one hand giveth, and one hand...

oh, my Funkmobile,
lovely, perky Funkmobile,
i will miss you so.

so yesterday while i was out running errands with *cc*, the Funkmobile started acting funny. she'd been acting funny for a few months, and i knew it was approaching time to take her for yet another check-up. 1st gear was skipping on takeoff, and in the last week she stalled on me twice.

the first time it happened, i attributed it to the cold, frosty morning and the simple fact she hadn't been driven in a week since i was in florida. she was tired, cold, and cranky. i'd give out in a pout if i felt that way, too. so i let her rest, then started her up again (after a few tries). however, i'd done quite a bit of driving with *cc* and the Funkmobile was warm yesterday...yet she still gave out.

so i called the dealership while she and i waited in the parking lot to pick up *mj* after work. we dropped off the Funkmobile after dinner, and i waited all day today to find out what the damage was. i finally got a call around 16:30 from my friend at the service center.

$1500 and an aneurism later, *cc* and i drove to the dealership to look at just buying a new car.

oh, my poor Funkmobile.

oh, my poor nerves. i felt like throwing up all evening. this was not the way i'd wanted to finally upgrade my Funk Force Fleet, y'know?

ironically enough, as Asphalta, Goddess of Roads, Parking Lots, and Commuters would have it, as She was taking away my Funkmobile with one hand, she was benevolently heaping upon me opportunities with her other hand. *cc* put it beautifully:

"on the other hand, dear," she said to me, chilled hands wrapped around a steaming paper cup filled with creamy hot chocolate, "it's a whole new year, a whole new you, and a whole new car that will be much more reliable, for which i know i'll be much more comfortable with."

she has a point. it's part of why i love her so much: it's like being able to talk to a wiser version of myself with a much cooler head. and she has tons of insights i might never have, and a lovely point of view that's refreshingly different, but we're still on the same wavelength. sometimes we yell at each other to get out of each other's heads, we think so much alike sometimes.

have i not said that my 30th birthday was my turning point? a renewal of dee, a rebirth into wetter and wilder and far more interesting truths and dilemmas to challenge me. why not have a new car and put pedal to the metal headlong into my very own renaissance?

on top of that, with even more irony (i think the divine Asphalta is a bit of a trickster at heart) the guy who sold me the Funkmobile sent me a text message hours later asking me how the Funkmobile was. so i told him. he wants to buy it back from me and make the repairs himself. so the car that would have cost me $1500 is going to make me money instead.

my life. just. can't. suck.

to top it all off, i got a real navy peacoat today!!! i've been in breathless love with peacoats for years and years, and i finally bought one! oh my goddess, talk about totally effing WARM!! not to mention sharp, and beautiful, and just a feast for the eyes. oh my gods, i'm in love with my new peacoat! i think i'm gonna sleep with it. maybe i'll even marry it.

(ima love it, and hug it, and squeeze it, and name it "george.")

delena haiku, and the funkmobile

oh, my funkmobile...
wherever have you gone now?
i miss you so much.

O.O !!!

OH MY GODDESS!!

she's so quiet, and she rides so smoothly! the repair bill came out to even less for the Funkmobile than i'd anticipated, so that's a good thing.

and i could swear that it's a whole different car now.

oh Funkmobile, i love you.

ah, wheels...

so i went to the dealership yesterday thinking that all i was gonna do was repair my rear CV boot (passenger side) on the Funkmobile. of course, as they looked at my darling car, apparently there was rubber on my axles that needed replacing soon.

"great," i said. "just do it, my blessing, call me when it's done. keep the car overnight if you have to." this was after two hours of lunching at red robin (yay, burgers!), and by that time it was 16:45, so i figured why not? get it done.

so i got a shuttle home.

then i was thinking about that hole in the Funkmobile's muffler... decided to call the dealership back up and see how much it would cost. everything together would still be under a grand, so i gave them my blessing.

hence, i have been without Funkmobile since then, and will be without it for another day.

le sigh.

but when i get her back? oh yeah, me 'n the Funkmobile are gonna rock. a thousand bucks poorer, but we'll rock the casbah baby, oh yeah.

drive

if gasoline weren't so expensive right now, i'd be going for nightly therapy sessions along the highway.

i've noticed that the best mood i find myself in during the last few weeks is when i'm driving. i sing in the car -- at the top of my lungs, even. i laugh, whether at lyrics playing on my cd player, at other drivers on the road, or even at myself or something funny i happened to remember. i feel beautiful, what with the windows down and my sunroof wide open, the wind ruffling my hair and the wonderous portland smells wafting in at me. sometimes i'll be sucking on a black clove cigarette. not healthy, i know, but the mellow wave that comes over me as it hits my bloodstream, and the yummy taste of molasses on my lips is just heaven.

i know those streets backwards and forwards. i know where most --if not all-- of them lead. there's no place in both the entire portland metro area, hillsboro, or vancouver where i can get lost.

on the road, i am so free...

the Funkmobile's a manual, so there's an even greater sense of power, of me and the Funkmobile melding into One as we fly down four lanes of portland freeway, or two lanes of back-end country lanes with such beautiful scenery it sometimes actually brings tears to my eyes.

during *m*'s visit, he drove everywhere. the only time i got to drive was when i was driving my own ass to and from work. otherwise, he was in the driver's seat, even when we were driving around my own town. yeah, i know on the outside the Funkmobile's really a pretty dinky piece o'crap. but, honestly, my car's a lot like me. not much to look at on the outside, but there's a lot of spunk, and a speed and power that'd take you by complete surprise. and i handle her very well, if i do say so myself. he's in love with his car, and i can understand that, but for love of the Funk, give me a fucking turn, too. jeezus...

i had to come home to feel like an adult and enjoy my own freedom. the entire time, with *m* driving, i'd point out something special or beautiful that meant something to me, and he'd say, "i'm busy driving," so i finally gave up trying to share my city with him. had i been behind the wheel, i could've pointed things out to him and he would have been able to look and enjoy them. i'm dynamic and engaging when i'm driving. i can laugh and tell jokes and have a conversation. in *m*'s car, i was quiet, we barely talked, and he channel surfed his satellite radio stations as bad as any man with a remote and widescreen t.v. mainly, i stared out the window, bored as absolute fuck, tried not to get carsick, and pretty much felt like i was being chauffeured everywhere. even during the entire road trip from portland to idaho, i sat shotgun. i'd offered to take my turn, several times, the night before, but i guess i was ignored.

i suppose i'll just have to give up hoping that i'll get to share that kind of experience with *m* and just go out driving alone, or out driving with my friends. except, oh wait. when i move, i won't have any friends.

miss me?

okay, beauty and truth fans, iGoddess is back! and i absolutely loved coming back home to all of your comments. i've decided that boho mom is just too fucking cool for any funky adjective i could ever come up with, i'm now on the hunt for patchouli car fresheners, and i want to live in mich's world. "get your bony butt back here," she says. i want to live in your world, mich, where delena's butt is bony, because that probably means her thighs aren't all cottage-cheesy, her lower abs aren't covered in hideous post-childbirth stretch marks, and i bet her boobs are still cute and perky, too. yeah, i wanna live in a world with bony-assed delena. lol

alas, i have no pictures. i had fully intended to take pictures of my whirlwind two-day trip. i even borrowed my mom's camera for the trip, too. however, hilarious as it may seem, aside from 'the bling' and the actual time i spent with *m*, nothing went right this whole week.

and yes, there will be mention of the bling.

so on saturday morning i went with *r* and her boyfriend down to bend to see about that car. originally, i was going to buy her '69 mustang from her, but after we made our deal, her boyfriend sold it to his friend right beneath me.

we got to bend four hours later than *r* wanted, so our afternoon was a rush of errands and LOTS of driving in a fifty-mile radius. we got to bed really late that night.

the next day, i found out that the other mustang i wanted to look at, a '67 (even better), was no longer for sale. the owner's parents heard there was a buyer in town all the way from portland, and "quite suddenly" there was an extra zero on the asking price. i was so dejected and pissed off i actually felt physically sick. i can't remember the last time i'd felt sick simply from anger.

actually, we suspect a bit of racism going on there, but since we can't actually confirm it we can only shrug. hell, even if we could, we could still do nothing but shrug. what a beautiful country this is, where injustices and fucktardism go completely unpunished.

i bought *r*'s boyfriend's black '93 honda civic ex, instead. it's a pretty sweet car. i mean, it looks like hell on the outside, with primer on the hood and roof, scratches all alongside the driver side exterior, and a crack that winds its happy-ass way across the entire windshield. but beneath the hood, it's got new or really-close-to-new racing-performance engine parts. it's a sleeper, actually. i could show up on a street racing track and be totally laughed at, and then take about 80% of them by surprise as my little banger makes them choke on my dust.

not that i'd ever race, mind you. my daddy's a cop, and he and *m* might take it amiss if their little chica was sporting a bit of illegal street racing... but hey! i'm just saying, i could...

as for my trip to idaho, i got off to a very bad start. i'd been enduring cracks, jokes, comments, and total, utter doubt that i was capable of making a stupid road trip. i was slightly bombarded from many, many people, so my scales were already ruffled and i was breathing smoke.

i was three and a half hours late. i'd wanted to leave at 19:00, but i didn't get out of the house until 19:30. i forgot something, so i had to turn around and go back for it.

i stopped by my parents' house to have dinner and shave a kitty butt because one of their cats had eaten something wrong and gotten an explosive (and i'm talking explosive) case of the poopies. so i shaved this creamsicle, longhaired kitty's latter half (and yes, i left the little tuft at the end of his tail like a lion) and now he's running around bare-assed. it's hilarious, but they love it. dad gets a kick out of that little lion tail.

so by the time i even seriously got on the road, it was already 22:00. i was quite irate, spitting brimstone and tail twitching. even *m* got a brush of it, because i couldn't quite keep the expletives and biting sarcasm out of the conversation. i ended up using the excuse of poor reception to turn off my phone a bit earlier than usual. it's not his fault people were being fucktards and pissing me off. he was a small contributor, but not the whole, so i just shut up and spared myself misery later. besides, i'd realized that trying to explain to him why i was pissed was a lost cause. isn't there a saying about picking your battles?

anyway, so then any and every traffic and road hazard conspired to push my arrival time back even further. everything from night construction to large mammalian carcasses appearing out of nowhere and scaring the crap out of me.

on the way home, i must've fallen asleep at least half a dozen times while speeding down the highway at 80 mph. the scariest time was when i woke to realize i was passing a semi i didn't even remember seeing on the road. yeah, it's only kinda cool in retrospect, ha ha. but see, i know this is a part of solitary road trips. and it's not like i could afford to stop and sleep for any decent amount of time. i had to be at work at noon. you just shake it off and keep going. besides, i'm an insomniac. sleep isn't a necessity for me like it is for others. it's a luxury item, a rare commodity. so i'm not all broken up about it if i don't get a whole bunch of it, but i don't expect people to understand it. unfortunately, pronoia keeps me from simply looking down on the poor, ignorant fucktards and going on my merry way.

hence the frustration. i don't quite yet know how to deal with the godsdamned sleep proselytizing yet. not in a pronoiac way, anyway.

i got to work a whopping half hour early and needing to pee like only someone who's been holding it for over 300 miles can pee...only to realize i'd forgotten to pack my work pants. so i had to turn back around and drive home, throw them on, and get stuck in traffic to be at work fifteen minutes late.

yeah, i'm still trying to work out what lessons and what, exactly, the universe felt i needed in that experience. i refuse to accept "don't visit *m* with only two days to spend" as the universal lesson. and i refuse to accept "you're too old to take road trips like that anymore" as the lesson either, especially since the only reason i bought that godsdamned car was to use it to visit both *m* and li'l *c*.

so yeah, still looking for the lesson.

on the other hand, i got a lot of thinking done. with nothing to look at but two lanes of highway in the middle of the night, and with music in the background that you're too tired and dazed to really be paying attention to, there's really not much to do except think.

mainly i thought about *m*, and about my bio-dad.

but all of it, even falling asleep at work today, was totally worth it.

maybe the lesson is a simple reality check. physically, emotionally, financially, and even mentally, it was a challenge. and yet it really doesn't feel like it. it's just something i felt, quite simply, needed to be done to make seeing a certain person that much easier. it was an indirect gift, and i was quite happy giving all of it. not once did i second-guess myself, or regret anything for a moment. reality check: it was a "just because i love you" gift that i suppose i hope is one day fully appreciated. i'm one of those people that really doesn't use that word a lot, except in spurts, but i'm the type of person where my actions are usually a nonstop recitation of one four-letter word.


PS: "what's that word again? oh yeah...PARK. park the damn car...quit running the roads...get back here!" *dying laughing* boho mom, you fucking rock.

what's that word again?

from the oxford-delena dictionary

stoked!
adj.

1. extreme excitement
2. totally revved about something
3. uncontainable passion and/or jubliation
4. what delena is right now, and what every single avid reader and fan of the Funk should be!!


delena got a car!! yes, beauty and truth fans, iGoddess has a vehicular mascot!!!

i'd love to write more, and i will, just not now. from now until probably saturday afternoon, iGoddess is going dark. i was in Bend, OR this weekend getting my car, and tonight i'll be somewhere, and tomorrow night i'm taking said new car to visit *m*, which is a nine-hour drive. or, well, four hours if you drive the way he does...

but yeah, so i'll be unavailable of the internet for the next few days. i'll be home friday, but i'll be working until closing time, and then i'll be dropping dead to sleep so i can then open up shop the following morning.

literally.

so yeah, i'll be wishing for death, but i'm telling myself it's worth it. =)

laters.