10.19.98

    It's getting cooler around here. The days are getting much shorter and we're going to have to fix the top on the MG. It's just getting too cold to go tooling around with the top down all the time. I fear that will be a Duct Tape job, though. Sometime soon I'd like to buy a new soft cover but the one I want is $300 and that's just not going to be handy for awhile. Good thing we're in Southern California and we won't have to worry about rain and/or snow seeping in through the holes.

    When I lived up in Oregon I used to get mold inside the car. I'd park on the street in front of the house and not move the car for a week at a time since I could walk to campus. It would rain and the car would get covered up with leaves and when I'd finally go to take it out there would be green fuzz along the inside of the canvas top. The worst was when I left it at a friend's house for all of Christmas break. When I had left it was raining really hard. I put the cloth cover on the car and I told her that when the rain stopped and the car dried off to cover it with my green tarp. She neglected to do that.

    After I got back to Eugene we went to get the car and there was the soggy cloth cover that had been sitting there all Christmas break through every rain. I opened the car door and a horrible stench tumbled out. There was mold on everything. Mold on the roof, on the seat belts, on the steering wheel, even on the gear shift. I remember smiling wanly at the girl while the engine tried to turn over and saying, "Thanks for taking care of my car." I was near tears. Next time I leave my sweet little car at home it's going into a nice, clean, dry garage.

    I'm excited for Halloween and I have no reason to be. I don't think that I have any plans. I certainly am not planning a costume and I haven't been invited to any parties. I think I'm just delighted that the few trees that are not palm trees are changing color and that I can sense a change in the seasons. I think the running joke around here is that there aren't any seasons just one continuous summer. Well, bah to them, I say. I can pretend, can't I?

    T. and I are going to carve pumpkins this weekend. I haven't carved pumpkins in years. My Dad was always the best at drawing the most intricate faces. I especially remember the amazing and spooky eyes he would create. Anything artistic that I do has grounds in the artistic enthusiasms of my father. He once helped me draw Mr. 'T' for a class project on who I admire most. (Why did I admire Mr. 'T' the most? I have no idea.) My Dad would draw an eye and I would sit next to him and try to draw the same eye on my piece of paper. The hardest thing to draw was the feather that was hanging on a clip from his hair. That feather took for-e-ver. I wanted it to look real.

    My Dad and I work in totally different mediums but I can still remember being around eight years old and asking my mom where we got the painting that hung in our foyer. "Your father painted that," she said.

    Wow.

    It was an oil painting, on a 2' x 3' canvas. It was of a bearded man holding a stack of papers in one hand and a pipe in the other. I used to make up all sorts of stories about that man and his adventures on fishing trawlers and his amazing poetry that he held in his hands. He really was just a bum that got paid $5 to let the art students paint him.

    As a total meandering side note: I remember a Valentine's Day project for fifth grade that both my parents helped me on. We had to create a Valentine out of construction paper and doilies for a famous person. My parents and I sat around brainstorming and I think I actually came up with this one which had my parents roaring with laughter. It's a Valentine for Gorbachev. It went like this:

    I got a really weird look from my teacher for that one.

    I'm also excited for Christmas. This will be the first Christmas that T. and I have spent together. We decided a year ago that this Christmas was going to be our Christmas and no one else's. The pressure from family to visit here and there has taken its toll. Plus, T. is the one who made me start liking Christmas again. We're going to have a little Christmas tree and maybe stockings. I guess we'll pin the stockings to the radiator or something. I hope I have some spending money by then.