Life on the Lusitania
The long national nightmare is over. The nightmare of our politicians goofing around with the budget until we almost had to shut down the Smithsonian for the weekend and quit paying people? Well, that, too, but I’m talking about MY nightmare.
I had to drive my mom’s big green 94 Lincoln Continental for 10 days.
Oh, I was glad to have a car for my use, but there were just a couple of little things:
The car is the size of the Lusitania. (I could have said “Titanic” there, but somehow Lusitania is just a funnier name, don’t you think?)
The car has white leather seats and I have a big, muddy dog. See: brown-streaked white leather seats and drool marks on the windows. Also, Goldie slid around on those leather seats like a cartoon character on a banana peel. Poor dog.
The advances in cup-holder technology in the past 17 years have been truly stunning. Or, I suppose, the lack of cup-holder technology in 1994 is what has me baffled. There are two sets of cup-holders in the car. Two on the floor are about 1/2 inch deep and bigger than the average travel mug. Who figured out the physics behind THIS genius idea? They are not so much cup holders as cup surrounders. That little half-inch lip doesn’t do anything except help the cup tip over, as it does within 10 seconds of hitting the gas pedal.
The other cup holders, which flip out from the pull-down arm rests, have a front and back but no sides. Because no one ever goes around corners in cars? Seriously. As soon as you make a left-hand turn, the cup tips into your lap, conveniently pouring hot coffee onto your work slacks. Or if you turn right, it tips onto the formerly white leather seats.
I spent a lot of time driving the Lusitania and musing on what led engineers to be so stupid in 1994. Did they not care that the cup holders didn’t work? Did they not know about ordinary physics and mechanics? Did they not know that cup holders are the single most important part of a car?
Anyway. I got a new car yesterday. It isn’t as cute as the Fit, but it has perfectly sufficient cupholders. And heated leather seats. And a 100,000 mile warranty. And most important, Goldie likes it. It’s a Hyundai Elantra Touring with all kinds of bells and whistles.
I got it through the Costco buying program, which I highly recommend. You fill out a form at the Costco website, they let the dealer know you are interested, you do all the test-driving and tire-kicking, then the dealer gives you a Costco-negotiated price. This car was $300 below dealer invoice. Yay.
Don’t look for me online. I will be out driving around, enjoying my new cup-holders.
Not finished yet
It’s weird about my car being dead. Of course I’m glad to be alive and mostly well (my chest muscles will forgive me for being smashed by the seat belt one of these days).
I just have that weird feeling that you get when someone breaks up with you when you weren’t expecting it – “Hey, I wasn’t DONE yet.”
I wasn’t done with my car. We still had some good miles left, at least in my head. But in reality…our time is up.
I wrote this post because I was thinking of dear Meno, who is suffering a much bigger loss than a stupid car. Her husband left and she’s feeling a little shaky. If you have a minute, go give her some love.
Your dog said what?
The weedy field in question. With the dog in question.
Goldie was digging in her favorite place, a huge, weedy field down by the harbor. It has never been developed and isn’t fenced, so it has turned into a de facto dog park, frisbee field and place to hang out and drink a beer or six by the water (gauging from the number of beer bottles in the weeds).
A lady with a beagle on a leash walked up.
“Oh, he found something, did he?” (people always assume Goldie is a boy because she is big. Sexism ahoy.)
“No, she just likes to dig. She rarely finds anything,” I replied.
“Molly says,” said the lady, nodding toward the beagle, “‘My mommy doesn’t let me dig on other people’s property.'”
Oh yes she did. She quoted her dog to make a passive-aggressive dig at me for letting my dog behave like a hooligan. I stood there, dumbfounded.
My question is this: What should I have said that Goldie said in response to her dog, Molly?
Listen to Your Mother
My mom on her 85th birthday
I went out car shopping today and it was a slog the whole way. I’m looking for another small 5-door hatchback because Goldie runs my life. She needs a place away from me to ride so she doesn’t kill us both with her leaping about, but also a car that is low enough to the ground that she can drag her 15-year-old bones up into. I’m NOT lifting a 65-pound dog more times than I absolutely have to.
I went to five dealerships and nobody had the model I wanted to see and the salesmen were getting more and more pushy and annoying and I was getting crankier and more tired.
I finally gave up and went to see Mom. We were talking when I got a sudden sharp pain and squirmed in my chair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, worried my accident-related wounds were bothering me.
“Girl cramps,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” she replied. “This is not the day to go shopping for a car.”
Right she is. Moms are smart like that.
*******
In other Mom-related news, BlogHer has decided to sponsor Listen to Your Mother, a series of readings of motherhood-related essays written by women.
I could not be happier about this project or more proud of the women involved in it. I met Ann Imig of Ann’s Rants last year at Creative Alliance 10 and heard her wish in the famous yurt for a national audience for Listen to Your Mother. I also got to laugh and weep and smile through a Listen to Your Mother reading. It’s like the BlogHer Community Keynote with a focus. So good, so powerful, such heart-fillingly good writing.
There will be a LTYM at BlogHer this year. Don’t miss out.
Lucky
I thought I’d skip the gym and walk the dog, since she hadn’t been out in the day before. I thought we might go to the beach since it was such a beautiful, sunny day. I drove along in the fast lane of the freeway in stop and go traffic, thinking about the evening ahead. The traffic was finally speeding up after having gone slowly for a few miles.
I thought “Dang, those cars in front of me are stopping fast.” I had to stand on my brakes pretty hard, but I knew I was ok because I am a freak about leaving enough following room on the freeway.
Then I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the guy’s utterly panicked face as he tried to stop his maroon car behind me and my next thought was “Oh, here we go.”
Not “Oh shit.” Not “Oh my God.” Nope. “Here we go.”
He smashed into me from behind. My car then hit the SUV in front of me. Which hit the van in front of it. It was all over in about a second. My windshield wipers were flipping madly. My glasses had flown off. My hood was all bent up, and my engine smelled funny, but I could still drive my car a few feet onto the shoulder.
I found my glasses and thought “Take this slowly. Don’t make any sudden moves.” The guy from the car behind me walked up and asked through my window if I was ok. He looked so afraid.
Remarkably, we were all ok. No one was bleeding.
I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t angry. I was rattled, but I was able to remember my priorities – make sure everyone is safe – the kid in the car behind me, the lady in the SUV, the guy in the work van. Call to report the accident. Talk to the paramedics. Talk to the highway patrol. Call for a ride. Tweet about the accident. Gather all my stuff from my car, which I was sure I would never see again. I was just going step by step, shaking but holding it together.
Big welts were starting to form where my seat belt had caught me. My neck hurt, but not broken hurt, just ouchy hurt. When the tow truck got there, he had me hop in the cab. I sat there quietly, looking at the driver in the mirror as he risked his life to load up my smashed car, trying to remember all of the things I needed to do.
Then I started pouring sweat. It was the weirdest thing. One moment fine, the next just drenched, sweat literally dripping down my face.
My co-worker Matt gave me a ride to Mom’s. I held it together on the ride, joking with Matt, who is hilarious. I held it together at Mom’s. And all day Friday as I worked from home and Friday night at dinner with CC.
On Saturday morning, I went to Mom’s and she told me “Your cousin was over last night.” My cousin is a retired police officer. “He said people usually die in those accidents where they get hit and smashed into another car.” She said it casually like you would say a random fact like “Four out of 5 dentists recommend sugarless gum for patients who chew gum.”
Then I went to a workshop at church where we were asked to “check in” – to say how we were feeling. It was a big circle, and it was random, not in order, so I thought no one would notice if I didn’t say anything. But the workshop leader looked at me and gently said “Sue? Will you check in?”
I blurted “I’m in a lot of physical pain – I just had a car accident and I feel like I’ve been beaten. I’m so bruised and I don’t know if I can handle being here for six hours.”
He said “What do you want from us to care for you?”
And then I lost it. The eyes of 30 loving people, the knowledge that I was almost killed, the fragility of my body, the rip in the fabric that turned an ordinary day into an ordinary horror…it all folded in on itself and turned me into a little black hole labelled “Emotionally Spent.”
Everyone was teary. Everyone was looking at me with concern and I just sat there and soaked up the love and goodness they were sending me. I said I wanted to just stay another half hour and see how I did with it.
The workshop was about creating a safe space to be who we are, who we really, deeply are, and I got to be Exhibit A in being who I was, right in that moment, out there in front of everyone, hurt, shaken, lost.
It sounds like a crazy hippie thing, creating a place for authenticity and for expressing the deepest desires of our hearts, but I had never needed it more, and it turns out the group needed me so they could see how the process worked, not just for happy idealistic moments, but to hold a space for expressing pain and suffering, whether those wounds are fresh and new, or whether they have been carried for years and years.
Yet at 4 p.m., after a whole day of sitting in an uncomfortable chair with a badly battered body, I bounced out of there filled with energy and with a light heart. The love and willingness of 30 random strangers and friends to meet as we were, where we were, right there, and to open our hearts and to be together, fully together, made the whole world new again.
At 10 a.m., I would have said that would not be possible. But there you go. Life is full of so many odd and wonderful things.
Pecked To Death
A friend told me he had recently spent the day with an ex-girlfriend (long story) and in the course of the day, she gave him grief about the way he said “Thank you.”
Apparently his inflection on “you” is too high, giving, in her opinion, an unflatteringly feminine tone to his speech.
He and I had a good laugh about it. The ridiculousness of someone busting you about the way you string two words together – a common phrase – ludicrous!
We also agreed that in couple relationships, those things are much more touchy. You know they said a jerky thing to you, but do you fight about it or do you let it go? How long do you put up with being the projection screen for someone else’s unhappiness?
I was in a relationship where I got picked on constantly and I can’t adequately describe how soul-killing it is.
To have the person who supposedly loves you and chooses to share their time with you pick pick pick at every flaw, real or imagined is like water on a stone. Or on a loaf of bread, depending on the day and my mood. Some days it bounced off, taking a tiny piece of me, other times it left me soggy and melted. It never did anything to help.
It isn’t like I don’t have my own inner critic to battle. I wanted to tell him “You don’t have to criticize the way I do everything – I CAN DO IT MYSELF.”
I’m not saying there isn’t a lot to criticize. If I wasn’t me, I don’t think I could live with myself. I do drive myself crazy on a fairly regular basis. But isn’t part of loving forgiving the person for being themselves? Until we accept someone for being who they are, can we truly love them?
I also know the pain of being the Picker, the one who is sitting there thinking “If I have to put up with one more day of him chewing with his mouth open, I am going to run away screaming.” I have had minor irritations grow into Huge Issues. I have had people turn from my beloved into Oh My God I Am In a Relationship With the Most Irritating Person in the World Why Must They Be Like That?
Just wondering. How do you handle it when the one you love picks at you? Do you pick at them? Do you try to stop?
Costa Rica Travels: Still Learning Things 10 Days Later
CC and four other students from her Spanish school and I took an excursion to Volcan Arenal. It was their idea to take the $4 public bus for the 5 hour journey from San Jose to La Fortuna de San Carlos, the closest town to Arenal. I’m glad we did because, well, it was $4 and a trip on the Grey Line would have been $80. I can put up with a little overcrowding for $76. After all, we had Jesus on our side.
After we got to town, we hung out and went to dinner and ate and talked and ate and talked and had some wine. Then, late in the evening, we decided we needed something to do the next day, so we started talking to the friendly and helpful staff at our hotel, the San Bosco. No, really, if you’re ever in La Fortuna, stay there, because it has a great staff AND a great view of the volcano. That thing with the clouds? That is the volcano:
Also – free breakfast. And clean. And two nice swimming pools and free internet. I love hotels that try harder.
So even though it was 10 pm and even though it was a busy tourist weekend there, the friendly hotel staff managed to round up an amazing all-day, all-night excursion for us the next day – a trip to the swinging bridges, swimming in a waterfall, lunch, a hike around the volcano and dinner and soaking at the hot springs. Hot damn – we were acting like tourists now!
Our tour guide, Ana, arrived in a van at 7:30 a.m. and got CC & I and then took off to get our fellow passengers. But we found out our fellow passengers weren’t the other Spanish students (who had chosen to stay at a cheaper hotel) but a bunch of very hale and hearty Dutch retirees with walking sticks. Whaaaa?
Ana explained that there were two vans and we would be meeting with the students at our first stop. We begged to switch vans so we could hang with our travel mates and not a bunch of Dutch people who, though very nice, seemed entirely too serious for our mood.
Ana was a knowledgeable tour guide, about 24 years old, well-versed in flora and fauna and geology, and was really, really darling to boot, with sparkly gold eyeshadow and khaki pants that fit like a glove.
When we got to our first stop, the swinging bridges, we met our other tour guide, who was much more reserved than Ana and who had an unintelligible name. Ana said it a couple times but not one of us could get it.
This is not actually one of the hanging bridges. This is for a movie, but I wanted to tell my Mom this is where we went to walk 150 feet above the jungle floor.
This is an actual real, safe hanging bridge. With an actual real Dutchie.
We got to join our fellow students in van 2 with The Other Guide. All day long, at every stop, our two vans would meet up, but our guide never said anything, letting Ana do all the talking on the hikes. In the van, The Other Guide didn’t talk and would barely meet our eyes. Ana had told us that The Other Guide was in training. I thought about taking Ana aside and telling her The Other Guide should train harder or maybe find a job where she didn’t have to interact with the public, because she seemed so painfully shy.
It wasn’t until 2 days ago that it hit me. I finally got it. I started laughing out loud.
The Other Guide wasn’t a bad guide, or a guide in training. She wasn’t guide at all. She was a friend of Ana’s whom Ana had called at 10 pm on a Saturday night and said “Hey, want to make some money tomorrow? All you have to do is wear my spare guide outfit and ride around in a van with a bunch of students.”
It was a choice for Ana between turning down 6 tourists at $140 per person, or roping her shy friend into wearing one of her polo shirts.
Ana stuck us with The Other Guide because she knew we were a bunch of goofballs, unlike the Dutchies, who actually wanted to learn something about the flora and fauna and geology.
I’m not mad. If I were Ana, I would have done the same thing.
Dig Deep
I haven’t posted a video on my blog in ages, but this is so excellent that everyone should watch it. I suppose to get the full context, you have to watch the odious Alexandra Wallace “Asians in the Library” video, and I’m sorry for that. The original got taken down, but here is a blurry version with commentary added:
But this response is so smart, so well thought-out that it actually makes me glad the young Ms. Wallace posted her foolish rant. Because this video, right here? This is the kind of thing that teaches me something about assumptions I have made, about feelings I have had. This is why I’m glad the internet exists – because it exposes me to important things I may never experience any other way.
Costa Rica Travels Part Five: Random Facts
You have to love people who can turn a simple oxcart into a work of art
I don’t know how much longer I can blather on about Costa Rica, so here are some random facts:
- Driving a car with an automatic transmission is considered a female thing in Costa Rica. Real men drive sticks.
- The national condiment, found on almost every table, is Lizano sauce. It is green and tastes kind of like Worcestershire sauce.
- The ketchup, on the other hand, is way too sweet and also runny.
- The national dish is gallo pinto (spotted rooster) which involves no chicken, but is rice and beans all cooked together. You can eat gallo pinto at any meal, and usually do
- The new national futbol stadium opened today. It was built at no cost to Costa Rica by the Chinese. Though some Costa Ricans have been known to say “There is no such thing as free.”
- Many Costa Ricans drink their coffee weak and watery. Apparently the good beans are sold for export. Boo. So sad to be surrounded by beautiful coffee plants and get a cup of…brown water.
- The national saying is “Pura Vida” (pure life). It can be used to express almost anything, though it is generally positive.
- Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. You could test this, but it probably wouldn’t be good for your health.
Photo by Sean94112. Used under a creative commons license.
Costa Rica Travels Part Four: Upriver with Jungle Tom
CC and I are arguing about whether we are on a sand spit or on a peninsula. We could both be right. What is absolutely certain is that we are further from civilization than I have ever been – a couple hours on paved roads from San Jose, then another hour plus on unpaved roads, then 45 minutes up a muddy waterway to the riverfront village of Tortuguero.
Bienvenidos a Tortuguero
I mean, it’s not exactly the heart of darkness, given that there are both Canadian retirees and goat cheese pizza here, but on the other hand, you can walk the beach 22 miles and not run into anything the whole way. As in, nothing.
I meet the Caribbean for the first time
Next stop, Moin, 22 miles up the beach
This is a sweet sign, no? And behind it, Tortuguero’s one and only street. No cars at all. There were usually just some street dogs and cute kids riding bikes.
The little river village of Tortuguero is would be where I would come to write my novel. It is about half a mile long and on about 200 yards of dirt wedged between a river and the Caribbean. The people are a gorgeous mix of Black and Latino, Costa Rican and Nicaraguan.
I would sit out on the dock at Casa Marbella and write and write like Hemingway. Except better. (Snort). I would drink semi-frozen ginger ale in the wet heat and listen to the howler monkeys and write the hell out of that thing. I would.
Our dock at Casa Marbella
When we had to go back to civilization, we caught a ride with Jungle Tom. We had heard tales of Jungle Tom from some Dutch guys we met the night before when we were drinking bad white wine and playing Crazy 8s on the dock with Roberto, who ran the hotel.
Tom’s boat arrived first, at our dock, where his skinny, silent driver picked us up. The boat driver took us over to the public dock, never saying a word. We waited and waited, until a large, sweaty man, who looked for all the world to be the victim of a very bad hangover (i’m not saying he was hungover. But he really LOOKED hungover), showed up and climbed aboard.
The public dock, where people just hang out in the shade.
We began speeding up the 32 km of canal, flying along the glassy water in our flat little tourist boat. Jungle Tom made a pile of life vests, put his head down on them, and fell fast asleep.
He awoke only to harangue some German ladies about switching seats on the boat and throwing off the boat’s balance, and later to bolt awake to point out exotic animals inhabiting the river banks, like the Jesus Christ (because it walks on water) lizard.
The little lizard is that bump standing on the hindmost tree root. How Jungle Tom spotted these things from the middle of the river is beyond me.
Once Tom spotted some animal, he would gruffly demand – not ask for, demand – people’s cameras to take photos. People were starting to get a little freaked out by Jungle Tom’s behavior.
After about an hour speeding up the river, we came to a landing. We got off the boat and in to a Mercedes 14-passenger van. We had been told that we were returning to to San Jose, with a stop for a prepaid dinner along the way.
We drove for about 90 minutes on unpaved road through the banana plantations, the stones in the road sometimes as big as basketballs. The van made this weird bubbling sound from the suspension or maybe the brakes, and we had Bob Marley blasting on the stereo. We lurched and bounced along slowly over the rocky road. When we finally got to the paved road, everyone cheered.
Jungle Tom opening a gate in one of the banana groves
We arrived in Liberia, a town with an airport, and let the German ladies off. When Jungle Tom got back in the van, he asked a passenger, “Are you going to San Jose, or Cahuita?”
My heart seized up a little. San Jose was one direction. Cahuita was in another, about an hour down the road or more.
“San Jose,” the man replied.
“Oh, good,” Tom said. “That sounds right.”
Great. It seemed like he had no idea where he was supposed to be taking us. At this point, I realized that the chances of us stopping for the prepaid dinner were slim. I gave thanks for the fact that I had wisely stashed some Clif Bars in my bag. (Word to the wise: Clif Bars are a traveler’s best friend and have saved me many times).
We caught traffic and crawled along for hours. It would not have been so bad except that Tom continuously honked at the traffic in front of us and tried to pass anywhere he could, stupidly, impotently, dangerously, gaining a few feet of ground at the cost of many grey hairs among the ten of us left on the bus.
At the pee stop, the French women hissed in the bathroom “C’est horrible!”
“Oui, oui,” was the only thing I could think to say.
As we reboarded the bus, Tom told us in Spanish “When we get to the mountains and it is raining and dark and you can’t see the road, don’t scream “We’re all going to die!” because I can see the road and I’m a good driver, so sit down and be quiet and let me drive.”
I began praying then. I had been annoyed and amused before, but now I was afraid of this madman. The darkness fell and the rain began to hammer down and we were in the mountains and I don’t know how it was because I had my eyes closed and was breathing four counts in, hold four, four out, hold four…trying to keep a grip on my sanity.
Until we came to the bandits. A car was parked in the middle of the dark mountain road, flashers on, rain pounding down. A lone man stood in the road, waving us down. I thought “This is exactly like they say in all the guidebooks where they tell you not to stop because you’ll get robbed or kidnapped.”
Of course Tom stopped.
The man told us his wife was sick, they couldn’t get a cell signal because of the mountains, the car was broken down.
Tom invited them to ride with us. He didn’t even know what the woman was sick with, and he invited them to ride with us. Could have been anything – something highly contagious – who knows. Thank God the man said no, all he wanted was for us to report the breakdown at the police station on the top of the mountain, past the tunnel. So he was not, in fact, a bandit. Whew.
It was about 6 hours total on the boat and in the van. Finally the rain stopped and we saw the lights of San Jose in front of us, and all of us, French, American, Argentinian, every one, clapped and cheered just to be alive.
As we saw the city grow closer, the Eagles came on the radio. I don’t even like the Eagles, but CC and I didn’t care. We didn’t care if people thought we were insane American middle-aged ladies.
We both started belting out “So put me on a highway, and show me a sign…take it to the limit, one more time.”
Suebob's Red Stapler 