Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-12-12 - 7:44 a.m.

A Weekday Commute

There were interesting things to see on the way to work this morning. This is a drive I do alone, and being as how my mind is one of those bad areas one doesn't go in alone (badly paraphrased from An Lamott, who was quoting someone else), I try to notice a lot of external things, so I don't have to turn on the radio to drown out my own thoughts.

This morning the mist was collecting in low patches over the golf course. I like it that I live in a golf course town, and that I actually drive THROUGH the golf course as I head to work. I also like it that I do not live ON the golf course, because I know people who do, and those people are sometimes washing up dishes after lunch when the window in front of them explodes into tiny projectile shards of glass. "It doesn't happen THAT often," they say defensively. "And we're insured." How often is too often? Me, I'm thinking once. One time. One exploding window. Snap my last remaining nerve. I'd develop a permanent twitch and a deep-seated fear of plate glass. Other people, who may harbor the same tendencies, put giant enormous walls of netting up around their yards. This netting is green, which is amusing, as though the salesman told them it would blend in to the background. "No one will notice you have twenty foot high fencing around your back yard - it's camouflaged!" It's a nice architectural addition, and probably keeps down the mosquitoes, but I like my golf course at a distance, and I never even think about errant golf balls and exploding windshields when I am driving through it. Hardly ever.

Especially when it's early and beautifully mist-covered, as it was this morning. It ought to have been haunting, or spooky, or ethereal, but truthfully, it looked more like the sort of fur that would grow on something that had been a bit too long in the Tupperware, reminding me that I needed to stop off at the grocery at some point today and get something for my two Food Critics for dinner.

I headed up the freeway and got behind a flatbed truck that was ferrying several stacked semi-defunct automobiles, which somehow tied into the thoughts about mosquito netting, because the back of this truck had a large iron frame and a tall CARGO NET on it, which certainly made me feel as though they hadn't much faith in their tie-downs, so I didn't drive too close behind. The defunct car facing me (the one that would have gotten the most use out of the cargo nets if its tie-downs had failed) was an old Dodge van that still had a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. That was sad, somehow. Sadder, and odder, was that it had a blue plastic Handicapped hang tag still on the rearview mirror. What sort of a person doesn't come back for their handicapped tag? It's worth more than the entire van. It may be the only thing they SALVAGE off the van. I would've salvaged it myself, except that I am essentially honest and know those choice spaces are actually needed by some people and I'm not one. Except when it's raining. Or Christmas. Or raining AND Christmas. Then I have no scruples.

I noticed as I drove by that the Ivy Pit had nearly gotten another car. The Ivy Pit is one of those freeway offramps that goes up and around in a big circle, creating a dropoff on one side and a miniature valley which CalTrans has covered in ivy as part of some "Keep Our Freeways Green" project. This particular valley has a way of claiming cars on a regular basis - regular enough that I've wondered if there isn't some sort of a radioactive nineteen-sixties trapdoor beast down there which flips open an ivy section and grabs when no one is looking. There are often tow trucks with winches and whatnot trying to lever some car off its back at the bottom of the Ivy Pit; today's near-catch was a nice blue PT Cruiser which either hadn't gone all the way over, as it still had its front tires clinging to the offramp, or had gone over but had managed to struggle part of the way back out. I would like to catch a new car myself. Perhaps if I waited at the bottom of the Pit, I might get one.

Considering the likelihood of getting a new car with a Pit, or possibly with some sort of web hung off an overpass, took me all the way up to my work exit, where I remembered to start thinking about work. I don't actually start getting paid until I am in the building and have set my things down and begun something productive, but I like to start thinking about what I might do as I take the exit, because that will later make up for the time I spend going into the staff room to see if someone has left any sort of food laying around. Most often no one has, and I wasn't lucky today, but once in a while there will be doughnuts or muffins, and it's like the golf balls: I don't forget. I'm either ever hopeful, or ever paranoid, depending on whether the projectile is edible.

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