May: "I'm SO Goth..."

Here's looking at you...
 

"All shall be well, and all shall be well..."

I grew up without a car; living in San Francisco made it actually easier (and cheaper) not to have one.  I got my license around 1986, but didn't actually own/drive a car until 1988.  Even then, a car was just a car.  It got me where I needed to go.  I kept it fed and watered, and got it fixed when needed, but I didn't think much else about it.

However, since getting the Sentra in February, I've been much more fascinated with it than with any other car I've owned.  When I go out to the parking lot, I look at it and feel like I'm in love.  I think about driving it when I'm not.  And I actually get jealous when Martin takes it for the day.  It's not that it's only two years old; my other cars were about 2-3 years old when we got them.  I've never felt superior about having things before, so this really threw me for a loop.  It was very weird, and was actually getting embarrassing.

Then I suddenly figured it out.  For years, I've been telling myself that "things have GOT to get better", but they never did.  Every time we fixed something on the van, something else would go wrong with it very soon.  The bills mounted up and I had to scrounge to pay them.  My mom got worse and needed more care.  I was stuck in a job I didn't want.  Things never got better, we just exchanged one problem for another, and there always seemed to be two to three problems going on at once.

But this car is "something better".  Yes, we now have an extra $240 in car and insurance payments every month, but because I got what was left in my mom's accounts after her death, we are able to afford it. And everything works.  (Knock on wood!)  The A/C, the heater, the CD player, the radio, they all work.  I don't have to shift into neutral when stopping so that the transmission won't buck.  The seats aren't broken.  All the dashboard lights and the gas gauge work.  And the paint isn't peeling and chipping off because the primer and/or the paint was bad (all Plymouth Voyagers and Dodge Caravans built that year apparently got bad paint and/or primer, at least the white ones; there should have been a recall on the paint job).

So this car is actually a sort of talisman for me.  It's physical proof that things not only can get better, but they ARE getting better.  And I'm clinging to that so that I can deal with the other things that I'm still trying to fix.

And yesterday, I noticed that the auto-withdrawal from my checking account for my credit consolidation payment went from $581 (!) to just $17 (!!).  I think I'm DONE with it, woo-HOOO!!!  Which means that one more thing just got better.  So here is a happy Goth to help me celebrate:


 
                                                        (I'd love to credit this, but the name is cut off; I found it on Tumblr.)

When one door closes...

... another opens, or so they say.  Last night a door that I thought was closed years ago suddenly showed a crack of light around it.

I left work early yesterday; for some reason, I'd been tired and groggy all day, and I was starting to make so many mistakes that I was afraid to trust myself any longer with someone's financial aid.  I went home and curled up on the loveseat in the living room to wait for dinner.  I wasn't asleep, just dozing, with absolutely nothing in my head (other than the squeaky-floored basketball game Martin was watching), when all of a sudden a VERY clear voice in my head said:  "You can go to Egypt and Crete."  HUH?????  Ooooh, wait, I can...

After my mom's bills and burial arrangements were all paid, I inherited the remainder of her pension fund.  Because I "inherited" it, I can't keep it or add money to it, but I can take money out of it whenever I want to.  I'm already using use some of it to pay for my museum certificate program; then I figured I would get a retirement account to put the rest into.  However, now I'm thinking that maybe I should use some of it to go to Egypt and/or Crete.  I honestly never thought I'd ever have the money, and neither trip is cheap.  But why not go?  I'll probably never have another chance, at least not until I'm too old to really enjoy it!

So now I am getting started.  I got out my expired passport and will be renewing it shortly.  And I have already chosen the tour agency through which I will be making my arrangements, Ancient World Tours (AWT), based in London.  They have many different tours to Egypt, and recently added one to Crete!  I "met" the owner, Peter Allingham, through an online group we were both in, and he was kind enough to allow me to quote him in my master's thesis.  Of course, that was back in 2006, but I'm sure he'll remember me... NOT!  ;-)

I shall now go and check on my "suitable for Egypt" gothic wardrobe.  Stay tuned for updates!

Deadly Quote of the Week

Sorry this is a little late...

This is a quote from Somerset Maugham, recorded shortly before his death in 1965 by his nephew:

"Dying," he said to me, "is a very dull, dreary affair.  Suddenly he smiled.  "And my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it," he added."

Deadly Quote of the Week

I found a book, called The Oxford Book of Death, filled with wonderful quotes and excerpts from all kinds of books, poems and plays, that I would like to share with you.  So this will be the first post using these.  I hope you enjoy them!

This one is from the metaphysical novel, Kleinzeit (which means "little time"), by Russell Hoban:

"Under the bed, Death sat humming to itself while it cleaned its fingernails.  I never do get them really clean, it said.  It's a filthy job I've got but what's the use of complaining.  All the same I think I'd rather have been Youth or Spring or any number of things rather than what I am.  Not Youth, maybe.  That's a little wet and you'd hardly get to know people before they've moved on.  Spring's pretty much the same and it's a lady's job besides.  Action would be nice to be, I should think.

Elsewhere Action lay in his cell smoking and looking up at the ceiling.  What a career, he said.  I've spent more time in the nick [jail] than anywhere else.  Why couldn't I have been Death or something like that.  Steady work, security."

Very human, isn't it?  The grass is always greener somewhere else.  Especially in a cemetery...

April: "I'm SO Goth..."

This COULD actually be me.  If you saw my t-shirt collection these days, you'd understand...

Back in the World of the Living

Yes, it has been quite a while since I've posted.  I really didn't have much to say in March; I was too busy with work, my museum class, burying my mom, and grieving.  Not to mention saying goodbye to an old friend and welcoming a new one.  Yes... we have a new car!!

Our van's registration expired at the end of February and I've had the paperwork since December, but due to my mom's decline and death, I kept forgetting about it.  Finally, I got the smog check done, only to find out she had failed one section.  Instead of pouring more money into a 20-year-old vehicle on its last legs anyway, I decided that our money would be better spent going toward a newer one.  Thanks to California's "Vehicle Retirement" program, we got $1,000 for bringing the van to a dismantler that will recycle her parts and sell them.  This ended up being our downpayment on the new one.

My son and nephew picked us up from the dismantler, and off we went to look at cars.  We had no idea if we would actually find a car the same day, but we were lucky enough to hit the jackpot at our local Hertz rental car lot.  It was more than I wanted to pay initially, but it has less than 44,000 miles on it (we still have 17,000 miles of factory warranty), and the monthly payments are just under $200!!  And it can fit two guys over six feet tall in the back, and I can STILL see out the rear window, although that window is a LOT smaller than the van's.  I miss that huge panoramic rear view.

Behold, our 2014 Nissan Sentra!! 
 
(This isn't actually ours, but it's the same year, model and lovely silver color.)

And this is the interior (minus the GPS; we have the radio/CD player in that spot and the heater/AC underneath).  Also, think black interior and fabric seats instead of silver:

We are now in the market for a StarTrek license plate cover and some vinyl stick-on bats for the side windows, heheheh...

In addition, I've been working on my online Museum Certificate course.  I finished the 'Introduction to Museums' class in January, and am two-thirds of the way through 'Museum Artifacts: How They Were Made & How They Deteriorate'.  I finish that one on my birthday!  And I'll be on vacation that week as well, the first REAL vacation I've taken since 2013.  Then in May, I have a two-week course on 'Gallery Guides'.  I'm glad I finally had the opportunity to afford this program AND convinced myself to jump in and do it. 

AND I almost forgot to mention that my first published short story, "The Second Time Around", came out in February, not only online but also IN PRINT!  I bought a copy of the paperback (Women in Horror Annual, $20/new), and it's really good; I recommend it highly, and not just because I'm in it.  I got a "like new" copy from alibris.com, but they are available on Amazon and in bookstores as well.

I hope you all had a wonderful Ostara/Easter/Spring Equinox!