It Seems Like Years Since It's Been Clear

This entry will probably be disconnected word-vomit. I have things to say but they're all competing.

Also, I'm going to talk about bad car crashes in this entry, so if that triggers you, I won't be offended if you scroll.

My father totalled his car yesterday. He's fine (he says he's sore, he didn't go to the hospital but he says he feels alright, so whatev) but his poor little car is smushed.

My online friends probably don't know this, but, adorably, my parents both have the same car. They're not really matchy cute people, but somehow they ended up with the same car. His had a spoiler and slightly larger wheels but they're the same color. In November, a few days before my birthday, my mother was hit while driving her car (she was also fine, and it was the other lady's fault unquestionably). Her car made it out alive (she claims it's not the same, but it feels the same to me).

I'm sad to see Daddy's car go. So is he. They're good cars. They got my parents out of their car crashes alive and mostly unharmed (Mama sees a chiropracter, one of the good ones I mean, not a scammy one, but she's almost done with that now.) Daddy says his wasn't his fault, and the body shop guy said the other guy had to have been speeding. I saw the pictures. I agree with Bodyshop Guy. How the hell did he get out of that car without ANY injuries? He has a heart condition! I'm not usually superstitious but it was my uncle's birthday. My dead uncle (my mother's brother), who died in a horrific car crash in 2003. I'm just saying, you guys. I'm just saying. (I also woke up like right around when it happened, somehow. And before my mother's crash I said to her she shouldn't leave the house- I just had a feeling. She should have listened since I'm usually right and she has the same ~feelings, but she didn't. We're totes psychic you guys.)

Why am I tearing up right now? I don't know. Usually I can understand my emotions even when they aren't logical, but I don't know exactly why I've been all teary since yesterday. It's just one of those things, I guess. Involuntary reaction to my father's car being totalled (I'm one of Those People who gets irrationally attached to objects, especially large machinery like computers and cars, so the car dying is hitting me hard, and in a related story I direct you to this entry where I discuss my childhood car and how much I still miss it) and my father being alive and not dead, and it being my uncle's birthday, and the fact that I've been feeling weird for the past few weeks is probably all spilling together.

Speaking of my dead uncle, I always think about my dead family members and how much I wish I had gotten to talk to them as an adult. Not that I have anything specific to say, just that I wish I knew them the way my parents knew them. I wish I knew my paternal grandmother (who died when I was 9) as more than a sickly old lady. I wish I remembered my paternal grandfather the way he was when I was little, not the way he was when I was 15 and he had dementia. I wish I could talk to my uncle, because we have stuff in common now (like baseball). I don't know where I'm going with this.

My father has another car (why do two adults need three cars? I mean, I can't drive, so idek) but he'd rather not drive it, it's a Cadillac and the maintenence/gas is expensive. He might trade it in for a new more sensible car, or just buy another car (again, why two cars? idek. We have two houses, the second one inherited from the dead grandparents, so there's room, but still.)

My other uncle just left. He wasn't even staying in my house, but he's just one of those exhausting people (he and his brother were like complete opposites, it's funny.) Now that he's gone and I've written this big cathartic entry maybe I can get back to writing and feeling normal. Timsey soon! Maybe! I hope!

Also new Kylie CD soon. I'm dying, you guys. DYING. And new Futurama started today! AND IT WAS SO GOOD. Like they'd never been cancelled. I was expecting it to be different but it feels exactly the same. It's just everything I hoped for. I'm relieved and excited and so happy. If the Rays would start winning again (and they won today!) this summer will be a good one. Fingers crossed, loves.

-11:55 PM

So... I told her not to go out today. Remember that: I looked out the window, contemplated the dark skies, my sore throat, and the fact that I was still tired, and said I didn't want to go out. And then I told her I didn't think she should either. And I said it more than once, which I never do; I never tell my mother not to go out, period, and today I said it at least three times. I don't know why I felt so strongly that my mother should stay home, except that every so often I do get those "feelings" that something bad will happen and it always does. (Examples: had one before my cockatiel died. Had one before my great-aunt's car died on the way home. Had one the night before my uncle fell into a diabetic coma while driving and was killed by a semi.) This time it didn't feel like anything much, unlike the horrible sinking in my chest I usually get. I just... looked out the window, and it hit me that today was not a good day to be leaving the house. Except...

She did. And now our car is horribly smushed on the passenger's side and the front tire is gone and my beautiful car may never come back. Of course, our family is weird and so there's another car almost exactly like it sitting in the garage right now because my parents have the same car and also my father has a Cadillac for no reason at all so we don't need a rental.

My mother herself is... well, I want to say "fine" but I think we'll have to see tomorrow; the hospital said it always feels much worse the next day. As far as injuries, the doctor says whiplash but she says she feels nothing and saw nothing on the X-ray and there's something about a neck injury but she says she only feels it in her chest where she hit the steering wheel. Nothing's broken, torn, bleeding, or really bruised. So she's home and feels alright.

She says when the car stopped moving it stopped just next to a pole. She says she was hit so hard it just wouldn't stop. You never like to get a phone call from your shaky-voiced mother saying she was in an accident and your father is there and the car is being towed away and then OKAY I'LL TALK TO YOU LATER BYE

WAIT WHAT, I HAVE QUESTIONS

and then your shaky-voiced grandmother who never shows emotions besides annoyance and anger calls and she's not nearly as shaky-voiced but she's scared, she's scared for her daughter and her husband left the house without telling her anything and she didn't know where I was and what's going on.

And then she made chocolate chip cookies, which I don't know that my grandmother has ever made before in all of her born days.

The inside of the car is fine, she says, but I do wonder if I had been in the car what would have happened to me; there's no steering wheel on my side, so how far would I have gone, wearing a seatbelt as I always do? Would I have hit the dashboard and made the airbag come out?

If I was in the car, would I have seen the crazy woman coming before my mother did? Would I have convinced her to take a different way home, because she often thinks out loud to me about which way she'll go?

Before she had the accident she asked me what was on my shopping list and I said Earl Grey Tea and ramen noodles (Oriental flavor). This was at about 2:30. She called again at 3 with the shaky voice (and immediately I felt guilty for being upset about being woken up again.)

When she finally, finally, finally came home at 7, looking a little glassy-eyed from Vicodin (she says she won't take anymore because she hates it, but I have a feeling she'll reluctantly take some more tomorrow, if she gets that prescription filled) she came home with... English Breakfast tea. I don't know why, but that feels like the cherry on top of the whole thing. The car may be dead (she said it made a horrible noise when she tried to turn it on) and she'll probably be in pain and then THE TEA IS WRONG.

I latched onto that (but didn't complain to her because, come on) because that's what you do when things go wrong: you find the tiniest thing and say "WELL, OF COURSE THAT HAD TO HAPPEN." Like losing your purse that just so happens to have your great-grandmother's earrings in it, or getting sick and throwing up on your expensive shoes; it's not the worst thing that happened, but it's the thing that makes the most sense, and is the easiest to get upset about because the rest of you is thinking "wait, what? what do I do now? what's going on?" It's the most everyday mistake, more everyday than a car accident, so that's what I've been thinking about, because it's just easier than OH GOD I COULD HAVE LOST MY MOTHER or OH GOD MY MOTHER COULD BE IN THE HOSPITAL WITH SEVERE INJURIES RIGHT NOW. Nope, the wrong tea.

I'll take the wrong tea if it means I get to keep my mother. I can live without tea. If you said "you can keep your mama, but you'll never have tea again" I'd take my mother. I'd take my mother in exchange for everyone in the world's tea, because that is my MOTHER and I love her and cannot live without her. Cannot. Ever.

I drank some and it tastes pretty good. It'll probably always be car-crash tea to me now though.

She did find a pair of sneakers she likes which is big, big news because my mother's feet are so picky it's nearly impossible to find shoes for her. So the day isn't a complete loss. Oh, and Adam Lambert at the AMAs, how awesome was that? My mother was underwhelmed, but she's underwhelmed about almost everything ever (she's a lot less shaken up than I would be, although she's definitely more shaken than usual) but dude's face in his crotch and grabbing vaginas and making out with the male keyboardist. There's no point to that sentence besides HOSHIT ADAM.

I missed Kris's presenting because we were next door gathering sweaters for the homeless and then had to find the tripped circuit breaker but the thingie wouldn't open. Today was really weird, you guys.

Oh and an unreleased acoustic version of one of my favorite Kylie songs EVER, Paper Dolls, leaked. It's not very different though.
-3:36 AM

They're not selling the Ford Crown Victoria to consumers anymore after this year.
I don't know why, but that's upsetting me a lot. I feel like I got hit in the chest, seriously. That's the only car I've ever given a crap about. It's not all fancy and show-offy like the other luxury cars, and it's not all tiny and bubble-shaped like the stupid sports cars. It's big and sturdy and has 6 seats. Six! And I'll never be able to have one of my own.
I won't ever, ever forget my 1983 model. She was HUGE. I was tiny and an only child to boot. So I had an oasis of a back seat all to myself. She had soft, cushiony plush seats with that kind of velvety thing going on, where you can draw patterns and stuff in the fabric. She let you feel how fast you were going and she let you feel all the pot holes, but she never made you feel uncomfortable. She made you feel safe. You were going fifty and you knew it, and she was going to hold on to you no matter how much the car bumped. She never let you go too fast, because you could feel it- no excuses. Her seat belts were soft but strong and never let you fly too far forward when she stopped short. She let you go places with lots of family members all squeezed comfortably inside. She had ashtrays in the door handles you could hide stuff in. She had the best arm rests EVER- stuffed full and soft like pillows. You could hide, like, three people in the trunk if you had to. She'd let you store whatever you wanted back there, no problem. In front, she had a simple face, a long checkerboard with two square headlights on either side with a little tiny Ford logo. That logo was up front because she meant business and wanted you to know who she was, but she was modest- she didn't scream for attention. You know what? She could even play cassettes.
And, okay, when the heat went and it was cold in the winter it wasn't so nice. When the engine, or whatever, squealed so loud you could hear her coming a block away, well, that was kind of annoying. But she was still my car. I never stopped loving her. We got other cars, but my father held on to her as long as he could, sticking her in the back yard when she wasn't reliable enough to go very far anymore and washing her as regularly as he could.
I would have happily let her stay behind my grandfather's house for the rest of forever, where I could climb inside with my own key and sit on the warm plush seats and be alone for a little while. But we had to let her go. I don't remember how much she went for. I think it was more than she was worth. My elderly neighbor bought her and let me keep her for a little while longer before he sent her away with his brother to get a new engine. The neighbor's moved away now, but my father did check up on the car every so often. I think she's in Tennesee right now, if she's still running. I hid a piece of Monopoly play money inside one of her arm rests. I wonder if it's still there. I know it was right to let her go someplace where they could fix her instead of letting her rot, but a piece of me died the day she drove away and never came back. I've never quite forgiven my father.
We used to call her Old Bess because she was old from the day we got her in 1993. I'm pretty sure I named her. She was there for my entire childhood... and she was possibly the biggest security blanket ever.
I still have her old keys.

Now I won't ever get a pair of new ones.

-4:49 AM