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Saturday, December 11, 2004
car-dancing fool
Today I drove down to the valley to buy more Christmas lights, as mentioned in my previous post. I went... ALONE. Now, to a lot of people -- a staggering quantity, really, judging by how few vehicles qualify for the carpool lane on city freeways -- being alone in the car is just part of daily life. However, for a full-time homeschooling mom, it's a rare event. I almost always have my children with me, and frequently my husband too, or occasionally we leave the kids with my parents and it's just T and myself in the car. Maybe five times a year I am actually in the car alone for any extended period of time (i.e. longer than it takes to drive to the podunk grocery store in town for an emergency evening shopping expedition). So when it happens, I go... a little crazy. Today I car danced to 80's songs for half an hour, and sang at the top of my lungs, and oh gaw, I am sure I gave the people in the car behind me something to laugh about for years. ("Remember that time we were on our way to the city and there was that total spazz of a woman in the car in front of us?") I lay all the blame at the feet of Men At Work, because if I hadn't started out the trip with "Down Under" I probably would not have been put into such a slap-happy mood. But then that was followed by 99 Luftballons. Now, you generally wouldn't think that a song about nuclear annihilation would be so darn dance-able. But that song's not just a late-Cold War classic; it's my childhood. Also, I sing along with the German version even though I have no idea what I'm saying and only catch every tenth word or so, and then I think about how funny that would be to someone who actually spoke German, and ack. The thing is that when I get into that kind of mood it just sort of spirals out of control. (ask anyone who's ever chatted with me at one o'clock in the morning).
And I won't even bother telling you about going stoplight-to-stoplight listening to "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" at volume setting 24 (25 is "shatter glass", I think), which is one of the two songs composed during the 1980's which, IMO, validate the existence of the electronic synthesizer, which was used so criminally by many, many "musicians" of that era. (the other song is "Axel F", by the way. SHUT UP.)
Shopping killed my buzz pretty thoroughly, though. We have always bought Christmas lights at Big Lots, and Big Lots was an utter zoo. ZOO. And they were also completely cleaned out of the kind of Christmas lights we use, so I had to go to (cue sinister music) Wal-Mart. Two Saturdays before Christmas. I actually had to perform deep-breathing relaxation exercises several times as I went around in that store. Also, I was looking at purses and found a box cutter, with its handle wrapped in black tape, inside a really cute little clutch wallet thing. There's a story there, and it could be creepy, but I have no idea what it is.
