TAKIN' A RIDE

Is there a part of your day that is necessary to get you through the other parts of your day that aren't quite your idea of ideal? I know what some of you will say, and I'm looking forward to reading what you'll write. The part of my day that I look forward to is really selfish but I've come to depend on it for mind-cleansing and stress-busting.

I completely enjoy a bubble bath. It's ultra-relaxing and, depending on how much time I have to spend, can relax me to the point of actually falling asleep. There is a downside, however, and that is waking up and finding the bubbles have moved out and left behind about 12 inches of chilled water and you, with pruny skin and goosebumps abounding. The other bad thing is that it is time consuming if you want the full effect so I tend to alternate between showering and bubble bathing and lately the showers have won out. But that isn't the part of my day that gets me through the rough stough. Or ruff stuff. Or ruff stough.

I love my car. I love everything about my car. I especially love the stereo system in my car. I love the comfortable, heated seats in my car. When I close my car door and buckle me in and push the on button for music, I'm somewhere else. So, as much as I love to be home, if I do end up having to leave my refuge for a reason (work, shopping, cello lessons, bikini waxing, animal rescue, press conference, tattoo removal, hostage negotiation, whatever it may be...) at least the ride to and from anywhere is enjoyable for me. And that's a darn good thing because it feels pretty much like my second home a lot of the time.

I remember when I was small, sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, Mom and Dad would pile all six of us kids in the car and we would just go for a ride. It was a big deal. Yeah, we would fight over who got the window seats. But after we got older and Dad got smarter (or better paid?) we had three-seater station wagons and more of us got window seats. A couple of us even got to sit "clear in the back" AND facing backwards. Which was fun of course, unless you had a dress on and had to climb back there like a lady... But that was only a problem for two of us, being that four of us were (and still are) boys. Well, men, now. People just don't do that any more. Like visiting relatives on Sunday afternoons, too. Families are so scattered, sometimes you can't make the trip in an afternoon. Otherwise, people are just too busy. Or pissy.

Life has changed so much. It seems to me that with all the time-saving devices available to us, we should have more free time than we do. I don't know, sometimes I literally yearn for the way life used to be. Some of you readers don't even have the luxury of knowing what it was like in the days that I'm referring to. And it's really weird to think that someday, some of you will be looking back to the way things are now and yearning for it. I need to live in the "Leave it to Beaver" era. The simplicity of that life is so very desirable to me. Most women could never imagine being satisfied and fulfilled to live as June Cleaver did, but, boy could I! I might lose the pearls and I might have had to wail on Eddie Haskell now and then, but I could so get into that level of simplicity in my life. Of course, I would still have to have my car and my stereo, no getting around that. And I might have to get Ward to loosen up a bit and trade those sweaters in on a few Banlons. Fun to think about...

Well, this post certainly skipped around all over the place. You'll maybe get used to that.

Have a good rest-of-the-weekend. What are you doing today?

STHTTMML: Each evening as my husband and I are getting ready to sit down to dinner, whichever one of us is getting drinks asks the other "What are you drinking?" Earlier in the afternoon I had cleaned and cut up celery to snack on. I had a couple of stalks of that center yellow part with the leaves left over that I thought would be great with a glass of V*8 later. Not wanting to put it back in the crisper to forget about until too late, I just put the stalks in a glass on the counter where I normally put my drinking glass. When my husband asked what I was drinking, he picked up my glass, looked at it oddly and said "oh. celery." Yes, dammit,you had to be there but honest, it was funny.

GSL: "You can lean your head on my shoulder, and just for awhile/ forget about the world, baby, mile after mile. We'll drive all night long, yeah. You want a ride?" from Drive by Bon Jovi. Not to be confused with a band I really like alot.

RQ: It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."- Virginia Woolf