Trompe L'Oiel

Driving around with a bashed up car for a week now I've noticed that people seem less likely to step out or pull out in front of you when you have visible damage on the front of your car. I've started to imagine perfectly intact and functional car manufactured to look like it's just been in an accident.

Ouch.

My morning did not get off to a really great start. Neither did Kim's. Kim is a seemingly nice enough woman I met this morning when she pulled out of 44th into Butler Street and stopped causing my car to collide with the front end of her car. I have never ever in my 25 years of driving had an accident so this was a new experience for me. I backed over to the curb and she pulled forward onto 44th and we stood at the hood of her car exchanging insurance info. She was suspiciously knowledgeable about exactly what information we needed to exchange. This took a lot longer than I thought it needed to but Kim is one of those women who keeps so much stuff in her purse that she can't even look around in her bag without taking some stuff out and setting it down nearby. Her wallet was so stuffed it took her several minutes just to pry out her driver's license. Meanwhile I found a tablet of paper and a pen for us and with her permission photographed both her car and mine.

So, with various bits hanging off my car I drove back home in the predawn darkness. For some reason My Beloved awoke when he heard me coming in the kitchen and stumbled sleepily downstairs. "I thought you were knocking" he said not really awake. "I had a car accident" I said apologetically. "Are you okay?" he asked to his credit despite the fact that I'm clearly standing in the kitchen looking just fine. "What do you need me to do?" I knew he really dreaded the prospect of having to drive me the one hour trip up to the clinic where I was scheduled to work so I let him off easy. "Put some pants on and come outside and look at my car." My Beloved had to saw one of the loose bits the rest of the way off the car and defying generations of tradition passed over the duct tape in favor of slip ties to secure my dangling turn signal.

Later, fueling up at the Starbucks in Gibsonia the lady ahead of me said "Well, I'm breathing and walking" in response to the barista's "How are you." I stood behind her nodding.

Thorncrown Chapel

This will come as a shock to you big city, bi-coastal types but one of the American Institute of Architecture's top ten buildings of the twentieth century is in rural northwestern Arkansas. So can you guess where I went on my Christmas vacation? It was an easy but day long drive down from Des Moines and would be a quick trip from Kansas City. Four lanes almost all the way. Then, boom. There you are in the Ozark mountains looking at a modernist interpretation of La Sainte Chappelle in the woods.

Some fellow from Pine Bluff built his retirement home on a pretty piece of property up in the mountains. He found that a lot of passers-by wandered up his driveway to admire the view and got the idea to build a chapel to inspire and provide respite for these travelers. The chapel opened in 1980 but not before some trials and tribulations that lend themselves well to moral lesions about aligning one's desires with God's plan. The Chapel worked its magic on us. The instant we saw it we went from weary road drones to curious and engaged explorers. Go visit it someday or go to Thorncrown Journal and indulge yourself in imagining the comfort some people must get from having their world ordered and explained by their faith.

Counter Clockwise

Last year we spent Christmas in Arkansas. We went down and sprang Hazel from the nursing home for a few hours and had a lovely Christmas dinner with the "twice removed" cousins. Then we drove up to Des Moines to see my folks. We had New Years Eve in a rest stop in Ohio.

This year we did it the other way around. We went first to Des Moines where we had a truly tranquil Christmas. A tranquil Christmas is highly unusual. My mother only recently noticed that I am an adult and seems finally to have let go of the need to make Christmas into some kind of an "experience." My family was never that numerous to start with even with the various step-relationships so now that we are all grown up and some of us downright aged we just slap a wreath on the front door and call it Christmas. We exchange gift cards for the most part. The really ambitious among us make charitable donations in each others names. Don't get the impression it was not meaningful. This year I had the deepest sense of gratitude I think I've experienced in a long time. This year no one is actively dying. At least not any more than we each are every day. This year no one was facing prison time. This year no one asked me for medical advice.

In retrospect I suspect we are just gathering our energies for another good go around.

FM Wisdom

From a country song:
If you're goin' through hell
Don't slow down.

Christmas Road Trip 2006

For the price of two round trip plane tickets to that holiday hot spot: Des Moines, Iowa we have just returned home from a week long road trip. As usual we left home in the evening and drove all night. When I say we I mean we were both in the car since My Beloved does 90 percent of the driving day or night. As usual we planned to spend the morning in an interesting spot and this time we chose Columbus Indiana. Yes, Columbus Indiana! You mean you didn't know there was a Columbus in Indiana? We'll neither did we until we saw a write up in Dwell my favorite home design magazine. Columbus has quite a collection of modernist buildings and a huge collection of public art in part subsidized by the Cummins family whose deisel engine company is headquartered there.
So we rolled into town around 5am I think and napped in the car for a while. Next we lined up with the locals at a diner which started serving at 6am. I failed to notice the name of the place but had the best road tea I've ever had. Unfortunately the people up at that hour were impressively ignorant about their city so we went over to the Columbus Inn and got a two dollar self-guided tour map. The pictures of Columbus on the Dwell website are probably better but mine have that special quality only the freaking crack of dawn can confer.

A Rat in My Basement or That Pretty Much Says it All

Greetings from the coffee table. No, I'm not writing as the coffee table. I am actually seated on the coffee table. After moving it what I consider to be a safe distance from the sofa I grabbed the computer and climbed up here. Earlier this evening I was in the kitchen enjoying some silence which is the same as saying My Beloved was not at home when I heard a squeak. It was a whistly creaky kind of squeak. I stood still to listen more closely but needn't have because next I heard a shreaking similar to one of those squeaky chew toys for dogs only one that is being tortured. Worse still it was doing a great job illustrating the doppler effect in a most unfavorable direction on the basement stairs. Next thing you know I'm perched on the kitchen counter thinking "Who's that screaming?"
Not inconsistently Dogzilla and Princess came over to examine me curiously while Killer ran over to the basement stairs to investigate the ongoing sounds of torture. Smidgen I concluded was the one doing the torturing. Thank heavens My Beloved is on speed dial. "Hello?" he answered unsuspectingly from the Corner Bar. I clearly stated: "Come home right now. Smidgen is fighting with a rat in the basement! It sounds like they're coming upstairs." Apparently all he heard was: "AHHEEHOOOHAHHH!" because his only reply was "What?" A couple of blood curdling screams later he finally pulled up in the alley and thundered in through the backdoor to find me still seated on the kitchen counter and waving an accusatory finger at the basement stairs.
This evening My Beloved filled his My Hero roll for the week when he quickly and efficiently rescued all the pets, identified the crack through which the rat had entered, sealed off the basement and moved the cat box to higher ground. I see a trip to the hardware store in his future.