August 2007 Archives

Ten years ago my mother and I had just moved into our townhouse in West Houston and I'd started my senior year and had my own car and sadly, Diana had passed away in Paris, and my friends took me to Guadalajara on Sam Houston Tollway for Mexican and they put a sombrero on me and sang happy birthday in Spanish.

Last night, I went to Lupe's with my brother and my parents and Stuart and they put a sombrero on me and sang to me in Spanish.

I'm glad to say I've got the same great family and the same great friends ten years later, friendship and family that's only gone from strength to strength.

I'd also say I'm proud of the past twenty seven years but those first few, I was pretty darn drooly and liked to play pretend a lot. Then I wore a lot of lavender and dated silly boys. I like to think I started firming up at seventeen into the person I am today, so this is sort of an awesome anniversary. And hey, presents are neat, too! Thanks, y'all!

So have a glass of bubbly on me! Make it a nice dry one. Check is in the mail.

Big hair. Big cars. Big stores. Big sky. Big 27 tomorrow!

I'm home in Houston, obviously.

So! Working is fun.

I've been doing a shade lot of it lately, what with finishing off temping commitments and starting my new position. The temping was a receptionist gig at a wines and spirits company (rhymes with Zemy Grointreau!) and it was fun to answer the phone in a phone-ily sincere "Good Morning/Afternoon, Zemy Grointreau USA!" and press buzzers and wear headsets and drink free tea all day. But a girl needs a little bite to her workday, you know?

Which brings us to the permanent gig. I went to two interviews for an Alexander Technique studio, meeting with a handful of board members, for their part-time Office Manager. It worked! They offered me the job at a decent salary and decent hours, and I spent all day Monday working with the woman I'll be replacing. The job is definitely demanding. In a great way. There's a myriad of responsibilities that fall under my (capable!) domain. Accounting, organizing, archiving, ad hoc press work, light website and editing work.

I'm more than prepared for the steep learning curve. I'm looking forward to working with conscious, artistic people in a gorgeous space. I'm also looking forward - seriously looking forward - to being efficient and productive three days a week and introspective and creative on my writing days, the other two. The knowledge that I'll have a steady job that I'm well-suited for, and that I get to leave all the work behind me when I leave for the day, is a comfort.

It's balancing all the anxieties about that steep learning curve. I need to go from idiote-savant in QuickBooks to pro, and soon! But I get to wear jeans, try some sessions in the Technique from teacher-trainees, and work in Union Square.

Which brings us to one of the best unintended perks of the job: farmers' market and Whole Foods baguettes as the panacea to our new neighborhood's dearth of the stuff. Ohhhh yes.

Unrelatedly, it's my birthday next Friday! And don't think I haven't been plumping up my wishlists, either, material girl that I am. Things might not be coming up roses because c'mon, that many roses would be cloying, but they might certainly be coming up lilacs.

I have found the holy grail, treasure of the Sierra Madre, Atlantis, Shangri-la, or anything else you'd like to call it. A job!

Oh, I know you want to hear all about it and believe you me, I want to tell it. But! I cannot tell you about it yet because I am too busy, up to my ears in temp work. Did you know that people who hire temps are shocked and awed when you display any glimmer of your natural-born intellect? They are! I've won scads of praise in the past two weeks just by being compos mentis.

Speaking of compos mentis! We celebrated with Champagne last night. So I am not! Mentisly compoted! Because of all the bubbles what ganged up on me.

So I will tell you more, yes my pretties, when the bubbly and the temp work have worn off. That is, tomorrow.

Note bene does after-bubbly make me talk like I'm in a Noel Coward song? Oh, I think it does.

Today my parents sold Rhonda, my 1997 cherry red Honda Accord coupe. She wasn't my first car - that title is claimed by a teal-green 1995 Saturn which only lasted a couple of years - but she was my first real car. Some memories from the ten years Rhonda and I have been on the road:

- She was actually my mother's car first. We bought her and the Saturn together, the Saturn for me and the Honda for mom. My mom is cool, and she was even cooler in such an ace car.

- I named her Rhonda sometime shortly after I inherited her, in the summer of 1999, with help from Erin. Later, when Erin got a Jetta, she named it Greta.

- While she was my mom's, I was allowed to take her for a spin to Starbuck's once, to hang out with Matt. Leaving the garage, I scraped her right flank along the garage door frame and spent an agonized hour at Starbuck's trying to figure out how to tell my mother.

- She's had the garage ceiling of our townhouse in Houston crash down on her, leaving her trunk forever difficult to open.

- She drove from Texas to New York in the summer of 1999, and from New York back to Texas in the summer of 2000, and then up to Rhode Island in 2001.

- She's been broken into once, in a CVS parking lot in Providence, with the CD player I got for Christmas 1997 stolen out of her in my favorite messenger bag.

- She's gotten in three different bumper fenders - the best one being when I backed up into the neighbors' minivan on Christmas Eve.

- We hydroplaned off the highway together in Texas, July 1999. I was going 80-something in the driving rain with very bald tires (hello, teenagers are dumb!) and we hit a wet patch and spun circles into the 50-foot grass median, screaming all the way. I remember Sheryl Crow was playing as we did about 3 full revolutions before coming to a muddy stop in the middle of the field. I threw up right after opening the car door. I've always been very careful with her tires since then.

- We've gotten through three winters together up at Sarah Lawrence, especially in Tuckahoe where we were constantly digging her and her twin sister - Beth's green Civic - out of the snow on a hill. Never once did she skid on the ice.

- I like to think she's a V6 who's convinced she's a V8. She certainly drives like one.

- When Stuart and I met, I'd been describing Rhonda as my zippy little red Honda. When he saw her, he said, "that's a LITTLE car?"

- We took Rhonda on our honeymoon to Bar Harbour.

- I drove in New York City for the first time in Rhonda. I was nervous about it, but a friend told me to "roll down the windows, turn up the music, and drive by instinct." Very good advice that Rhonda and I have always dutifully followed.

- Once, on my solo drive from NYC to Texas, I stopped in Newnan, Georgia, for the night. All my worldly college possessions were in the car, so, you know, my REM records and my deep journals and some flannel shirts. I got my overnight bag from the passenger side and then went into my motel room. The next morning, I was rummaging around in my purse for the keys as I approached Rhonda and saw them. In the door. To this day it's amazing that someone didn't just help themselves to the big gift-wrapped car in the parking lot.

- In the summer of 2000, I was a mother's helper on Fisher's Island and the family I was working for had two Mercedes. Both girls thought Rhonda was a sports car and asked their mother repeatedly why she didn't have a sports car as cool as Rhonda.

I know it's silly, maybe, to be this attached to a car. But I always felt like Rhonda was really the perfect car for me. She was tough and stylish and fast. She hugged the road like a dream - everyone that drove her was amazed at what a smooth ride she was. When I didn't really have a home in college, because my parents were overseas, Rhonda felt like a little den of permanence, like no matter where I lived, she'd always be parked outside. Which is probably why her back seat was always littered with fifteen books, four sweaters, a Starbucks cup, and five water bottles.

I escaped with her, went on adventures with her, drove countless friends around for countless awesome hours. We drove through towns and cities with all kinds of music talking to all kinds of people but she was always mine.

Since I moved to New York City, she's mostly been in retirement in my parents' garage, but she was always my car when I went home. This summer, she stayed in Brooklyn with us for a few months and even though her air-conditioning was broken, and every time I got in the car it felt like my face was melting off, I was always happy to get behind the wheel, turn the music up, roll down the windows, and give a little pat to the dashboard, and hum a little Help Me, Rhonda at her.

She was my car for nearly ten years and I loved her. Hope her new owners know what a gem she is.

It's a uniquely disturbing experience to turn on the TV and flip networks only to find the same MTA spokesperson telling people in no uncertain terms that our mass transit system is so bad, it's going to break up with us over Facebook and then sleep with our sister.

Favorite quote of the morning: "The subway is just not going to get you from A to B today."