What Color Is Your Car?

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Dorothy Parker

Next time you're sitting at a stop light, notice the cars around you. How many different colors do you see?

I know what I see. A sea of white, black, silver, gray, beige. An occasional red. Maybe a blue one here and there. Used to be black, white, brown, gray, and silver weren't even colors. The color wheel I remember had blue, yellow, red, green, purple, orange.

Are our cars a sign of how boring we've become? Sort of like how boring this post is?

Often when my husband and I are driving somewhere, he'll ask what I think of some car he sees on the road. I don't know why he does this, because cars really don't do a lot for me. (Air conditioning, heat, radio, starts--works for me. I can't tell the difference between a Cadillac and a Datsun. And a truck is a truck.)

I never display much enthusiasm in my reply, hoping he'll discuss something more interesting to me. Surely he knows what those things might be.

His next line? "What do you think of that new Z2000375A?"

"Coupe or sedan?" I reply, and in my mind bang my head against the dashboard.

So goes our exciting rides in the car. Sort of like when he's flipping channels between American Chopper, some war show on the history channel, and some obscure football game between Nimrod College and Shinola State. He'll make a comment and I'll look up from my book and nod my head. I think he truly believes I'm following the changing of the channels every 30 seconds. That I enjoy watching snippets of all those shows, too.

Okay, so I was talking about boring colors and boring posts.

I have six drafts of posts sitting in my Post queue. I have topics on minivans, children's play, my cat coming to the lake for the first time, night owls, creativity, jobs. Each of those has notes on it with a worthwhile list of ideas to make a fine essay. Do I have interest in writing any of them this week? No.

Perhaps it is a reflection of my personality at the moment. Perhaps it is the time of year and everything outside is brown, so I feel brown, too. Perhaps, perhaps.

I think I'll go get in my silver car and go to the grocery store. Nothing mundane and boring about that. I'll even, like normal, forget where I parked and search for my car in the sea of boring color in the lot.

Oh, wait. Sometimes there is a rainbow. The produce section. Surely I can find some real color there. I'm off!

Onward to the New Year

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

My oldest son took the above photo down at Zilker Park in Austin. The city has put up this tree of lights for as long as we've lived here, probably longer. When my kids were little, my husband and I would take them down to the park and we'd stand underneath and twirl.

When my son sent this photo he took this past Christmas season, I recalled those nights of twirling with my little boys. Those recollections brought me joy and I closed my eyes and whirled in my mind, the events of the past year swirling with me. After a year of extreme highs and lows, I welcome the new year in hope of a steadier stream of events.

Alas, rather than further lament over how to write my first post of the year, I've decided to "butt in chair" and type away. If this lands all over the place, so it goes. The new year has arrived; I'm happy about it.

Of course, I don't know if life this year will accommodate a level stream, but I can hope.

This morning, I have the house to myself. No teaching job today. Middle son and husband off at work. Youngest son safely ensconced in his dorm room at the University of Alabama after sliding in between the South's snow storm and freezing cold. He left yesterday morning at 5:30 taking the southern route through Baton Rouge and arrived in Tuscaloosa in 12 hours. Proud of that boy doing that all by himself.

Seems odd to have him gone again although I didn't see him much while home. He worked landscape and made his money for books and expenses this next semester. Had a good lesson on how if he were to depend on that income to live, he'd have to give up certain things like electricity, entertainment, and food. (Great fodder for school success.)

Middle son currently living at home substitute teaching in the day and painting the YMCA at night. Decided that working on a for profit trophy deer hunting ranch argued with his sense of wildlife preservation and conservation. Eagerly pursuing a wildlife job anywhere in the country, but employed in the meantime.

Still his presence here means my husband and I are not empty nesters. That transition has been put on the back burner. We still can't run around naked.

But today, no one is home and I won't tell you what I'm wearing. Instead, I'll begin my first blog of this wonderful new year with some photos from our holiday. Get this first one going and hopefully the ideas and words for getting back on track will arrive.

The Christmas card I sent this year, ala A Christmas Story. I want that lamp.
The other card I sent.
One of my favorites that I received.
The mushroom crab cakes I made up. No recipe, but to die for.
My granddog getting intimate with our splurge for dinner.
The dinner table filled with Swedish meatballs and potato sausage, lefsa, cucumber salad, and the lobster. A white dinner.
Me with the kids. Husband had to take the picture.
Chelsea's new socks.

Happy New Year everybody. I'd like to share my list for the new year, but, I don't have one. However, do cheer for the Green Bay Packers Saturday night. Go Pack!