So far, I’m pleased with the Honda and how it sails me smoothly to work and home again.

But a new car is also a burdensome reminder of money spent before it’s earned and of how things haven’t quite shaped up the way you hoped they would.

For too long, I’ve been a single and self-sufficient bike-and-bus-taking do less harmer, occasionally driving a beater as a mea culpa for driving at all. Now I spend about two hours loping around in a car every day, clinging to my travel mug and pulling my hair.  All fender bending, no sparkling pioneer spirit. But it has to do for now.

The Honda is by far the nicest, classiest car I’ve ever had and so I’m cycling through all of those typical new relationship feelings. I love the way it smells and I want to mess around with all the buttons and take it out on the highway and roll down the windows.

Such is love in the springtime.

It’s nerve-wracking, though, starting out before that first scratch or door ding. Facing a car that’s never left you stranded on the highway or told you in anger that its last owner was a better driver… but knowing it probably will.

And Lord knows,  I’ve been hurt before. There was the Buick Century that gave me a black eye when I wrecked it dramatically at age 17. And the Taurus– he always disappointed me and still I clung on because I wasn’t convinced that I could do any better.

The Porsche, of course. Flashy and unpractical. The “roommate’s hot older brother in a band” car who forgets your name while he’s kissing you, but always wanders back into your mind after a couple of beers when it’s warm out and a particular song is playing.

I’m guilty of overlooking pragmatism and reliability in favor of a self-confidant swagger or ironic affectation. But as much as I don’t want to admit it, maybe I am the kind of girl who really could use a nice car for a change.

I can’t promise I’ll always be a good driver or that I’ll never leave an empty Diet Coke bottle in the back seat, but I think the Honda and I are going to get along just fine. Or that’s how it seems at first blush.

My down-time has instead been filled with chores like… cutting my own hair, fixing a desk chair with duct tape, finding my lost car keys, finding my lost car, sitting on conference calls with Romanians and preparing for the arrival of our new roommate, The Tree Surgeon.

I’ve got several posts in my trusty “drafts” folder, one of which requires me to edit some audio, so for now you’ll have to make due with a poorly-lit photo-tour of my newly sorted grotto basement hobbit hole.

Pictured: Our Lord and Savior David Bowie and Saint Napoléon Bonaparte.

Not pictured: Archangels Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

]]> http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/03/born-to-blog-badly/feed/ 4 http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/01/the-complications-you-could-do-without/ http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/01/the-complications-you-could-do-without/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:10:07 +0000 Hank http://www.hankincents.com/?p=2051 It’s important to recognize holidays named for obscure Polish war heroes, celebrated only in the places you wish you were on those holidays.

Today I’m thinking fondly of Casimir Pulaski Day and the state of Illinois as I do my Monday in a city that’s lately been a little left of hospitable.

I was in Chicago on the first of last March, trudging through the bitter cold to Evanston and telling everyone with a mixture of awe and distress that my fish, Chocolate Milk, had perished during the night…

“Just like the Sufjan Stevens song, except a fish instead of a girlfriend with cancer!”

Not really an apt comparison.  Chocolate Milk wasn’t even particularly impressive, but he was my “crisis fish,” an impromptu purchase during the horrible fall of 2008. Lehman Brothers was collapsing on the news and I was unraveling at at work, so I took a half a day for my mental health.

A few hours later, I was back home trying to explain to my roommate why I thought a blue beta in a small plastic Tupperware was the solution to my problems.

So here’s to the dear things we’ve lost or had taken, be they cars or girlfriends with cancer or simply our peace of mind. May we each be lucky enough to find good friends–or fish– along the way to cover our losses a bit.

(The song’s for Mary for remembering Chocolate Milk and James because he needs it to do battle with the Pink Robots…)

“In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing…

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

-Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

So, my car got stolen on Thursday morning from a quiet by stretch of street near the Checkers on G and 14th NE. If you’re playing along at home, this is the fourth–count ‘em– fourth police report I’ve filed in 18 months.

Obviously, a reference to Dr. King's letter from Birmingham Jail after he was caught... carjacking for Civil Rights?

I was startled, sure, and greatly annoyed.  But not particularly surprised. I bought myself a cupcake and took the bus to my other job and waited for the cops to call and hoped it would all work out. They did… it didn’t.

The officer said they broke in with a couple of screw drivers and took a joy-ride to Maryland where they led the State Police in hot pursuit before slamming my car through a fence, blowing out the (new) tires and then trying to run.

I’m planning to FOIA the cruiser dash camera video just to have a good souvenir…

They weren’t looking for a way to get around or trying to sell it for money or parts. Not even for drugs, because at least drugs are a reason. They stole my car just to intentionally smash it up.

Because busting up an 11-year-old Ford Taurus the color of cough syrup is really the way to stick it to the man.

The cop told me it was “pretty beat up” but he didn’t mention three busted tires, both mirrors knocked off, chassis twisted and bent, ignition ripped out, door locks smashed and inspiring verses inscribed in the back seat.

I inherited “The Ferrari” from my mom in my sophomore year of to college. It was banged up, the heater and defroster were terrible and it was always running out transmission fluid. It wasn’t a great car and I don’t like driving anyway. But I have to get to two different public transit-inaccessible jobs every day and at some point you’ve got to be practical.

I bought another car yesterday, an ‘07 Honda Civic, because I had to and because everything sort of fell into place with the financing and the price and even the color.

So, now I have a car payment. And two brand new screwdrivers (tags and all) and a large brick (not sure if they were planning to smash my windows or if they were just stealing part of someone’s house).

And I have a few words of wisdom, earned through my tenure as a cops reporter, a student of social science and a frequent victim of unlawful hijinks:

Resign yourself to this. We’re not playing by Omar’s rules here– we are all in the game now. Those kids are young and angry and now they’ll go to jail. Because they did something wrong, but also because they’re probably poor and black and have been failed by the educational and social systems in a city full of polished marble and shiny BMWs where we spend 7 hours in shrewd political maneuvers over budget reconcilliation instead of how best to provide health care to sick people.

Because hope at the ballot box doesn’t equate change in the South East any more than tea party politics help me get a job with benefits and pay my student loans.

When those kids get out of jail, they’ll be slightly older and more angry and probably addicted to drugs. And they’ll be unable to find work and unable to get rehab and when my new car gets stolen I’ll know that we were all holding that screw driver.

I have advice for the car thieves, too. Don’t ever, ever, ever run from the cops.

Robbin’ people with a six gun,
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won.

Barbarian
Long after the days and the seasons, and people and countries,
The banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers; (they do not exist).
Recovered from the old fanfares of heroism – which still attack the heart and head – far from the old assassins.
Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers; (they do not exist).–
Bliss!
Live embers raining in gusts of frost, – Bliss! – fires in the rain of the wind of diamonds flung out by the earth’s heart eternally carbonized for us.
- O world!-
(Far from the old retreats and the old flames, still heard, still felt.)
Fire and foam. Magic, veerings of chasms and clash of icicles against the stars.
O bliss, O world, O music! And forms, sweat, eyes and long hair floating there. And white tears boiling,– O bliss!– and the feminine voice reaching to the bottom of volcanoes and grottos of the arctic seas.
The banner…

-Arthur Rimbaud

Beauty and terror and childhood who-dunnits in 20 questions. (A man, dead in a pool of water. A wound but no knife…) Sure enough, when you type “icicle” into Google, the first auto-suggestion is “icicle deaths per year.” Despite our collective morbid curiosity, there aren’t really any hard numbers out there. I did find a seven-year-old article in Slate that predicts a particularly difficult time for our Slavic comrades:

Falling icicles, which each winter skewer roughly 100 Russians who happen to be under the wrong building eave at the wrong time, haven’t—yet—been the subject of extensive demographic research.

This sounds like a really bad trend story I would’ve tried to pitch back in one of my early reporting classes…

Lots of the old houses on my street were sporting stunning icicles last week. They’re a nice reminder of winter beauty now that all we have are septic puddles of slush and motor oil and ugly gray lumps of snow.

Two additional notes– I was devastated that I couldn’t find the video with the flying toast for this song with embedding enabled. It’s adorable.

Second, I understand that this song is on the soundtrack for a certain Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Zooey Deschanel indie chickflick and I must defend my cred by letting you know that I heard it long before that. Like, 500 years. At least.

[In fact, I have not even seen said film because (true story) I went to see it alone one night in Chicago and I followed a cute boy in Ray-Bans into the wrong theater and ended up seeing In The Loop instead. I spent the first 30 minutes trying to figure out why everyone was British and how they managed to get a PG-13 rating with that much cursing…

“But in the meantime I’ve got it hard
Second floor living without a yard
It may be years until the day
My dreams will match up with my pay

Old dirt road
Knee deep snow
Watching the fire as we grow old”

-Feist

(Friday!)

Working two jobs is simultaneously more and less complicated than I anticipated. I say this, cresting my second full week of high-speed sprinting from bed to metro to car to Virginia and back to bed again. Throw in some fuming over snow detours and chugging of caffeinated beverages and you have a good picture.

I can’t seem to summon the physical energy that used to propel me through long days, so I’m trying to ramp up the mental game. With grocery lists and color-coded Google calendar pages and a whole lot of post-its.  I’m washing dishes in REM sleep. I’m sewing buttons on the metro. I’m eating cereal while jogging. Dr. Gawande, you ain’t got nothing on this.

I miss the boundless vigor of my Daily Athenaeum days–  spending more hours at the college newspaper office than in apartment, ducking out of lectures to conduct interviews on my cell phone, ditching class for deadline and being hungry for more.

Our passionate little faction treated reporting like the kegs of Yuengling we drove to Pennsylvania to buy for staffer parties. We gulped down stories, for fear they would spoil. Or worse, that they’d get scooped. We lived on beer and coffee and Red Bull, spilled burrito innards on our FOIA documents, showed up bedraggled after too few hours of sleep and generally spiraled out of control with anger and passion and the giggles.

We were all in it together. And it’s harder to find my legs in these kinds of relentless hours without Jon’s slushie runs and Tricia’s whimsy and Ry’s…  insistence that we get-back-to-work-goddammit-and-stop-fooling-around. Plus, I’ve been living like a grown-up for too long now to flip the switch back to all that mess.

So, I’m looking for a new way to make it all work. And I think part of it is not getting ahead of myself and staying alert and present in what I’m doing instead of getting swept up in all the frenzy.

After all, that’s how I ended up doing a face-plant onto the dining room floor yesterday on my way up from the basement. My mind was up the stairs and out the door, packing a lunch and shoveling out my car instead of focusing on my feet.

So focus. And coffee. A whole lot of coffee.

I tend to  skip over this particular song because it’s so chaotic and messy, but I think it’s well suited to my current frazzled state of mind… excluding, of course, the part about indolence…

Up with caffeine and down with a shot.
Constantly worried about what I’ve got.
Distracting my work but I can’t make a stop
and my confidence on and my confidence off.
And I sink to the bottom and rise to the top
and I think to myself that I do this a lot.
World outside just goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes…

-The Avett Bros.

I try to give the people in my life plenty of affection and appreciation, but I don’t usually give much credit to the inanimate objects that exist only to bring me joy.

In the spirit of rampant Valentine’s Day commercialism, here are my expressions of love and devotion–in haiku– for the top ten best non-sentient beings in my life.

1. Static Guard
You tame me with love
When my hair goes electric
Like 60’s Dylan

2.Sunday New York Times
Smudgy black fingers
and smarts are what you give me.
Rave on, Grey Lady.

3.Diet Coke
Silver and red can,
Lift me with your bubbling fizz,
Caffeine spring of life.

4.Electric blanket
My heart may be cold,
beloved fire hazard,
but my bed is warm.

5. Colonel Mustard, 1970’s yellow Schwinn road-bike
Speedy yellow Schwinn
Take me on a ride of love
Helmet-guard my heart

6. Under Armour
Black stretchy fabric,
my super hero garment,
I’m snug like sausage.

7. Vertebra #4 of Peck’s Tyrannosaurs Rex at the Carnegie Museum
Jurassic neck bone
King carnivore of the past,
love time-traveler.

8. Macswell, the Macbook
Pretty glowing fruit,
you scroll me with two fingers
rescue from spyware.

9.My record collection
Stack of good ol’ tunes,
always a pain to move, but
you move me with song.

10.Porsche, the 1974 Porsche 914
You stall in traffic
and your roof leaks in the rain,
but my heart drives on.