the little things

It's the little things that make me smile:

Walking down the street, listening to my brother on the phone as he demonstrates his ability to accurately count from one to one hundred.

Singing silly songs with my baby sister when she's supposed to be asleep.

Laughing at the fact that my professor failed to show up to Friday class. Again.

Watching the sky, waiting for it to snow, torn between excitement and dread. Will it be as cold as I think it will?

Washing the kitchen sink and catching my reflection in it's gleaming cleanliness.

Sweeping the floor and sighing in relief at the fact that my feet no longer crunch through layers of crumbs and chuckling at the fact that my roommate still doesn't realize that I have yet again given up on waiting for her to do her chores and have resigned to doing them myself.

Listening to my best friend's unbelievable happiness and relishing in the deep understanding between us that allows me to share this moment with her.

Making the sticky notes on my computer desktop line up in proportionate order, the exact amount of space between each one.

Seeing my favorite font on a campus poster advertising the Take Back Beauty movement.

Typing all my hours into my time management project spreadsheet and analyzing how I really spend all my time.

Singing along at the top of my lungs to my favorite Britney Spears song and looking back at the days I drove down the highway, blasting 90s pop music from my car's crappy speakers.

Vacuuming under the bed, then celebrating that the entire house is finally clean! Or at least vacuumed.

Looking at the beauty of the colors of the leaves for one last time before the freeze off during the snow tonight.

Go out and appreciate something small, but wonderful.

That's all.

ode to the oven

My dear sweet oven,

I care for you, honest I do. I am, however, frustrated.

You seem to be rather temperamental. Perhaps if we discuss this for a bit, you can share your feelings and we can work through our differences, and you could work more efficiently. Not that I find your work inefficient, I don't mean to offend.

Let me start by saying that it really is your fault. I am a good cook; ask anyone in the state of Texas. But upon my arrival in this cold place my baked goods have fallen flat. Literally.

At first I blamed the mountains. I declared war, fought some good fights, then realized I would never win in an attack against the earth. Dejected, I had decided I would just give up. Then I visited a friend and baked bread in her oven. It was an instant success.

I had a realization. It was not the mountains, or my cooking, that was causing the failure. It was you, dear oven.

Then you decided to stop opening when you're hot. This is a problem, as half of the times I open your door, you are at a high temperature. The crazy door-opening dance I have resorted to performing only works on occasion, and I would like to request that you stop that crazy nonsense.

Then today, when I went to clean you, you decided that you didn't want to be clean. The self-cleaning function has no intention of coming back to life and after scrubbing your interior for twenty minutes, I called maintenance.

And so, my dear, sweet, oven, I have only one request. Be nice to those kind maintenance men. Hopefully they will return you to your originally fully functional state.

Otherwise, this is war.

That's all.

losing an old friend

Over the past while, my beloved car has slowly begun to fall apart.

It started when the air conditioner quit working. For a long while, air only came out of the defrost vents next to the windshield. On really hot days, you could lean over the steering wheel and occasionally a small amount of semi-cool air would hit your face. Likewise, during the cold of the Texas winter, you could hold your freezing hands near the glass and warm them slightly. It proved to be an easy problem to fix; a small pin size hole had developed in the tube that switched between A/C and defrost. We paid someone some money and corrected the problem.

The next adventure was the seatbelts in the back seat. Heat and years of use broke the buckle part, and eventually one of them quit working entirely.

Then the mileage counter quit counting miles. It is forever frozen at 128079. Not to say we haven't traveled much further since then.

Problems continued with the cranky speakers. The bass had long since completely gone out, so there was always a little background fuzziness, but the lovely speakers have now decided that only one of them will work at a time. The truly fun part is guessing which one has chose to work at a particular moment. Any time you close a door or drive over a bump or even brake quickly, the sound rotates to a new speaker.

And then it was the driver's side window. The handle that you turn to crank the window down broke off, leaving the window permanently rolled up. Which doesn't seem like a problem until you realize that every time you go to the bank, or go to happy hour at Sonic, or turn in books at the library, or return your movie at blockbuster, or enter a parking garage, or get directions from the construction workers on the side of the road, or even just pull up next to your friend in the parking lot to make plans, you will not be able to roll down your window. Rather, you will have to open the door and get out of the car while the person behind you at the ATM stares at you like you've literally lost your mind and the construction worker looks like you're going to attack him since people don't usually get out of the vehicle in those types of situations.

But all these were manageable. It was the time that the clutch started acting up a month ago that we took the car in to the shop to be fixed. Which all seems rather harmless. We decided to have the clutch and brakes fixed, and the door replaced.

Well the car was returned in the most awful condition. The air conditioner had completely gone out, you had to slam in the clutch as far as it went and then jerk the gear shift as hard as possible, and they had managed to cut the muffler so the engine was insanely loud. The door was fixed though. That was a plus. In the interim before we returned it to the shop, I left work one afternoon to find that I could turn the key in a complete circle in the ignition while the car made no response. We had to have the ignition replaced and I then had two keys to the car: one to open the door, and another to start the engine.

Eventually we got the whole thing fixed, though the muffler never did return to perfect condition. And then last Wednesday, at approximately 5:28 pm, I was driving to work and the car died while I was stopped at a stop light. It was rather frightening actually.

My lovely vehicle has a habit of revving the engine on it's own while you're in a stationary position, so I though nothing of it while the engine revved as I sat at the light. But then the engine started making some loud noises, and it began to smell like something was on fire, and then the car turned off, much as if I had stalled out. I turned the key in an effort to restart the car, but to no avail. The most horrible noise, much like the sound you get when the chain falls off your bike and the gears grind together, came from the engine. I finally got it to jump forward, but I couldn't get it out of first. I rolled onto the street where I was working, and the car died right there. Leaving it on the side of the road, I ran to work.

Dad got the car, push-started it, and began to drive it to the shop, only to have it die on the side of the road. We towed it to Goodyear later that night.

The conclusion of my story came late yesterday evening when we heard the sad news: our car will never return. It breaks my heart just a little; it was my first car. I have many memories of driving in that good old friend. He was reliable, for the most part, and he got me where I needed to go.

So here's to my car, may he rest in peace.

Goodbye, my friend. You served me well.

That's all.