I’ve had my share of cars, but none of them have made it almost 12 years or were “driven into the ground” like my 1995 Mercury Tracer trio package four-door wagon hatchback.

That hunk of metal still sported its original paint — a metallic aqua green with only one rust spot festering on the hatch. Aside from the front windshield, the rest of the glass was original. Almost every piece of machinery in it had been replaced until substitutes were no longer an option or worth the investment. Time ran out on my plan to save for the next vehicle.

Despite the age of that Tracer, deemed “Harry’s wagon” two years ago when my cat of 17 years was alive and going to football and basketball games with me, it ran pretty well. But it was parked at Dixon Tire for the last time in January. That Tracer sat there while I tracked down a lien release from Chevrolet after I mistakenly threw away the cleared title and until I could clean the car out somewhat before Smitty’s Salvage came for it.

I appreciate John Dixon for allowing me to keep the car parked there much longer than I’m sure either of us thought it would stay.

It’s a little odd to pass by and not see it still sitting there. I have fragments of memories of a gray-haired cat bobbing its head in and out of view.

If it hadn’t been for Mike Slupianek’s skill and inventiveness to keep the car pieced together, she probably wouldn’t have made it 12 years.

About four or five years ago he started asking me, “Isn’t it about time to get another car?” And I’d say, “Not yet.”

I knew its day was coming even as cans of WD-40 kept the doors greased enough to open. The defrost wasn’t working as quickly as it once had, the heater and air conditioning weren’t working at full blast, the mileage for a tank of gas was gradually declining, and the windows were getting harder to roll down.

As I picked through what was in that car, I realized a person can accumulate a lot over the years and that even inanimate objects have too many memories and emotions attached. I found things I forgot I owned, about 10 ice scrapers and several other items I thought had been lost or had mysteriously vanished.

Most of that stuff was collected during border-to-border trips to see family, Jaycee ventures or going to sports events.

That car didn’t know every nook and cranny or shortcut from here to wherever, but it made it 247,869 miles before it couldn’t go any more.

I celebrated with that car on the side of the road, raising a can of diet cola in its honor, in the middle of nowhere when the odometer turned over to 100,000. That was the only car I’ve owned to make it that far.

I had cars that didn’t need keys to start, that fit far more inside than physically possible, and that lasted as long as deer, bushes and reckless drivers stayed out of the way. I had cars that survived pelting hail storms, and one that made it through the tornado near Towne East in Wichita while cars near it were demolished by light poles. I’ve even owned a used lemon.

With that ole Tracer, I didn’t need it to be anything more than what it was. … Except I would have been happy had it run longer.

Getting on track

Hmm, yeah, OK. Sigh followed by a low, gutteral growl.
I've always heard time will pass one by. Makes it a little hard to live in the moment if the whirlwind doesn't stop long enough to allow.
New Year's resolutions included jotting something down daily or even snapping a photo. Here I am yet to do either of those frequently enough to say I'm even a participant in my life.
Maybe, just maybe, the new Flip I bought will allow for some visual diary access since my fingers, brain and attention wonder elsewhere.

I want my mommy

A sign that spring is coming is the constant sound of sneezes both at home and at the office.
My sneezes turned into a head cold last week. Head colds are commonly accompanied by a stuffy nose, drainage and headaches — symptoms that might be relieved by over-the-counter medicines, if you can pick the right formula. I couldn’t.
The last of the Tylenol Cold daytime pills, leftover from last spring, got me through Friday. I tried a severe formula on Saturday and gave up on it Sunday when it didn’t help.
Starve a cold, feed a fever, right? I wasn’t hungry Saturday, but I wasn’t awake much either. Long enough to finish a bowl of cereal after three bites, pop another pair of pills and the last of my vitamin C chewables and crawl back under covers.
It isn’t “starve a cold, feed a fever” nor is it “starve a fever, feed a cold.” WebMD says starving is never the correct answer.
If a person has a cold, eating foods high in antioxidants, such as beta-carotenes and vitamins C and E, eating more raw fruits and vegetables and drinking lots of liquids are said to be ideal. But in the last days of winter, who’s going to find apricots, asparagus (yuck), beef liver (double yuck), beets, broccoli, cantaloupe, carrots, corn, guava, kale, mangoes, mustard and collard greens, nectarines, peaches, pink grapefruit, pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes, tangerines, tomatoes and watermelon right there in the food aisle? Who, in their right mind, is even going to feel like fixing any of it between sneezes, aches, pains and blowing the nose?
Mom might, but back in the days when I lived at home, my brother and I spent however long it took in bed, a thermometer still tasting of rubbing alcohol under the tongue, and Mom’s cool hand on a hot forehead.
Lunch was Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and crackers followed by Jell-O. The best was always raspberry with applesauce. We drank orange juice in the morning and again at lunch and had ginger ale the rest of the time, usually right after cough syrup and a vapor rub. And when the chicken soup ran out, tomato took its place, complete with oyster crackers.
But nothing works better than a mother’s love.
Last Sunday, the chicken noodle soup went down easily for the most part. It was even better than Campbell’s, but the crackers sunk the ship. The liquids were enough to keep my nose running and my eyes watering. There was no energy to make mom’s heal-all Jell-O, and the orange juice was too acidic.
Grown women aren’t supposed to say, “I want my mommy,” but between sweats and an inability to find comfort, I did.
Buzzle.com offers suggestions like blow your nose regularly and drink hot liquids to help relieve the congestion. The Web site recommends limejuice, and next time I may try it in a warm glass of water with a teaspoon of honey.
Garlic has antibiotic properties. I love garlic, but not on an empty or upset stomach. I have a can of chicken noodle soup left over that I will add some garlic powder to, just to see.
I plan to restock the fridge with apple juice, and if this cold doesn’t clear up soon, I might even try taking powdered cinnamon and mixing it with honey three times a day to clear my sinuses.
I am tempted to dive into my stash of essential oils to find some eucalyptus to use near my nose.
But nothing is going to keep me from wanting a little motherly love to help shake this cold just in time to get ready for allergy season.

It makes sense now ...

Subtle hints to be cautious about spending money started showing up on my daily horoscope readings provided through a Facebook program in early to mid-December.

I took it to be the usual don’t overspend at Christmas. The readings for my Sagittarius origin were pretty typical for the festive holiday season — celebrate and keep an eye on finances.

Christmas came and went and the hints turned into cautions through the end of last year at least. “With Mercury in retrograde in your house of finances, pay attention to your expenses …”

It’s pretty unusual to have daily readings repeatedly harping about finances, much less anything else, but these weren’t letting up, which caused me to take notice.

At the time, it wasn’t like I much mobility. There was 11 inches of snow that kept me in park and the artic mass that blasted through here kept me inside, except for my dying curiosity to see if my car would start.

I don’t put much faith in horoscopes, particularly since the activity in my other 11 houses of my birth chart would also factor into a more accurate prediction of what could happen. Birth charts are based on time and place of birth and these programs don’t have that information.

Typically I glance at my horoscope at day’s end if I remember. Once in the last week of 2009 I thought about spending money, because supplies were running out. But both times I left that day I forgot my checkbook. Some people might call that a sign, just like when Mercury went into retrograde (or appears to move backwards) and is supposed to have an affect on matters through Wednesday or possibly into early February. Retrogrades tend to indicate chaos and little snafus.

Since Mercury has been in retrograde in my second house, which deals with possessions and financial issues, a few things have come to light.

It was Jan. 5 and I was backing out of a parking stall when I heard a sickening pop underneath my car. The sound wasn’t of a blown tire, but something more guttural on the right passenger’s side that grabbed my full attention. At first I thought the axle might have snapped or the wheel was about to fall off.

“Uh oh,” I breathed, frozen in place, waiting for the front end to fall into the packed snow and ice. I may have exhaled when nothing happened and I’m not sure what rationale I used to convince myself it was OK to move, to put my foot gently on the gas and that the noise was from something that thawed out and nothing broken.

Except, some five blocks later I knew something wasn’t right, but my dense mechanical background wasn’t going to shed any clues as to what. My car favored pulling to the right, especially after making a turn in that direction. I still hoped there was a chunk of ice or snow causing the problem. Then the rearview mirror gradually became a little crooked and some days more so than others. Frankly I couldn’t remember if I accidentally hit it or it just happened. I kept waiting for warmer days, thinking a tire had to be low on air, but every time that car moved, it made a noise and favored its right side, which told me it was serious enough to call Mike Slupianek, because it wasn’t going to fix itself or go away.

I got the answer Jan. 14 from Slup — a broken spring.

“And this means what?” I asked and listened as he told me it was going to be a costly fix I may not want to make.

Those warnings on my daily horoscopes suddenly made sense.

“But can you fix it?” I asked and vaguely remember releasing a sigh when he said yes.

I should be thankful for the snow, the blistering cold and making myself suffer through long stretches of boredom. The snow and cold kept me inside and my boredom had me hopping around too much to do much Internet shopping, which means anything I thought about buying, thought I couldn’t live without, will instead be payment for new springs to balance the front end of the car; new shocks, which haven’t been replaced possibly ever; and, I think, a new alignment, which will last as long as I stay off our brick streets and out of potholes, right?

Since then, my horoscope has mentioned finances once. A general overview of the rest of this month suggests there are some existing money issues, but this area will start to show improvement. Likely in time for Mercury’s second of four retrogrades this year.

Where luck flows

For at least the past month or more, likely more, my kitchen sink drain has funneled itself dry so slowly that not even two large bottles of drain opener had an effect.

Was it swollen mini pieces of waffles that caused a clog? Could it have been the dried citric foam of Diet Coke? Wilted Corn Flakes? Mushy granola? The sour milk from quarts that I don't finish? Could these things have found their way into the drain, but not through the water trap at the bottom of the U to cause the slow movement of water? Doubt it. I say that, because within the last week or so, that drain didn't gurgle any minute pieces of waffle or send spinning upward any piece of stray corn flake.

Neither did any of that mush find it's way onto the painted cabinet flooring.

I'm not a plumber, but a slow drain is a pain in the ass. I don't have the wondrous disposal gadget. The building I live in was erected sometime in the 1800s. The pipes are quite a bit newer than that, but possibly vintage 1950s, 1960s. Hard to know. They definitely are older than Nov. 1998, when I moved back to this historic town that charms anyone with its brick streets, ornate lamp posts and German flair.

We were under the sink this weekend, pulling out what isn't usually found under other people's, normal people's, sinks. Not many are likely to be storage units for citric acid, SLSA, Dendritic salts, foam boosters or stabilizers unless you happen to make bath and body products that fizz and scent water. Of the array of salts underneath, Epsom might likely be found. Dead Sea, Himalayan Pink ... not so much.

Each item was pulled out to be calculated, weighed and labeled for inventory. Everything, but the sand dollar size of water was configured, even for the first 30 minutes of taking turns to watch a drop of water slash onto the surface of that minute puddle. But, what a dangerous puddle that was.

That water could have activated or dissolved or caused quite a bubble fiesta in that confined space. That water could have uncoiled the rest of my already overly testy nature and wiped out a good bulk of inventory.

Thing is, where did it come from? The male party of the "We" doing inventory simply put a red Solo underneath that would hold 16 ounces. He carefully placed it on a neatly folded paper towel and played the "wait and see" game.

Females, most that I know, aren't the wait-and-see type. An hour later, I was accidentally hitting the pipe, because something had to be loose. The male simply rolled his eyes, unconcerned that there had been a leak. The female was envisioning some kind of major catastrophe that she would end up cleaning, because the male doesn't live here. He sleeps over a few weekends a month, but he wasn't going to touch the two sections where the U met the pipe going up to the sink or connected to the one that came from the wall. He couldn't figure out why I was. Even though the drips of water went from a steady plop, plop, plop to longer plops and eventually none, something was causing that leak.

And eventually, the landlord was called. We saw them about 25 hours later. Long enough that the need to find where the leak was had been forgotten.

"See, it isn't leaking any more," the male said.

"But it will," she said.

"We'll leave the cup over night and check it in the morning," he said.

Sunday night, with the landlord underneath a carefully unpacked sink, the source of the leak made itself known. A hole at the bottom of the U that gave way when the landlord happened to run a finger over the area. And when he did, splash. The trap was drained.

Female to male, "Wow, it didn't stop leaking."

Male to female, "It did now."

Female to male, "Ya think?"

Male to female, "Pretty lucky."

Female thinking, "No shit."

There's a nice plastic U-ish piece there now, "Great to see if you have a clog, lasts longer too," says the landlord.

I think I'll refrain from clog watching, but still need to figure out why the sink still drains slowly.

Friday's Five

Friday Five

How it works, copy and paste the questions to your blog. Answer them and share a link to your answers with a posted comment here if you want.

1) With an Artic cold snap gripping the nation right now, how cold has it gotten in your neighborhood and how are you coping?

2) What do you like about winter, if anything?

3) What are your favorite childhood memories about winter?

4) What is your favorite winter meal guaranteed to keep you warm from head to toes?

5) What would you rather be doing now?

1) With an Artic cold snap gripping the nation right now, how cold has it gotten in your neighborhood and how are you coping?

The winds have switched and it's a constant blow out of the north. I doubt the thermometer is calculating wind chill, but I know it was -8 early last night. I've been reading and staying under the covers. I did brave the elements to see if my car would start, which it did. Just hope it does so again.

2) What do you like about winter, if anything?

I love the quiet beauty of snow falling and blanketing the earth. It's a very peaceful feeling to watch. This last storm was kind enough to drop about 3 inches and blow away. It just adds to what has definitely been more than 25 inches so far this year. I don't recall a worse winter, even two years ago, when snow had blown drifts as high as my lower knee, as I've already tread through drifts almost mid-thigh high this year. If I had children, I actually could have told them when I was child we walked to and from school in snow this high and not exaggerate too much when I lift my hand to my waist.

3) What are your favorite childhood memories about winter?

We used to dash out into the snow and start rolling balls to make the first of several snowmen, spending much time huffing in the cold air, cheeks and noses turning pink as hats sometimes slipped over our eyes. Compacted snow clug to our gloves and somehow scarves ended up coated in a light dusting of flakes. From snowmen to snow angels and then hearty snowball fights with the neighbors or just with my brother. I can't recall ever feeling as frozen to the bone then as I have felt recently -- as in frozen nose hairs. Every trek outside was met with the warmth of a lit fireplace inside, which toasted our feet through layers of socks, while we drank hot chocolate and carried on with our lives.

4) What is your favorite winter meal, guaranteed to keep you warm from head to toes?

Chili! I have the fixings, but lack the initiative make it. I need to change that today. There's nothing like a steaming bowl of chili thick enough to scoop out of the bowl with crackers. With it, I may make some pumpkin bread. Oh! Brief domestication as my world has been frozen to a halt and Dan Brown beckons for the next adventure.

5) What would I rather be doing now?

Well I won't have to work tonight as the basketball games were cancelled and it appears wrestling may be a no go tomorrow. I would rather be in front of a roaring fire than in an apartment where the temp is set at 64. Sounds a little cool, and it probably is, but the heat from below rises and keeps it fairly warm here. I would rather have inventory done so I could be making soap, bath bombs and other things with color. Perhaps tomorrow I will have permission to get started.

Baby it's Freeezzzzzzin' Outside

I've done nothing but find ways to stay warm without jacking up the heat bill (too much, I hope) the past two days.
A gal I work with had her electric bill estimated by Westar at a whopping $500+ and they wanted to charge her to come read it. Hello, get your asses out in the cold and stop raping people for cash!! Estimate nothing. With the rate hikes, Jack Frost can bite your ass a little too.
Wholly cow it's frigid outside! The worst is supposed to come tonight, but my nose hairs are froze. They have to be. They feel like it. Chili would be good to make if I weren't so tucked under covers and reading to pass the time.
I will have to figure out how to get to work in this stuff if it's still sub-zero tomorrow night. While the wind is wicked, so, too, is having car doors frozen shut. The blessing though is, while I parked facing into a west wind yesterday, the beast still starts!!