Enter Henrietta

My cute, sassy 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport. Yes, in the span of sixty hours I got a new car. Here's a frame-by-frame:

Friday. The call comes from Gurley Leep about Earl's totalled status. I freak out. My grandparents promise to help. I ride back to Erie with Mom and Dad feeling sick. Dad calls a friend from church for car-buying tips. The guy tells him he usually gets them off Ebay.

Saturday. Doug e-mails Dad a link to a 2001 Toyota Corolla Sport on the Ebay market, fantastically priced and in great condition. I see the pictures. I read a list of the car's assets. I fall in love. Dad calls the seller (who lives in Rochester, NY) to ask a few questions. Dad calls Pap-pap to tell him about the car. Dad wants to drive the car before he buys it. I spend the entire day chewing my nails.

Sunday. Dad calls the seller again. Pap-pap calls with his approval (necessary because Pap-pap is footing all of the money for the car, part a gift and part a loan). Mom, Dad, and I drive to Rochester. We test drive the car. I am wildly in love with the car. I name her Henrietta Brighton-Jones. We buy the car. We drive her to North East. We arrive there at 8:00 p.m. I finish packing the rental car and start out in it for South Bend at 9:00 p.m.

Monday. At midnight I am still driving. I pull over at the western edge of Ohio at 1:00 a.m. for a nap because I am so tired I am shaking and feeling close to vomiting. I arrive at my apartment at 3:45 a.m. I fall asleep an hour later. My alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. I sleep for another hour. I arrive at work forty minutes late. I make it through the day. I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. for ten hours of sleep.

Tuesday. Mom and Dad drive Henrietta to me. Dad and I return the rental car while Mom helps Meg at work. I drive Henrietta back to work. We have dinner at the Fiddler's, then part ways so Mom and Dad can get home before midnight. I drive Henrietta home and hash out the details of repayment with my grandparents (I'm paying back eighty-eight percent of the cost of the car, which will have me making payments to them for the next five years. This basically means I'll be living in my current lifestyle -- no extra frills or fun stuff, definitely not a new chair and probably not even a new mattress for a long time -- even after my raise. This stings a little, particularly about the mattress because my back HURTS all the time now, but at least they're not charging me interest, which with their loans they usually do. My grandfather was a banker). I sit back excited to watch Bones and House. Or maybe just Bones, depending on how tired I am.

So Henrietta is white, snazzy, with a CD player and a stick shift and cruise control. I have wanted a stick ever since I learned to drive one. I can't believe that I have the car of my dreams. For this I am exceedingly grateful. And she definitely has "get-up-and-go." Earl was faithful, but certainly not speedy (zero to thirty in ten seconds). Henrietta grips the road and jumps.

I have an amazing family and a great car.

Happy happy happy.

Tired.

good night, sweet prince

They're totalling my car.

Apparently on the close inspection that he should have done the minute I drove to the dealership with my damaged Earl four weeks ago, the inspection/estimate guy decided yesterday that the cost to repair outweighs the value of the eleven-year-old minivan. So I'm sitting back waiting for a call from the insurance company.

This frustrates me for a number of reasons. First, my old Earl has been a faithful vehicle. So I'm sad. But more than this, the insurance company should have declared total loss at least a month ago. Instead they farted around denying me the money I needed for a rental (they said they'd pay for the three days it would take to repair the as-then-assessed damages, but no more, sticking me with the bill for another five days since the soonest they would let me take my car in was Thanksgiving week, when I was due to travel to visit family), and then the estimate guy waited till FRIDAY (I dropped my car off on Monday) to call me to tell me he's putting a hold on my car until he can hear back from the insurance company about totalling it.

So now I have to scramble to find a new car before the cost of the rental puts me in the poorhouse. My grandparents were great, though -- I got the phone call yesterday at their house, and was so upset that I buckled onto the floor and started crying (I seriously don't have the money for this and I sure as hell have never bought a car before); poor Mom thought someone had died -- and my tough, practical, Scots-Irish grandmother came and knelt in front of me on the floor and took my hands firmly and said, "You're a good kid, and you've been making it on your own. I am so proud of you. Your grandfather and I will help you with a new car. And don't be too proud to accept it." I sniffled and said, "Thanks, I'll pay you back," and she said sharply, "No you will not. If we help you, you won't pay anything back." And my gruff German-Scots-Irish pap-pap growled, "Sure, honey. We'll help you." And Grandma started flipping through the 2006 Consumer Report looking for reliable automobiles while Pap-pap gave me advice on taxes and told me to run my hands up under the dashboard of any used vehicle I consider to look for flood silt.

So I've decided I want a Toyota Corolla -- affordable, reliable, cheap to repair, long-lasting, safe -- and Mom and Dad and their friends and our family are helping me locate some. So within a week I should have a new car.

The good thing is I get an extra paycheck in December, which should cover the cost of the rental. And I'm actually pretty excited about a new(er) car. I'm just glad I don't have to do everything myself (another sucky singleness factor, especially with home base so far away).

Oo, and my parents are giving me my favorite of their three cats, adorable black-as-velvet Simon who doesn't prefer the company of so many cats and would probably benefit from living with only one person. He strayed into our yard two Easters ago and I made first contact with him (I was sitting in the yard with Kristin Born, then Bell, late one evening when I saw this gorgeous slender black cat hanging around under one of the cars, so I crouched down and started rubbing my fingers together and crooning. He paced frantically back and forth like he wanted to come running but was afraid, then suddenly gathered all his courage and shot over and scooted under my hand and froze. Then when I kept crooning and started stroking his head, he relaxed all over and kicked up a raspy loud purr that you wouldn't believe and started rolling around in ecstasy in the dirt. Within a week he was formally adopted into our zoo/family). So after Christmas I'm taking him back to South Bend.

This will put me two closer to achieving my five By The Time I'm Thirty-One I Will Have goals. Those goals are: a house, a new car, a cat, a dog, and a king-size bed.

Three to go.

this is me doing okay.

I found my first facial line.

There are three, actually. Very fine, but clear. One parallelling the curve of my upper right lip, the other two side-by-side at the left-hand corner of my mouth. I have been noticing for the past month or so that when I smile (yes, I check myself out in mirrors and my car windows when I'm unlocking the door) the smile quirks back into set, predestined curves. But then after a four-hour laugh session at Don Pablo's with the incorrigible and hilarious MP, I got home and noticed while getting ready to wash my face that the laugh lines...were still there. And I wasn't smiling.

A smile-free night of semi-restful sleep (I have just decided that my mattress sucks, which is the reason I wake up tired and sore every morning) found the lines...still there.

I have two feelings about this. The first is, of course, a combination of hollow regret and desperate panic (will I meet the man who wants to marry me BEFORE my skin collapses into dewlaps?) because I think, I'm not eighteen anymore. The fresh unworn skin is becoming a little less supple, a little more set, like overworked clay.

The other feeling is...pride. I hated being eighteen. I have always wanted to be a grown-up. I have always felt a little too old for my age (and have been told at least a thousand times that I am, even this year), and now I've reached the point where I've lived enough to have it carved, just the tiniest bit, into my skin. My body is beginning to catch up and take me where I've always wanted to go. And I'm proud because the lines, the first to appear and tell me that however young I am, I'm getting older, were born of laughter. In high school I had small white frown-spots at the corners of my mouth from not smiling, from feeling heavy-laden and sad; in college I started to shove away sadness and embrace joy. And the lines that tell me where the smile is going to go show me that I've won what is for me an old war. I have a leg up on time. I'm going into age laughing.

There are years of reasons why this is a miracle. I was reared in my adolescence by a fanatic youth pastor who taught me that I was horrible, who trained me to hate myself and to think that God hated me for not being perfect. I used to lie awake every night weeping, casting around in my mind for every single minute thing I had done wrong that day and desperately begging for God's forgiveness, believing he would cast me into hell and withhold his love from me because I was human. I believed for the entirety of the most formative years of my life that God detested me, was disappointed in me, would never be satisfied with me, thought I was disgusting, and loved me only in spite of myself because he was God but would much rather he didn't have to. I was afraid. I was in despair. I didn't particularly want to live. I didn't think I could make it on my own. I thought that if God could only love me because he was God, no one else could love me. I was alone.

But in college I learned that my fellow human beings could, and did, love me. And so did God. My favorite bathroom stall in North Hall my freshman year (left-hand side, second door from the front) had Zephaniah 3:17 hanging in it. Every time I took a pee, it affirmed to me in curly cheerful letters, "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. / He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." I started to uncurl my fingers and loosen my hold on the idea that I was worthless, good-for-nothing, better off dead. I began to laugh.

When my sister went through her debilitating illness, I learned to stave off the anguish and despair with laughter. Wild sometimes, hollow sometimes, forced sometimes, but still healing. Even when I was angriest at God, I found something I'd forgotten, something that vanished sometime after I turned eight. I found joy. And I held onto it. I met people I could laugh with, and I found faith that everything would work out.

And it has. It's not a happily-ever-after ending, of course -- not yet. But it's still good. When I was eighteen I had my whole life planned out. Now at twenty-four I don't have plans at all. None of them panned out the way I thought. And I couldn't be happier about it. Sure, there are nights when I wish my battered stuffed Eeyore was a solid, breathing, warm human man; sure, there are mornings when the thought of wiping one more horrible slug-dripping nose or changing one more shitty diaper or holding one more kid in the throes of a temper tantrum over something stupid like "It's time to brush your teeth" makes me want to pull the covers back over my head and deny the daylight; but at every moment I'm in a season. Something new is just around the corner.

Not all of it will be enjoyable (in fact I have an appointment after Thanksgiving to see if I have a stomach ulcer, which I doubt but who knows?), but everything will be okay. I'm doing what I didn't think possible, even two years ago: I'm relatively emotionally stable, I have a good job (which is getting better -- in mid-January I'm going to be, not Administrative Coordinator, but Director of Events, some Marketing, and some PR -- I'll be writing press releases and I get a thirty percent raise and an extra week of paid vacation and an office!!!), I find pleasure in living alone, I find pleasure in spending time with the few trusted friends I've made here. I find pleasure in being.

Yesterday I opened my Bible at random to Psalm 37: "If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand." Yesterday I laughed so hard with Marianne that my abs hurt more than they do after my daily workout. Yesterday I found my first facial lines. Today the lines were still there, and today I looked out my window at the hard, bright, shallow sunshine on the bare bright trees and I loved my life and this season and the God who brought me to it. I put on my coat, my favorite scarf, and my warm ugly gloves and went out into the day at the death of the year (this coldness before the snow flies, when the leaves are packed in sharp-smelling banks along the curb and the land is stark and bare, is my favorite time of year), and found Colette, and walked around the neighborhood, talking.

Maybe every second doesn't find me jumping up and down in elation -- that's not life. Maybe every morning doesn't find me burning with delight to be awake, maybe every afternoon doesn't find me suppressing a song because I'm filled to bursting with happiness. But every minute finds me alive. Every minute finds me upheld. And when I turn my faithful, as-yet-unrepaired old Earl nosefirst down the driveway wherever I'm going each day, I can look down the uneven bricks of Ashland St. and up at the flat November sky and think, I'm doing okay.

I'm not getting younger, and I'm not where I thought I would be. But where I am is better. Facial lines and all.

la la la la la

Just had a fantastic evening hanging out with former roommate Marianne -- I sometimes forget how lovely and essential it is to spend time with someone who has known you well for a long while, whose company you really enjoy. (Shout out, MP!)

Also some really exciting news on the promotion, which I'll go into further over the weekend. Right now I'm tired and have to get up early on a Saturday for a conference on baby sign language. Wheee.

yak

So I'm recovering from a weekend of nasty illness and took a sick day today to give me a chance to get back to as normal as possible.

Last week a wicked stomach bug ran rampant at the Center, and Friday afternoon I caught it. When I got home from work I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet (my toilet has an old-fashioned base shaped in cross-section rather like a flower, which makes it conveniently easy to grip when in the throes of retching), and went to bed. Apparently bored with the dash-for-the-bathroom routine, I had my stomach put a little blood into the vomit and treated myself to a trip to the ER where after being ignored for hours I was put onto an IV and drugged senseless. My two angels through this ordeal were Colette and her coworker Tona -- Colette drove me to the hospital and Tona met us there -- and they lugged my stuff around and told stories and fetched me things like heated blankets and cups of ice.

After about six hours I was still having trouble keeping water down and the nurse was all for admitting me for the night, but by then I had one clear and ever-so-stubborn thought in my muddled head: Go home. That was about all I could manage to say: "Wan' go home." So Colette drove me home, then filled my prescriptions (I did say angel, yes?) while I dragged myself up the stairs and collapsed into bed.

So the rest of the weekend my stomach was irritable and sore, and I lay around feeling generally miserable and weak and with the idea that I really ought to be eating something, but I was afraid I couldn't get it down. Then came today, when I felt reasonably sure of my stomach lining and managed to make a nice chicken soup that tasted insanely delicious.

So my NaNoWriMo project is sadly sadly behind, but I can sit up without every abdominal muscle clenching in pain, so I think I'll call that progress.

And tomorrow it's back to the gremlins.