INTEGATRON

It’s a sad day for dogs.

He has an eye infection and the only way to keep him from making it worse is to have him in this cone of shame for two weeks so he can’t scratch it.

He’s about to turn 10 years old and he has rarely been sick or injured so this has not been going down well.

He is so low-to-the-ground that when he walks/waddles, the cone trips him up.

Taken out the car window on the freeway.

I have been driving this stretch of the 101 Freeway for the majority of my life. Sometimes when I look at this part of the road and contemplate the countless hours I have spent driving across this exact same piece of highway, it boggles my mind.

Skeptical of the term miracle, it actually is one that I have never had an accident on this freeway.  I am a good driver now but that is definitely not how things started.  I remember when I was 16/17 and driving from the suburb where we lived up the 57 Freeway to the 60, to the 5 and finally onto the 101 into L.A., I would look over my shoulder to change lanes and hold my breath and brace for impact as I actually did it, just incase….

I realize now I should not have been driving. Or maybe I was actually a very good driver then, just doubting myself.  

  It didn’t help that the DAY I turned 16 I had a huge car accident.

My parents let me have a car because I did all the things I was supposed to do in order to be a licensed driver and they were probably sick of driving me around so I got handed a pair of keys to a used pebble-brown VW that morning before school.  

School was about 2 miles away from my front door but I could not wait to pick up my friend Melanie and drive us there.  

  I started the car, made it down the road, I remember the feeling of absolute elation as this happened. I made it to the corner where I had to turn left to get to Melanie’s house and that’s when I made a bad decision and turned left on a yellow light as a six-ton Arrowhead water truck sped up to make it through it and plowed right into my rear bumper, sending me spinning up the hill, over a curb, and into a tree.  

Somehow, I was fine.  The other driver was also fine. My airbag didn’t even go off (Fahrvergnügen!)  The street did not fare so well, as 200 gallons of water dropped from its cargo and flooded the intersection.

  My parents took the car away.

Gold Fields

I’ve been in Atlanta for about 48 hours now.  I still get extremely excited when I get to experience a new place so I have been pretty excited for most of that. Now I am just hot.

Things are very spread out here and I did not expect that. I can’t figure out what neighborhood I am in. Ever. 

Also, everything is green. I had no idea there would be be this many trees and the parks seem to be as dense as forests.  There are entryways to houses that are completely overgrown with long, leafy vines, doorways that look straight off of the cover of a pulp sci-fi paperback. I touched some of this alien foliage to try and see where it started and stopped and now I have itchy palms.

I have decided I should not really touch anything while I am living in Georgia.

I have never been in the South before.  There are a lot of churches. A lot of buildings that are in disrepair and covered in graffiti. I like the clouds. Big, fluffy humidity clouds that turn into animal shapes (and boots, I keep seeing boot-shaped clouds).

I am a bit of a deer in headlights right now - a pretty dangerous thing to be here by the looks of it. 

And of course, I keep thinking about Flannery O’Connor.