Do Old Ladies Like Key Chains?

This morning I was going through the house, opening the blinds to let in some sunlight in an attempt to help warm our chilly home.  I pulled a cord, the slats turned, and this little guy was sitting there waiting for me.

I was planning on cutting this hydrangea back all fall, as it's gotten so big and top heavy, but then I got sick and then it got cold out and then I saw this fella and remembered our hydrangea bush is a favorite perch for cardinals every winter.  It's tucked into an outer niche of our house, which means it's somewhat sheltered from the wind, but also means I can look out the above window in the living room and watch the cardinals, or...

... I can go into the front room and spy on them from a different angle.  It seems to stress them out when I go back and forth too much, though, so after snapping a couple pictures I left him alone.  The only thing that would have made this better is to have had a female cardinal in there, too, as I prefer their muted coloring and besides, female solidarity and all that.

Last night Derek's mom very kindly drove down to watch our kiddos for the evening so Derek could take me out for my birthday.  I wanted to eat at a restaurant that has these amazing(ly unhealthy) waffle fry nachos topped with pulled pork and other glorious fixin's, and while yes, those nachos were incredible, our joy was somewhat muted by the fact that we were freezing the entire time we were there.  See, this local chain of restaurants builds decks onto their buildings, then for some exasperating, flummoxing reason encloses the top with a glorified tarp and continues to seat diners there all year.  There are heaters suspended from the ceiling, but as Derek put it, we were eating on a three-season porch during the fourth season.  

Why, yes, we did wear our coats, scarves, and hats throughout the meal, thank you so much for asking!  I took my gloves off because I found manipulating my silverware with them on to be a bit unwieldy.  I was so mad I hadn't worn my long underwear under my jeans, as the draft coming in under the table around my legs was brutal.

This wasn't mere overflow seating, either; we saw numerous open tables as we were led through the (deliciously warm and cozy) dining area to the winter porch.

Jethro's, your food is good, but it is December in Iowa.  Please stop with the deck seating.

I MEAN

Let's see, I have talked about one of my favorite birds, my hydrangeas, and complained about a recent visit to a restaurant.  Although I have tiptoed around it many times before, it would seem that 34 is when I begin my official foray into cranky old-ladyhood.  I am comfortable here.

My next request for our birthday date was to visit the local antique mall (hang on while I search for the expedited application to AARP).  Which we did.  And it was, as usual, glorious.

Derek and I will be celebrating 13 years of marriage next summer, and while I know ten years is Tin and 15 is Crystal, I have a feeling 13 might just be Basket of Heads.  If I'm right, I know exactly where to look!  Thanks, Brass Armadillo!

Really, though, the only thing I came close to purchasing was found in this stall.

Do you see what I see?

The good angel was saying, "Do you really need a muskrat foot key chain?  What about the starving children in China?" but the bad angel was like, "It's your birthday:  Treat Yo Self!"

In the end, I did not bring the muskrat foot key chain home, as it's hard to buy something you're afraid to touch.  But gosh, did my grinchy heart grow three sizes that day.

The Tercel

Brace yourselves:  I'm going to talk about cars today.  Be assured it will most likely never ever happen again.  Not because I don't like them or I have a religious belief against them, but because in general I just don't really care about them.

Oh, except for my first car.

It was blue.  A pretty little blue Toyota that had been my dad's.  I remember when we went and bought the car (in large part because it was, up to that point in my life, one of the most intensely boring days I had ever experienced).  The poor sales guy kept showing my parents different cars, and my dad would stubbornly repeat variations on the theme, "I want a car that will get me from point A to point B.  That's it."

And that's what they got.  It was (is, it is, because don't kid yourself: that car is still running, and will probably run until the end of time) a little 4-cylinder, stick shift, two-door Tercel with dark vinyl seats (the better to retain heat in the summer so as to give you immediate contact burns on any surface of skin you were foolish enough not to protect from the car), no air conditioning, no power steering, no power anything, for that matter, no right side-view mirror, no radio, no speakers, no clock, no nothing car.

I loved that car.

It was peppy.  It whipped around corners beautifully.  It was as reliable as the sun (more on the sun in just a moment), got great gas mileage, and the one amenity it featured, heat, worked so well in the winter it was like it was trying to make up for the fact that it lacked pretty much everything else other cars have.

So maybe it wasn't the most powerful car in the world.  I've heard another Tercel owner compare the sound of the engine to that of a lawn mower.  So what?  It moved with alacrity when I pressed down on the gas pedal.  It's not like my life was The Fast and the Furious.

So maybe my affectionate nickname for it was The Easy-Bake Oven.  I remember getting in the car to drive the five minutes it took me to get to work as a carhop at Sonic, and arriving in clothes quite literally drenched in sweat.  When it's well over 100 degrees outside, you're sitting on dark vinyl seats, and the cooking implement isn't so much a light bulb as the sun, it's going to get a little hot.  So what?  As a carhop, I spent half my shift outside, anyway.  (This was a little different when I started working in a drugstore.  On the very hottest days, I would bring a different shirt to change into when I got to work, and hang my sopping wet shirt up to drip-dry while I worked.  I'm pretty sure they loved me there.)  I had friends who said things like WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS CAR and I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HOT IN MY LIFE and OH JEEZ I FEEL SICK.  It was a car, wasn't it?  Teenagers.  So dramatic.

It was because of this car that I was so confused and not a little cranky when we moved to Connecticut.  We lived in a relatively working-class neighborhood, not at all what you'd call affluent, especially by Connecticut standards, but there was a high school just a couple blocks away from our condo, and that school parking lot was full of nice, new cars with brand names like BMW and Lexus.  What the heck?  This gave me lots of opportunities for curmudgeonly grumbling about Youth Entitlement and Kids These Days (it just occurred to me I was the ripe old age of 21 when I moved there- at this point I could either label myself as an "old soul" or just accept that I've always been a little cranky).

Now, thankfully, we're back in the midwest, where the school parking lots are full of bikes and old trucks and, my favorite, an old, rusty, beater car that has a bumper sticker that reads "Don't be fooled by my car- my treasure is in heaven."

My point?  I don't really have one.  Except to say that even if you have money coming out your ears, please don't get your kid a nice car when they first start driving.  I am happy with just about any car I drive now, I don't care if it's pretty, I don't care if it doesn't have power-whatever- I just want it to get me from point A to point B.  (Although, I'm not gonna lie, I might cry on the day when I finally get to drive a manual transmission vehicle again.  I feel very strongly about those.)