat up from encounters with vandals and panel vans and city parkers on our crowded block, and it had one largeish dent caused by a parking-while-pregnant incident* that we decided not to remedy because it was purely aesthetic, not even any paint damage. But we took it in for all its checkups and we drove it gently (it was a stick shift, so we were able to control RPM's ourselves) and it gave us no mechanical grief at all.
Since Z. was born I am hyper-aware of my vulnerability in a car anyway. While Z. was exclusively breastfeeding, I could get myself all choked up behind the wheel by thinking about what would happen to her if I were killed in an accident. (I think this was a PTSD symptom, but maybe it was just adjusting to motherhood--in my case the two are not easily separated.) I still can't go through an intersection without a faint, caution-inspiring anticipation of the impact that's about to hurl itself into Z.'s side of the car.
There is another part of this, too, which is driving within a couple. I am an excellent driver--my father would have it no other way--and this made me prone to speeding and impatience in my younger days, though I've mellowed. But on the road, I'm generally aware of everything around me and I anticipate most of what could come up. When we met, A. was a cautious and slow driver, hesitant about passing trucks and uncomfortable near jersey walls. She didn't own a car, so most of the driving fell to me naturally. When we lived in Wisconsin, we became more car-reliant and we bought a car together when my old car died of old age, so just as naturally she began to drive more.
I confess I have not always been a good driving mentor. I have occasionally been a real jerk. But when I was pregnant I was often too tired to drive, and also during Z.'s infancy if we were both in the car, A. did most of the driving because Z. would be cranky in her carseat and need my attention, or I would be feeling invalid-ish. Also, when I was growing up my mother usually took the passenger seat while my father drove, and I'm sure I was reproducing this. (Most of the errand-running still fell to me, so I probably did more driving overall--which, come to think of it, is maybe why my mom let my dad drive.) During this period, A. pointed out to me that since we have been together her driving has improved, and I reflected on what she said and realized it was so. Just her need to say it explicitly was a signal to relax about this and give her more credit. I surrendered some of my driverly vigilance and became more of a passenger, less of a back-seat driver (that's "less of," rather than "no longer:" navigation is still a sore point.)
But in the past five months we had one very scary near-miss that was definitely A.'s fault, but she was only driving because I had told her I wasn't good to drive (which I wasn't, but neither was she). Then this latest accident which was not her fault, but which has had more repercussions. I am trying not to let it affect our couple-driving dynamic, but I do wonder if I've let too much of the driving responsibility pass to her. Have I left her more slack to pick up than is realistic or fair?
*I swear I wasn't too tired to drive when I got in the car--parking it 20 minutes later I was in a completely different state of consciousness.
I really don't like not trusting a car we just bought a week ago. It turns out that the little whine I heard when I drove the car home from the dealer was the very beginning of the demise of the transmission. The mechanic at the dealership tells me that it will escalate into knocking and various other problems, so even though it would be good to drive for (he implied) thousands of more miles, they did order a new transmission, all of it covered, not a problem. I don't think he was implying I was fussy--I think he actually was impressed I caught the whine so early and pleased to be able to offer me a complete solution. He was implying that I should come out to the effing dealership again and pick up the car while he waits for the new transmission to be delivered. When I explained how recently we bought the car and how often we've been out there since, he was very accommodating. But I don't want accommodating! I want a car I can just drive and be done with it. It will take me awhile to trust this car, even though it is in almost every way identical to my old car. (The biggest difference is the automatic transmission, which I detest but am resigned to.)
The new transmission, combined with the death of the battery last week, is making me wonder about how this car was treated by its last owners. It's a 2005! It has less than 28,000 miles! It's a Honda! It's certified! That's why we paid more for it. It shouldn't have problems like this. Granted, our 2003 was a little beat up from encounters with vandals and panel vans and city parkers on our crowded block, and it had one largeish dent caused by a parking-while-pregnant incident* that we decided not to remedy because it was purely aesthetic, not even any paint damage. But we took it in for all its checkups and we drove it gently (it was a stick shift, so we were able to control RPM's ourselves) and it gave us no mechanical grief at all.
Since Z. was born I am hyper-aware of my vulnerability in a car anyway. While Z. was exclusively breastfeeding, I could get myself all choked up behind the wheel by thinking about what would happen to her if I were killed in an accident. (I think this was a PTSD symptom, but maybe it was just adjusting to motherhood--in my case the two are not easily separated.) I still can't go through an intersection without a faint, caution-inspiring anticipation of the impact that's about to hurl itself into Z.'s side of the car.
There is another part of this, too, which is driving within a couple. I am an excellent driver--my father would have it no other way--and this made me prone to speeding and impatience in my younger days, though I've mellowed. But on the road, I'm generally aware of everything around me and I anticipate most of what could come up. When we met, A. was a cautious and slow driver, hesitant about passing trucks and uncomfortable near jersey walls. She didn't own a car, so most of the driving fell to me naturally. When we lived in Wisconsin, we became more car-reliant and we bought a car together when my old car died of old age, so just as naturally she began to drive more.
I confess I have not always been a good driving mentor. I have occasionally been a real jerk. But when I was pregnant I was often too tired to drive, and also during Z.'s infancy if we were both in the car, A. did most of the driving because Z. would be cranky in her carseat and need my attention, or I would be feeling invalid-ish. Also, when I was growing up my mother usually took the passenger seat while my father drove, and I'm sure I was reproducing this. (Most of the errand-running still fell to me, so I probably did more driving overall--which, come to think of it, is maybe why my mom let my dad drive.) During this period, A. pointed out to me that since we have been together her driving has improved, and I reflected on what she said and realized it was so. Just her need to say it explicitly was a signal to relax about this and give her more credit. I surrendered some of my driverly vigilance and became more of a passenger, less of a back-seat driver (that's "less of," rather than "no longer:" navigation is still a sore point.)
But in the past five months we had one very scary near-miss that was definitely A.'s fault, but she was only driving because I had told her I wasn't good to drive (which I wasn't, but neither was she). Then this latest accident which was not her fault, but which has had more repercussions. I am trying not to let it affect our couple-driving dynamic, but I do wonder if I've let too much of the driving responsibility pass to her. Have I left her more slack to pick up than is realistic or fair?
*I swear I wasn't too tired to drive when I got in the car--parking it 20 minutes later I was in a completely different state of consciousness.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Strangely...
...I am posting this from a computer in the lounge of the Honda dealership, and all the Blogger buttons are in Chinese. Go figger.
The car saga continues, and continues to intersect with the therapy saga. (Sorry, I'm not up to hunting down html for internal links in Chinese, but the post about switching therapists and car problems is in my archives under Depression. I'll try adding the link later.)(Okay, it's later now, and here it is.)
On Friday, I was going to have my last therapy session with my ineffective therapist. What I haven't said about Ineffective Therapist is that almost the first thing she did when we started last Fall was offer me medication, while also acknowledging that I'm not the type to want to use it. I didn't want to use it, and the idea of going on antidepressants still scares me and, honestly, makes me burst into tears if I think too hard about it. But Ineffective Therapist, now that I think about it, didn't have a lot else in her bag of tricks. She put me on other ingestables instead--vitamins and minerals and Bach flower remedies. The supplements probably helped some, but it wasn't enough.
Here's what happened Friday: the car wouldn't start. I had cut it rather close because I had to open the store on Friday, and I hadn't gotten Z. to day care before store-opening time, so by the time I called Ineffective Therapist to cancel it was very close to the time of my appointment. And she asked if I wanted to reschedule. Which I didn't. I stopped therapy with her over the phone instead, explaining I was going back to Dr. L. She took it okay, not great but okay, and ended the conversation by saying that if I wanted to start medication she would be happy to help.
After that phone call, I called daycare to say no Z., because I figured there was no guarantee I'd be done with car stuff in time to pick her up. Then Z. and I had adventures with tow trucks and extremely nice co-op shoppers--the tow truck couldn't accommodate a car seat even though I told the dispatcher I was travelling with a toddler, and Extremely Nice Co-op Shopper saw me while she was loading her groceries into her car and offered to follow the truck. Good Samaritans just stop me in my grumpy tracks--and I gotta pay it forward next chance I get.
We were in the dealership a good long time, and it wiped Z. out and she was sick all weekend with low appetite and spiking fevers, but she seems okay this morning, except for waking up at 6:00. That was because I needed to get the car here early enough for a loaner. And why am I back here after spending most of the day on Friday? They replaced the battery, but didn't have time to check out the whine. And so here I am, waiting for that loaner so I can get to my first full session with Dr. L.
What I think about antidepressants is that they seem like an easy solution to a hard problem, and I'm not sure that they don't do more papering over than actually solving anything. I don't like the idea of feeling worse while they kick in. I don't like the idea of side effects so severe that many people can't tolerate them. I don't like the fact that they're only slightly more effective than placebo, and help only half or less of those who use them. I don't want the effect on libido--really, really, I don't think my marriage could take that. I don't like facing a withdrawal process getting off of them. And I don't like the idea of something chemical affecting my mood, though if the rest weren't there I think I'd be more willing to risk it. But I'm not, not yet.
The car saga continues, and continues to intersect with the therapy saga. (Sorry, I'm not up to hunting down html for internal links in Chinese, but the post about switching therapists and car problems is in my archives under Depression. I'll try adding the link later.)(Okay, it's later now, and here it is.)
On Friday, I was going to have my last therapy session with my ineffective therapist. What I haven't said about Ineffective Therapist is that almost the first thing she did when we started last Fall was offer me medication, while also acknowledging that I'm not the type to want to use it. I didn't want to use it, and the idea of going on antidepressants still scares me and, honestly, makes me burst into tears if I think too hard about it. But Ineffective Therapist, now that I think about it, didn't have a lot else in her bag of tricks. She put me on other ingestables instead--vitamins and minerals and Bach flower remedies. The supplements probably helped some, but it wasn't enough.
Here's what happened Friday: the car wouldn't start. I had cut it rather close because I had to open the store on Friday, and I hadn't gotten Z. to day care before store-opening time, so by the time I called Ineffective Therapist to cancel it was very close to the time of my appointment. And she asked if I wanted to reschedule. Which I didn't. I stopped therapy with her over the phone instead, explaining I was going back to Dr. L. She took it okay, not great but okay, and ended the conversation by saying that if I wanted to start medication she would be happy to help.
After that phone call, I called daycare to say no Z., because I figured there was no guarantee I'd be done with car stuff in time to pick her up. Then Z. and I had adventures with tow trucks and extremely nice co-op shoppers--the tow truck couldn't accommodate a car seat even though I told the dispatcher I was travelling with a toddler, and Extremely Nice Co-op Shopper saw me while she was loading her groceries into her car and offered to follow the truck. Good Samaritans just stop me in my grumpy tracks--and I gotta pay it forward next chance I get.
We were in the dealership a good long time, and it wiped Z. out and she was sick all weekend with low appetite and spiking fevers, but she seems okay this morning, except for waking up at 6:00. That was because I needed to get the car here early enough for a loaner. And why am I back here after spending most of the day on Friday? They replaced the battery, but didn't have time to check out the whine. And so here I am, waiting for that loaner so I can get to my first full session with Dr. L.
What I think about antidepressants is that they seem like an easy solution to a hard problem, and I'm not sure that they don't do more papering over than actually solving anything. I don't like the idea of feeling worse while they kick in. I don't like the idea of side effects so severe that many people can't tolerate them. I don't like the fact that they're only slightly more effective than placebo, and help only half or less of those who use them. I don't want the effect on libido--really, really, I don't think my marriage could take that. I don't like facing a withdrawal process getting off of them. And I don't like the idea of something chemical affecting my mood, though if the rest weren't there I think I'd be more willing to risk it. But I'm not, not yet.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Car update
For those of you wondering about the latest accident follow-up news:
Because Z. had a timely tantrum Friday night and the car lot is, of all things, closed on Sunday, we didn't actually purchase the new-to-us car until last night. It took an unconscionable amount of time, a fair portion of which was because we didn't bring our insurance card. A. had to go back for it--she was reacting so badly to the fluorescents that she literally raced out of the dealership to drive home, leaving me with Z. and no diaper bag for the next 45 minutes or so. And no binky. And no change of clothes, not that we had that to begin with.
From here you could probably write the end of the post yourself, couldn't you?
I can only hope that the bathroom walls of the dealership are very thick. Z. was red in the face with tantrum, refusing to sit on the potty, pants around her ankles because she wouldn't let me wipe her, making herself a moving target, finally peeing on the floor (not entirely sparing her pants or shoes) and still repeating over and over "Put my diaper on! I want to poop in my pants, I want to poop in my pants, put my diaper on, I want to poop in my pants!" The word "poop" is hilarious, of course, but a distraction. She is intensely invested in learning about this process and getting some sense of control over it and there I was, interfering all over the place. I don't blame her for being mad, but we were also in public and she was a mess and getting messier.
Here is what finally worked: leaving the room. This has been working magically recently. I tell her that I will leave so she can get herself together, or stop crying, or get ready to go to sleep, or whatever the situation demands. I tell her I will be right on the other side of the door, and that is where I go. And as soon as the door is shut she tells me "I stopped cwying" or "I got myself togedder" in a tone of mixed wonder and pride. So it went last night. Once the bathroom was cleaned up and she was made as presentable as possible, we found a sippy cup with a silicone top that could substitute for a binky, and walked outside until A. returned.
Driving home in the new used car, a buzzing insect whine made itself heard at about 37 mph.
Because Z. had a timely tantrum Friday night and the car lot is, of all things, closed on Sunday, we didn't actually purchase the new-to-us car until last night. It took an unconscionable amount of time, a fair portion of which was because we didn't bring our insurance card. A. had to go back for it--she was reacting so badly to the fluorescents that she literally raced out of the dealership to drive home, leaving me with Z. and no diaper bag for the next 45 minutes or so. And no binky. And no change of clothes, not that we had that to begin with.
From here you could probably write the end of the post yourself, couldn't you?
I can only hope that the bathroom walls of the dealership are very thick. Z. was red in the face with tantrum, refusing to sit on the potty, pants around her ankles because she wouldn't let me wipe her, making herself a moving target, finally peeing on the floor (not entirely sparing her pants or shoes) and still repeating over and over "Put my diaper on! I want to poop in my pants, I want to poop in my pants, put my diaper on, I want to poop in my pants!" The word "poop" is hilarious, of course, but a distraction. She is intensely invested in learning about this process and getting some sense of control over it and there I was, interfering all over the place. I don't blame her for being mad, but we were also in public and she was a mess and getting messier.
Here is what finally worked: leaving the room. This has been working magically recently. I tell her that I will leave so she can get herself together, or stop crying, or get ready to go to sleep, or whatever the situation demands. I tell her I will be right on the other side of the door, and that is where I go. And as soon as the door is shut she tells me "I stopped cwying" or "I got myself togedder" in a tone of mixed wonder and pride. So it went last night. Once the bathroom was cleaned up and she was made as presentable as possible, we found a sippy cup with a silicone top that could substitute for a binky, and walked outside until A. returned.
Driving home in the new used car, a buzzing insect whine made itself heard at about 37 mph.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Depression
The central fact of my sensory life right now is depression, but I skirt around it here. I name its source (PTSD), I sometimes go into its effects (meltdowns and financial screw-ups), but I don't often describe it. Here goes:
It feels like a grey, empty place at my center, from my lungs to my belly. It is as though there's a little less light reaching my retina than there should be. My hearing is somehow less differentiated, as background noises fuzz their way up to the foreground. The emotional high notes of my life have been muted, but not the low ones. Happiness will reach me as a trickle coming down, unhappiness as a spring welling up.
My thoughts proceed as though my brain is wrapped in a duvet--it's muffling and hard to get out of. My follow-through is lousy. My memory is patchy. My sense of time is off. My sleep is irresponsible. I think I must prefer exhaustion to remembering my dreams. Books and blogdrift are my anaesthesia.
I started therapy last fall. I felt that being so marginally functional for so long was unfair to A., and I called up a woman whose name my midwife had given me when I was a wreck right after Z.'s birth. I keep deleting descriptive sentences because everything I can think of to say about her would identify her to anyone who knows her even slightly, and I don't want people to think any less of her because of something I write here. Let me try it from another angle, then. Therapy with her has never felt like therapy. Sometimes I leave feeling better, sometimes not, but I don't feel like this is going anywhere. I don't feel like there's anything to be engaged with when I'm not there. I am seeing her again on Friday, and although I haven't told her yet, it will be for the last time.
I realized that in the Fall when I started seeing her, in my heart of hearts I went mostly to demonstrate to everyone who sees me falling apart that yes, I know that I am falling apart and ought to be in therapy. When I met her, I liked my current therapist and I think she would be a good match for me if I were looking for advice and wisdom. Unfortunately, advice and wisdom are not doing it for me. I am not getting better. I don't even see the route to better.
I want to be in therapy to get better.
Surprisingly, I didn't understand this before now. Having understood it, I can't stay with a therapist who isn't really helping me.
Unsurprisingly, this is not at all the first time I've been in therapy. I briefly had a bad therapist in college, and then for a year I had a much, much better one. And finally in grad school I hit the jackpot. I found a great therapist. I was in therapy with her for a few years, jumping in and out as necessary, trying to break some relationship patterns I didn't like, and I stopped therapy with her because I had succeeded in breaking them, which is a heck of a lot to say for your therapist. I think I always knew that if I was really serious about getting better, I would need to call her.
For the sake of bloggy anonymity I will call her Dr. L. Somehow this appeals to me exactly because it's not what I call her: I use her first name, but Dr. Lastname is what she uses on her answering machine.
Last Sunday night, A. asked me to call Dr. L., in a tone that meant she needed me to do this for her. So I did. Dr. L. found a time in her schedule for me. Better than that, she sounded warmly happy to hear from me after 6 years. Thursday morning was my appointment.
Here's where things went to pieces. A. had told me she would wake me at 6:00. I woke on my own at 6:30. A. came up, saw I was awake, waved at me and dashed out of the house for her train. My mother was visiting until Wednesday afternoon, making it the first morning since the previous Friday that Z. had only one grown-up helping her get ready for the day. Heroically, I headed off fuss after fuss and we were both set to walk out the door at 8:30--with parking, it's a 2-minute drive to school, 5 minutes to settle Z. in, 30 minutes for drive in rush hour to Dr. L.'s office, 10 minutes for finding parking, 5 minutes to walk from parking. Eight-minute cushion.
I grabbed my keys from the hook and found no key to the rental car. Now I had a 2-minute stroller-wrestle, 10-minute stroller-walk, 2-minute stroller-wrestle, 5 minutes to settle Z., 5 minutes to walk to SEPTA, indefinite wait for train, unlikely to catch one before 9:00, probably boarding train around 9:15, maybe 9:20. Twenty-two-minute train ride, switch to trolley, not sure which trolley anyway, indefinite wait for trolley, let's say switch+wait is 10 minutes. Not sure how close trolley would get me, let's say 10-minute trolley ride and 10-minute walk. These are probably all low estimates. Now my session is probably ending as I arrive. There is resistance to therapy, and then there is sabotage.*
I called A. at her school and told her to look at her key ring. She said, "Oh no." She said, "I'm really sorry." She suggested SEPTA. It was instant meltdown for me--"I can't make it, how can I make it, I have to walk Z. to school, there's no way I can make it. SEPTA! Do you know how long SEPTA takes?" (She does, she used to live not far from Dr. L's office when we were dating.)
Mama in tears. Z. patting Mama's face, saying "I made you happy." This is not how I want her to grow up.
The next 40 minutes were me forcing function to overcome meltdown. It was a little convoluted along the way, but the final piece was me once again teary, briefly explaining the tears in order to ask the synagogue office (Z.'s daycare is at our synagogue) if I could use a phone to reserve a PhillyCarShare car. The rabbi offered to help me in any way he could, which I believe I interpreted correctly as an offer of pastoral counseling--and very decent since the minyan I belong to within the synagogue is lay-led, therefore he barely knows me. I think once I feel settled in the new therapy I may take him up on it.
Five minutes before my appointment, I was finally on my way. By the time I got there, with the end of rush hour in my favor, I still had 20 minutes in my session. Those 20 minutes were fairly breathless since I had to fit 6 years into them, but even so I felt like I was returned to good hands. She listened, she asked the right questions, she knows me already and I know her (at least as a therapist). She asked to see Z.'s picture and saw in her face just what I would want her to see.
She told me that even though I am clearly distressed, I seem to have bloomed in the past six years. I can't tell you how hopeful that makes me feel.
*On sabotage: A. lurks here and some of you know her as well or better than you know me, so I don't think I can just say this and move on. I think it's clear from the post--but worth restating--that I don't think this was conscious. A. says it was not the case, she was simply enormously tired, forgot she had told me 6:00, and didn't look at her key ring because she saw I was up and so she didn't lock the door (our front door opens into a fenced and gated sideyard, and we have two very barky dogs to scare off bad guys ... so we don't always lock it). Since A. didn't take out her keys that morning until I called her and told her to look at them, she didn't remember that the rental key was there. It's certainly true she has been tired, and still shaken from the accident. And although I thought of it independently, she did leave messages suggesting PhillyCarShare and called daycare to make sure I checked our messages. I do believe that she wants me to be in effective therapy, but going back to Dr. L. is the first step towards us finding a couples counselor and the fact I can't get past is that A. could not have undermined it more elegantly and effectively if she tried. She brought me roses on Friday as an apology for doing it, whatever the motivation. They are red, long-stemmed, and organic.
It feels like a grey, empty place at my center, from my lungs to my belly. It is as though there's a little less light reaching my retina than there should be. My hearing is somehow less differentiated, as background noises fuzz their way up to the foreground. The emotional high notes of my life have been muted, but not the low ones. Happiness will reach me as a trickle coming down, unhappiness as a spring welling up.
My thoughts proceed as though my brain is wrapped in a duvet--it's muffling and hard to get out of. My follow-through is lousy. My memory is patchy. My sense of time is off. My sleep is irresponsible. I think I must prefer exhaustion to remembering my dreams. Books and blogdrift are my anaesthesia.
I started therapy last fall. I felt that being so marginally functional for so long was unfair to A., and I called up a woman whose name my midwife had given me when I was a wreck right after Z.'s birth. I keep deleting descriptive sentences because everything I can think of to say about her would identify her to anyone who knows her even slightly, and I don't want people to think any less of her because of something I write here. Let me try it from another angle, then. Therapy with her has never felt like therapy. Sometimes I leave feeling better, sometimes not, but I don't feel like this is going anywhere. I don't feel like there's anything to be engaged with when I'm not there. I am seeing her again on Friday, and although I haven't told her yet, it will be for the last time.
I realized that in the Fall when I started seeing her, in my heart of hearts I went mostly to demonstrate to everyone who sees me falling apart that yes, I know that I am falling apart and ought to be in therapy. When I met her, I liked my current therapist and I think she would be a good match for me if I were looking for advice and wisdom. Unfortunately, advice and wisdom are not doing it for me. I am not getting better. I don't even see the route to better.
I want to be in therapy to get better.
Surprisingly, I didn't understand this before now. Having understood it, I can't stay with a therapist who isn't really helping me.
Unsurprisingly, this is not at all the first time I've been in therapy. I briefly had a bad therapist in college, and then for a year I had a much, much better one. And finally in grad school I hit the jackpot. I found a great therapist. I was in therapy with her for a few years, jumping in and out as necessary, trying to break some relationship patterns I didn't like, and I stopped therapy with her because I had succeeded in breaking them, which is a heck of a lot to say for your therapist. I think I always knew that if I was really serious about getting better, I would need to call her.
For the sake of bloggy anonymity I will call her Dr. L. Somehow this appeals to me exactly because it's not what I call her: I use her first name, but Dr. Lastname is what she uses on her answering machine.
Last Sunday night, A. asked me to call Dr. L., in a tone that meant she needed me to do this for her. So I did. Dr. L. found a time in her schedule for me. Better than that, she sounded warmly happy to hear from me after 6 years. Thursday morning was my appointment.
Here's where things went to pieces. A. had told me she would wake me at 6:00. I woke on my own at 6:30. A. came up, saw I was awake, waved at me and dashed out of the house for her train. My mother was visiting until Wednesday afternoon, making it the first morning since the previous Friday that Z. had only one grown-up helping her get ready for the day. Heroically, I headed off fuss after fuss and we were both set to walk out the door at 8:30--with parking, it's a 2-minute drive to school, 5 minutes to settle Z. in, 30 minutes for drive in rush hour to Dr. L.'s office, 10 minutes for finding parking, 5 minutes to walk from parking. Eight-minute cushion.
I grabbed my keys from the hook and found no key to the rental car. Now I had a 2-minute stroller-wrestle, 10-minute stroller-walk, 2-minute stroller-wrestle, 5 minutes to settle Z., 5 minutes to walk to SEPTA, indefinite wait for train, unlikely to catch one before 9:00, probably boarding train around 9:15, maybe 9:20. Twenty-two-minute train ride, switch to trolley, not sure which trolley anyway, indefinite wait for trolley, let's say switch+wait is 10 minutes. Not sure how close trolley would get me, let's say 10-minute trolley ride and 10-minute walk. These are probably all low estimates. Now my session is probably ending as I arrive. There is resistance to therapy, and then there is sabotage.*
I called A. at her school and told her to look at her key ring. She said, "Oh no." She said, "I'm really sorry." She suggested SEPTA. It was instant meltdown for me--"I can't make it, how can I make it, I have to walk Z. to school, there's no way I can make it. SEPTA! Do you know how long SEPTA takes?" (She does, she used to live not far from Dr. L's office when we were dating.)
Mama in tears. Z. patting Mama's face, saying "I made you happy." This is not how I want her to grow up.
The next 40 minutes were me forcing function to overcome meltdown. It was a little convoluted along the way, but the final piece was me once again teary, briefly explaining the tears in order to ask the synagogue office (Z.'s daycare is at our synagogue) if I could use a phone to reserve a PhillyCarShare car. The rabbi offered to help me in any way he could, which I believe I interpreted correctly as an offer of pastoral counseling--and very decent since the minyan I belong to within the synagogue is lay-led, therefore he barely knows me. I think once I feel settled in the new therapy I may take him up on it.
Five minutes before my appointment, I was finally on my way. By the time I got there, with the end of rush hour in my favor, I still had 20 minutes in my session. Those 20 minutes were fairly breathless since I had to fit 6 years into them, but even so I felt like I was returned to good hands. She listened, she asked the right questions, she knows me already and I know her (at least as a therapist). She asked to see Z.'s picture and saw in her face just what I would want her to see.
She told me that even though I am clearly distressed, I seem to have bloomed in the past six years. I can't tell you how hopeful that makes me feel.
*On sabotage: A. lurks here and some of you know her as well or better than you know me, so I don't think I can just say this and move on. I think it's clear from the post--but worth restating--that I don't think this was conscious. A. says it was not the case, she was simply enormously tired, forgot she had told me 6:00, and didn't look at her key ring because she saw I was up and so she didn't lock the door (our front door opens into a fenced and gated sideyard, and we have two very barky dogs to scare off bad guys ... so we don't always lock it). Since A. didn't take out her keys that morning until I called her and told her to look at them, she didn't remember that the rental key was there. It's certainly true she has been tired, and still shaken from the accident. And although I thought of it independently, she did leave messages suggesting PhillyCarShare and called daycare to make sure I checked our messages. I do believe that she wants me to be in effective therapy, but going back to Dr. L. is the first step towards us finding a couples counselor and the fact I can't get past is that A. could not have undermined it more elegantly and effectively if she tried. She brought me roses on Friday as an apology for doing it, whatever the motivation. They are red, long-stemmed, and organic.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Accident update
Thank you, again, everyone who gave sympathy and expressed concern (and welcome, Julia). Especially for those of you who know A., she is mostly okay, but she's still very much looking forward to seeing the chiropractor on Wednesday. I thought she'd get in sooner, but apparently because insurance is involved, there's a set format the visits need to follow and they can't just squeeze her in. Meanwhile, her neck does seem to be bothering her less, and her spirits are better. She's been getting more sleep than usual, which helps.
She stayed home Thursday, the day after the accident--those of you who know her will know how badly she was feeling to give in and do this--but unfortunately much of the day was consumed in dealing with the logistical aftermath and clearing out our car. I feel bad for letting this fall to her, but I really had not been at work enough lately to take the whole day off. A. went back to work on Friday (a half day for students).
On Friday I had a physical scheduled, and it wasn't until I was two blocks into my three-block walk that I realized our garage is right next to the doctor. Have I lived here for 8 years? Yes. Have I used this garage and this family practice this entire time? Yes. Was I in denial? You decide.
As it turns out the doctor's office didn't think I had a physical, so after [re]scheduling one for next week, I stopped in to see the car, figuring that must be what the universe wants, right? I had decided not to look at it, and A. thought that it was better for both of us if I didn't, but then I went and walked right by it, twice, and the gravitational pull of seeing the back of the car from the street was just too much to resist.
A. had described the car as "shorter," and that's fairly accurate. The space between our front license plate and the engine was reduced by about two-thirds or more, I'd say. The damage to the front end was both better and worse than I'd imagined. The right headlight was cracked, and the whole front fender was pressed flush against the engine block, but there were no accordion folds and the damage to the rest of the car was only what was there before the accident, the stuff I'd procrastinated on fixing. I was impressed with Honda's engineering. It was also strange to open the door and have the newly non-functional car beep at me in that endearing, "the key's still in the ignition, you doofus" way that it has.
None of this got to me.
What did, what actually shocked me were the deployed airbags, especially the driver's side one. I saw the airbag burns on A., I know she was spared much worse injury because of them, but even though I prepared myself for seeing the front-end damage, it didn't occur to me I would see the airbag until I was actually looking at it pouring out of the steering wheel of our car. The passenger's side one had also deployed, but it seemed theoretical, since no one had been sitting there. The sight of the one on A.'s side made me stop to catch my breath. And make a mental note to thank my father.
I know what went into that airbag being there. Most of the time I was growing up, my father worked for the Department of Transportation, and one of his ongoing projects was the fight to make passive restraints mandatory. Not that he was the only one working on it, but it took a lot of doing. Automakers resisted vigorously, even though the technology (airbags) had been around since the late 60's. Now recall when your steering wheel first got that big, airbag-in-the middle shape.
I'll pause to let that one sink in.
The industry feared that if they acknowledged how dangerous cars are, we would stop buying them. That's right, they thought that the risk of death in collisions was some kind of trade secret.
On a slightly cheerier note, I now have an inventory of the things that live in our car, other than junk. All of this is now in the foyer:
a second-hand Maclaren stroller
a second-hand Brita carseat (actually, this is in the rental)
a mirror-thing that hangs in front of the carseat to distract the offspring (ditto)
a telescoping mirror that suctions to the windshield, for viewing the backseat
a first-aid kit
a telescoping shovel
an ionizer that plugs into the power point
two cell phone chargers, one for a phone we've lost
two ice scrapers
a partially-used gallon of windshield fluid (this is actually in a closet, away from dogs and toddlers)
a bottle of Windex
one mylar folding screen for the windshield, needing to be replaced
a membership decal to a local arrboretum
a club
a handful of cd's
two sheets appropriate for dogs to sit on (actually in the dryer, waiting to be folded and returned to the foyer)
two spare leashes
an extra dog dish for water
maps for the northeast and midwest (we haven't lived in Wisconsin for 2 1/2 years)
myriad pens and pencils
and, last but by no means least, our E-ZPass tag
A lot of furnishings for a small space, no?
The insurance has totaled the car, as expected. We'll get about $12,500 for a car we bought new 4 years ago. My mother helped my sister shop for a similar car about a year ago (really--my sister's car is identical to ours in everything but color), and thinks this isn't a bad deal, so I guess it isn't. We won't see the check for another week or so, but I called the Honda dealer that sold us our car and they have both Civic and Accord hybrids on their used (oops, "pre-owned") lot. With luck, I may even be able to get a manual drive.
Right now we've got a rental PT Cruiser, which is about the most awkward car I've ever been in.
She stayed home Thursday, the day after the accident--those of you who know her will know how badly she was feeling to give in and do this--but unfortunately much of the day was consumed in dealing with the logistical aftermath and clearing out our car. I feel bad for letting this fall to her, but I really had not been at work enough lately to take the whole day off. A. went back to work on Friday (a half day for students).
On Friday I had a physical scheduled, and it wasn't until I was two blocks into my three-block walk that I realized our garage is right next to the doctor. Have I lived here for 8 years? Yes. Have I used this garage and this family practice this entire time? Yes. Was I in denial? You decide.
As it turns out the doctor's office didn't think I had a physical, so after [re]scheduling one for next week, I stopped in to see the car, figuring that must be what the universe wants, right? I had decided not to look at it, and A. thought that it was better for both of us if I didn't, but then I went and walked right by it, twice, and the gravitational pull of seeing the back of the car from the street was just too much to resist.
A. had described the car as "shorter," and that's fairly accurate. The space between our front license plate and the engine was reduced by about two-thirds or more, I'd say. The damage to the front end was both better and worse than I'd imagined. The right headlight was cracked, and the whole front fender was pressed flush against the engine block, but there were no accordion folds and the damage to the rest of the car was only what was there before the accident, the stuff I'd procrastinated on fixing. I was impressed with Honda's engineering. It was also strange to open the door and have the newly non-functional car beep at me in that endearing, "the key's still in the ignition, you doofus" way that it has.
None of this got to me.
What did, what actually shocked me were the deployed airbags, especially the driver's side one. I saw the airbag burns on A., I know she was spared much worse injury because of them, but even though I prepared myself for seeing the front-end damage, it didn't occur to me I would see the airbag until I was actually looking at it pouring out of the steering wheel of our car. The passenger's side one had also deployed, but it seemed theoretical, since no one had been sitting there. The sight of the one on A.'s side made me stop to catch my breath. And make a mental note to thank my father.
I know what went into that airbag being there. Most of the time I was growing up, my father worked for the Department of Transportation, and one of his ongoing projects was the fight to make passive restraints mandatory. Not that he was the only one working on it, but it took a lot of doing. Automakers resisted vigorously, even though the technology (airbags) had been around since the late 60's. Now recall when your steering wheel first got that big, airbag-in-the middle shape.
I'll pause to let that one sink in.
The industry feared that if they acknowledged how dangerous cars are, we would stop buying them. That's right, they thought that the risk of death in collisions was some kind of trade secret.
On a slightly cheerier note, I now have an inventory of the things that live in our car, other than junk. All of this is now in the foyer:
a second-hand Maclaren stroller
a second-hand Brita carseat (actually, this is in the rental)
a mirror-thing that hangs in front of the carseat to distract the offspring (ditto)
a telescoping mirror that suctions to the windshield, for viewing the backseat
a first-aid kit
a telescoping shovel
an ionizer that plugs into the power point
two cell phone chargers, one for a phone we've lost
two ice scrapers
a partially-used gallon of windshield fluid (this is actually in a closet, away from dogs and toddlers)
a bottle of Windex
one mylar folding screen for the windshield, needing to be replaced
a membership decal to a local arrboretum
a club
a handful of cd's
two sheets appropriate for dogs to sit on (actually in the dryer, waiting to be folded and returned to the foyer)
two spare leashes
an extra dog dish for water
maps for the northeast and midwest (we haven't lived in Wisconsin for 2 1/2 years)
myriad pens and pencils
and, last but by no means least, our E-ZPass tag
A lot of furnishings for a small space, no?
The insurance has totaled the car, as expected. We'll get about $12,500 for a car we bought new 4 years ago. My mother helped my sister shop for a similar car about a year ago (really--my sister's car is identical to ours in everything but color), and thinks this isn't a bad deal, so I guess it isn't. We won't see the check for another week or so, but I called the Honda dealer that sold us our car and they have both Civic and Accord hybrids on their used (oops, "pre-owned") lot. With luck, I may even be able to get a manual drive.
Right now we've got a rental PT Cruiser, which is about the most awkward car I've ever been in.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
I'm okay, but...
...don't you hate the way your belly sinks when a phone call starts that way?
A. was in a car accident yesterday. She called me at the-moment-that-Z.-must-be-picked-up-from-day-care-or-we-are-fined, to tell me to get Z. and then come pick her up. She was three blocks from our house, not thinking very clearly about bringing a toddler to the site of a recent accident. I told her I'd meet her at home. The car, she said, was not okay. She had been turning left on yellow just when someone was barrelling through the yellow from the other direction. Because there was a car facing her also waiting to turn, she didn't see the oncoming car. The other car was an Explorer. Ours was a Civic Hybrid. The other guy wasn't hurt, negligible damage to his car. Symbolism, or just one more reason to curse SUV's. (Requiring uniform bumper height would go a long way to mitigating SUV threats on the road.)
I called day care (we weren't fined), and tried to calm myself down on the walk to get Z. We followed our (new) usual routine as much as possible. There were snacks on the patio as I periodically paced down to the top of the garden stairs to see if A. was coming yet. When she did arrive she was shaky and in great need of a hug, a little banged up with friction burns on cheek, hands, and knee from the air bag deploying. Z. and I ministered to her with hugs and cookies and lemonade and tea and ice packs and rescue remedy and arnica. Today her neck is stiff but there doesn't seem to be much bruising or burn marks--arnica is amazing.
Today I'm almost giddy. Thank god it was just the car. Thank god for insurance. Thank god for family. Thank god, thank god, thank god.
Here's the thing--in my usual state of overwhelm, I never took the car in last week, as I had planned. The hood was damaged when a panel van backed into it with open doors--that was in December--and last month some kid sprayed a streak of red spray paint along two panels on the driver's side. We did get a pay-out from the panel van's insurance, but with one thing and another I hadn't managed to get the work done.
Never say that procrastination doesn't have its benefits
A. was in a car accident yesterday. She called me at the-moment-that-Z.-must-be-picked-up-from-day-care-or-we-are-fined, to tell me to get Z. and then come pick her up. She was three blocks from our house, not thinking very clearly about bringing a toddler to the site of a recent accident. I told her I'd meet her at home. The car, she said, was not okay. She had been turning left on yellow just when someone was barrelling through the yellow from the other direction. Because there was a car facing her also waiting to turn, she didn't see the oncoming car. The other car was an Explorer. Ours was a Civic Hybrid. The other guy wasn't hurt, negligible damage to his car. Symbolism, or just one more reason to curse SUV's. (Requiring uniform bumper height would go a long way to mitigating SUV threats on the road.)
I called day care (we weren't fined), and tried to calm myself down on the walk to get Z. We followed our (new) usual routine as much as possible. There were snacks on the patio as I periodically paced down to the top of the garden stairs to see if A. was coming yet. When she did arrive she was shaky and in great need of a hug, a little banged up with friction burns on cheek, hands, and knee from the air bag deploying. Z. and I ministered to her with hugs and cookies and lemonade and tea and ice packs and rescue remedy and arnica. Today her neck is stiff but there doesn't seem to be much bruising or burn marks--arnica is amazing.
Today I'm almost giddy. Thank god it was just the car. Thank god for insurance. Thank god for family. Thank god, thank god, thank god.
Here's the thing--in my usual state of overwhelm, I never took the car in last week, as I had planned. The hood was damaged when a panel van backed into it with open doors--that was in December--and last month some kid sprayed a streak of red spray paint along two panels on the driver's side. We did get a pay-out from the panel van's insurance, but with one thing and another I hadn't managed to get the work done.
Never say that procrastination doesn't have its benefits
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
First post
Welcome to my first real venture into the blogosphere. I've been reading some mom blogs and have been feeling more and more like I would like to join that conversation. It might be good for me. So here I am. I could introduce myself but I'm acutely aware that no one who doesn't know me will read this, except possibly in archive, by which time you'll probably already have a sense of who I am. So it seems a little silly. Let me just launch in.
It'll be Valentine's Day by the time I finish this. A., Z., and I went to the Four Seasons a day early b/c the day itself was booked up by the time we called. Once a year we see what life would be like if we actually had money to spend and make a reservation to have tea there, in the lounge. It's very civilized--the doorman opens your car door for you even if you arrive in a battered Honda with a second-hand carseat and trash in all the footwells. Some years there's been a harpist and there's usually a fire in the fireplace. There are rolled-up cloth towels in the bathroom instead of paper, and expanses of marble and plants everywhere. The food is, of course, impeccably High Tea: tiny cucumber sandwiches, warm scones, clotted cream, dainty desserts, chocolate-dipped strawberries. The weather is usually dreadful. It's the middle of February, after all.
Because it's so close to Z.'s birthday it's also a marker: 2 years ago we were there Before Baby, though I was hugely pregnant and anxious about the due date. I can't believe we were so innocent so recently. Last year Z. was in a high chair they rolled out from some corner (Peg Perego, no less). This year she was in a booster seat covered in chintz, which she loved. She was transfixed by the harpist, she ate 4 chocolate strawberries, and much clotted cream. She said "thank you" and "you're welcome" without being prompted, and she did not dump her food on the floor. (We are working on not dumping.) So, for 23 1/2 months, impeccable table manners.
A. and I have been talking about some of the parenting stuff that has been driving us bonkers: for A., it's Z.'s bedtime (too late); for me, it's Z.'s arrival at day care (also too late). These are linked, of course, but getting Z. earlier to bed and earlier to rise seems to require lifestyle changes that may be beyond us. Still, talking about it is a starting point.
It'll be Valentine's Day by the time I finish this. A., Z., and I went to the Four Seasons a day early b/c the day itself was booked up by the time we called. Once a year we see what life would be like if we actually had money to spend and make a reservation to have tea there, in the lounge. It's very civilized--the doorman opens your car door for you even if you arrive in a battered Honda with a second-hand carseat and trash in all the footwells. Some years there's been a harpist and there's usually a fire in the fireplace. There are rolled-up cloth towels in the bathroom instead of paper, and expanses of marble and plants everywhere. The food is, of course, impeccably High Tea: tiny cucumber sandwiches, warm scones, clotted cream, dainty desserts, chocolate-dipped strawberries. The weather is usually dreadful. It's the middle of February, after all.
Because it's so close to Z.'s birthday it's also a marker: 2 years ago we were there Before Baby, though I was hugely pregnant and anxious about the due date. I can't believe we were so innocent so recently. Last year Z. was in a high chair they rolled out from some corner (Peg Perego, no less). This year she was in a booster seat covered in chintz, which she loved. She was transfixed by the harpist, she ate 4 chocolate strawberries, and much clotted cream. She said "thank you" and "you're welcome" without being prompted, and she did not dump her food on the floor. (We are working on not dumping.) So, for 23 1/2 months, impeccable table manners.
A. and I have been talking about some of the parenting stuff that has been driving us bonkers: for A., it's Z.'s bedtime (too late); for me, it's Z.'s arrival at day care (also too late). These are linked, of course, but getting Z. earlier to bed and earlier to rise seems to require lifestyle changes that may be beyond us. Still, talking about it is a starting point.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
