Leaping...

I have leaped without looking. I have done it for the sake of faith.

As a child I would leap and not look because my faith was so strong in whatever it was I leaping into... but then I started to reap the consequences of not looking before my proverbial leaping and accrued many a broken thing: wrist, arm, leg... heart. It's the heart that seems to not take it as well as the more healable bones. The more broken hearts I collected the harder my heart became and the less leaping I did or even attempted.

I arrived... not the "arrived" we all seem to strive for... I arrived at a hardening of heart that for someone of my age should not have... or that's what I've come to believe: People my age are able to collect themselves, their broken pieces, reassemble the puzzle and have a few missing tiles that don't ruin the entire landscape of who they were or are or become from the multiple broken heart episodes... and yet for me, I could not take the pieces... perhaps because they were so scattered... or I forgot to collect them for the re-assembly... and reassemble them into something recognizably cohesive called a feeling heart full of faith in love.

My heart has not healed from the love I have given. I have given away love that should not have been given for it was not earned nor the recipient deserving... and yet I loved. I loved passionately. I loved with hope. I loved because I believed, had faith, that if I showed it could be done to the one I was loving, they could love me back. That was not their m.o. however. I have chosen wrong so many times in the giving of my love and self that I have broken trust with my heart from acquiring so many broken hearts... I can no longer trust that I know the path of love. I have not had a map. My navigation has been faulty for the compass of my heart is off kilter. I have gone it alone and been left wanting so many times... what's the use to continue the journey? I am and have been carrion for the vultures who feast on the carcasses of the dead who have died on the pilgrimage to find love. Can this state of pain be regenerative? Am I a Phoenix who rises from the ashes who only crashes immediately thereafter back to the sooty grave it rose from momentarily triumphant?

Perhaps if the heart were a bone it could be set after it is broken and then heal better... correctly... and yet, sometimes bones have to be rebroken to heal correctly and so maybe my heart is a bone that needs to be rebroken. I just don't know how to take the leap or find the person worth leaping off the precipice into the  boulders that await my crashing down into their cold, obsidian jetty of hardness. Maybe I need an Icarus to swoop down as I descend and catch me before I crash upon the waves of the heart breaking rocks and fly me away to a place where we both will not have our rescuing wings of love melted by the scorching heat of the Sun's scrutiny.

Then leap I must...I pray my Icarus arrives before my demise...CATCH ME ICARUS!

Christmas in November...

Dear Friends and Family,

This morning I decided I needed some coffee to wake up after I "taught" an advanced algebra/trig. class and headed across the street and around the corner for that good ol' $1.00 McDonald's coffee.

 

I was sitting there enjoying my cup-o-Joe, tapping my foot along to the rhythmic sounds of CHRISTMAS!! Then it hit me... like a ton of bricks... the day was masquerading itself like any other day IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA IN DECEMBER: sunny, cool and brisk... and this is where the CONFUSION came upon me... I really had to shake myself awake by taking a long pull of coffee from my adult sippy cup-o-Joe! It is not even remotely close to December. I had to remind myself of the date since I had just written it on the board for the students. It is Tuesday, November 9th!!!!!

IT IS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH and McDONALD'S IS ALREADY PLAYING CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!! I immediately stopped tapping my foot and told myself to stop enjoying the sounds of winter/Christmas since it is NOT even remotely winter (or close to December) here in Chicago...

I do not want to hear another Christmas carol/song until the appropriate time: WAY AFTER THANKSGIVING!! Maybe even December 1st!!

I really had to stop and think about where I was: Chicago, not Northern California. I had to remind myself that today is just unusually nice (weather wise) here in Chicago IN NOVEMBER and that it is only the 9th day of November!!

Some people, corporations, are just rushing things along! Slow down McDonald's. The only thing I want speeding me up is the cup of coffee I came to get so I can/could keep up with the/these quick teenagers I am responsible for on a daily basis!
 

Much love to you all and reminders that it's JUST NOVEMBER folks!

Sincerely,

JoLynn ~drinking cups-o-Joe, from McDon-OHs

Invisibility Cloak...

I am feeling that invisible feeling again. It starts from feeling anxious. I don't understand why my life has been careening toward anxiety and fear as I've aged. No one warns you that the carefreeness of childhood wears off... like love after too many betrayals. Then instead of being offered some fun kiddy candy you're offered a mint of maturity for the bad breath you've gotten from drinking to drown out the pain of life that even the alcohol stopped numbing after the first drink. Not that I do that... it's just a fitting metaphor/analogy for this feeling of invisibility that washes over me like Harry Potter's "Invisibility Cloak." Granted his was a choice, mine is a result of being subjected to the realization that life is harder and more painful than I ever imagined or even wanted to discover. But you can only be in denial for so long I suppose... although I avoid denial and move to ignorance!

Someone recently told me the worst kind of self hate is comparing yourself to someone else... but I can't help but do it! It seems others are seen and I'm invisible. Others get responses for the same things I do and are applauded and I'm looked down the nose at like I'm a midget someone almost trips over and then scoffs at even though it was the taller, condescending persons fault for the close-call collision.

Being ignored hurts just as much as being seen and picked on does. I want to be seen. I want to feel valued. I don't want to be told it comes from self love... "IF you just loved yourself more you'd be happy," I've heard that  many a time in my life. I don't hate myself. I don't like some aspects. I HATE that I have cellulite, but I don't hate myself. I hate certain aspects of my-so-called-life. I don't like reality... as much as I don't like vegetables. Yet, I KNOW both are good for me. Everything in moderation, maybe? Even feeling invisible?

This feels so unfinished... the words are invisible to me right now... I can't see where to go with this... maybe I will finish this later when the words uncover themselves from under the cloak of invisibility my mind has shrouded them in!

Eye-mazing...

It's amazing the things you don't think of thinking about. I never thought about how anyone can hail a cab.

Today I saw the most amazing thing as I was riding the bus home. This woman stood on an island during rush hour traffic in downtown Chicago and at first it looked like she was a drum majorette holding a baton in her hand punching it up and down in the air... but the longer I stared the more my eyes became accustomed to her antics. She wasn't just standing there with a stick in her hand conducting the traffic as her marching unit, she was using her cane to hail a cab. This was a blind woman standing and doing what anyone with their vision would do (sans cane... or not, who's to say, eh?). For some unknown reason it just never entered my mind that a blind person would or even could hail a cab. HOW is she going to know if the cabby is or will be honest? How will she know if she is delivered to her desired location? HOW did she even know to stand where she did to hail that cab?

It's a good thing she couldn't see me staring at her. I was fascinated, amazed and couldn't take my eyes off this transaction I have taken for granted so many times because of my fully functioning eyes.

Choose me...

Once upon a Friday night I was sitting on a stoop-ish thing in front of a building on Chicago Ave., in Chicago with a girlfriend who was so wounded in the heart that she couldn't even get tears to cry! I felt her pain. I have been there many times. I almost cried for, or with, her on a few occasions during our time on the stoop... but I didn't shed any tears either.

What she was going through brought up so many memories of me and men I have "loved" before... I wrote "loved" because I am discovering I don't love men... I lust after them and when the luster has worn off I'm on to the next shiny object of my lustful desires. Sometimes I feel man-ish in this regard. Men seem to be like that - perhaps it's stereotypical, but it's typical just the same for a lot of men... they rove, their eyes wander and therefore so do their hearts.

Sometimes I question God. "God, what is wrong with me that men don't seem to like me for more than a buddy? What am I doing wrong?" But then I'm reminded that I don't give them a chance because I am struggling with liking them for longer than a mental-fantasy-boyfriend-in-my-head-okay-the-fifteen-minutes-of-fame-in-our-relationship-is-over NEXT!! dealio... and I wonder why and question God like He's the problem I can't keep a man around longer than a fling and a stroll in the park/roll in the hay...

So here we were, two beautiful women sitting on a cement curb that was protruding from a storefront on a busy street in Chicago and many good looking men, and dating couples were walking by. Some looked at us, most looked at her... she's stunning. I'm cute... She was not able to cry and I was on the verge... Then I remembered a quote from a television show, Grey's Anatomy, I think, where, I believe Meredith Grey says to Dr. McDreamy, "...choose me... pick me..." and I felt kicked in the gut and heart because here's my beautiful friend trying to figure out why God has dealt her another painful blow in her love life, and I am thinking, "if she can't get a man to want to commit to her for the long haul and she's a stunner with so many other redeeming qualities besides beauty," what's gonna happen to me?" It seems the pattern keeps repeating itself: I meet a guy. I like him, he doesn't like me or he likes one of my many friends. I meet another guy. He likes me, I don't like him. I meet another guy... we like each other... for a short time... and one of us stops the liking and moves on.

I sat there and someone I have had a secret crush on said something to me I feel will only result in me being crushed by him because I believe he likes the stunner and I had to suck it up because I was there for my friend, the stunner,  who was dealing with a broken heart... and I feel my broken heart is
(im)pending with this new guy I have a crush on... but like a house on the market, even though it's a horrid market, and everything is about "location location location", I still feel like I'm prime real estate in a great location and would really like a man to "choose me... pick me..." so we can sit on a stoop together and I can cry over things on his shoulder while people walk past admiring us... ya know, curb appeal.

I want a relationship with a man because I don't want to spend another Friday night in the city with a person of the same sex on a stoop almost crying over someone of the opposite sex!

God please send someone to "CHOOSE ME... PICK ME... " sooner than later!! I'm tired of the heart break and ache.

DISCLAIMER: Equal Opportunity Employer of Dateable Dudes. Men must be confident, financially stable, educated, well-traveled (and would like to travel more), potty trained, taller than me (not hard to do), fun, forgiving, humble, and a Christian. All others need not apply.

Free and reduced lunch...

This is something I wrote last year (almost exactly one year ago today ) and in light of today being the FIRST day of school for CPS I thought it would be good to re-post and be re-reminded:

Today as I was leaving the school I currently am employed at in South Chicago, a band of 3 little cutey patooties were skipping by. They were so tiny and bouncy so much so that the little girl of the 3, the other 2 you've probably deduced were boys, could be heard via her clear blue and white beads smacking in to one another.

I looked down at the munchkins and proclaimed, "oh my you're adorable!"

She, the midget, I mean-little person, I mean-under tall young person, looked up at me and said, "Lunch?" as she tried to push pass myself and another taller, larger woman who was exiting the building with me to get at the "lunch."

I responded with, "huh?" for I could not understand her through her lost-from-decay front tooth, and quipped, "you're kinda small for a high school student!" She just looked at me blankly and like I had a decayed front tooth and responded vehemently with, "Food! Lunch!"

Mind you it was WAY past after school and closer to dinner time. The woman I was walking with told her, "no, honey we don't have lunch anymore today." The little angel with the missing tooth merely grunted and kept steppin...

She stomped on my heart though... here is a child that has equated school with free food. We do hope that our students are getting the educational nourishment we sometimes feel we, as educators, are force feeding them - and here is a beautiful little urchin knowing that behind the door that we were not exiting through quick enough, back onto the street in to one of the most economically depressed areas of Chicago, to get in to our comfy, clean cars where we can drive off out of this area to a drive-thru for crap we CHOOSE to eat! She just wanted some kind of nourishment - not questioning what she would get, but with a hope that she would receive something... anything... free... or reduced, and we had nothing to give or offer.

Was it another door shut on a promising young mind? Hopefully it was just shut on her appetite and not her hunger and thirst to one day learn from the educators behind those doors she was unable to go through and find some, "Lunch! Food!"

Obsessive Compulsive...

I am not sure WHY I did this today, but I went into Walgreen's to buy some cleaning supplies to KILL the lingering stench in my refrigerator's freezer and I got distracted by the cheap movie tower display. I saw a DVD I considered buying and then I saw a bunch of kung fu DVDs. The whole display was in utter disarray (hey, that rhymed.)! So I stood there for an hour, no lie, and organized it.... BUT I only organized the kung fu films. I gave them ALL top and second shelf honors. I felt compelled to do it. I didn't care if I was in the way of other people trying to walk down the aisle I was occupying... I actually got quite perturbed on a number of occasions when folks asked to pass... couldn't they see I was busy arranging the horridly acted, badly directed and filmed kung fu movies that only my big brother and I would consider Oscar worthy?? Of course not.

I just couldn't stop until ALL the DVDs were in, what I believed, place!! I kept going until it was done to my liking (minus alphabetizing) and my fingertips were dirty from the film of dust that had collected on these classic beauties security taped and plastic wrapped cases that no one has stopped to admire, buy and take home.

When I finally made it to the check out counter, I oddly felt a sense of relief for accomplishing something that I didn't really need to do... must be a reflection of the need to get that stinking thesis paper completed... the 2nd first draft that is!!!

OH and on my walk home I noticed a bunch of cars whose owners' had parked them without consideration for the other owners' of the cars in the neighborhood who may need a parking space sooner or later, and I wanted to go around to every car with too much room at their front and rear bumpers, the THREE EXTRA FEET these selfish peasants were hoarding for their crappy rice rockets, and either become Wonder Woman and push the cars forward, or create a note on a Post-It type sticky that reads, "Be kind; move your car forward. The space you save could be your own some day or night... DOOSHbag!"  Then go around to all the cars hogging space and stick it to their driver's side window HOPING that when the owners of these cars see it it would strike fear in their hearts, because I would make sure it would resemble the parking ticket citations that are issued so frequently (because these incompetent car parkers make it impossible to find a space - resulting in REAL parking citations), and they would thus move their cars quickly because they would be afraid it was an actual citation. Maybe I need to include on the fake citation, "This is your first warning; the next time this happens expect a fee or other severe consequences. Have a blessed day!"

Obviously, I haven't taken such extreme measures... yet!

I'll take an order of salmonella after 1 a.m., please!

When you smell something funny when you get off the elevator and the smell turns to a stench that greets you at your "luxury" apartment door like a loving significant other - it's not a good sign!

Here's the sad part: I could NOT find the stench and wondered where it could be coming from when I surveyed all 650 sq. ft. of my humble abode... but I naively attempted to remedy the odor by spraying some room deodorizer and went about my unwinding-from-many-hours-of-driving routine.

I went on a much needed vacation to Ohio. Ohio, I know, who knew... but the stories about that are for another time. I need to blog about salmonella after 1 a.m.

After the olfactory assault upon entering my miniscule (but swank) domicile, I decided to take a break from thinking by turning on the T.V. and getting a little opposable thumb exercise via channel surfing... but then I started to feel sick to my stomach and headachey... so I got up and got myself some extra-strength pain reliever. The bottle of said pain aid was in a cupboard above my dishwasher, which I thought was harboring the stinky/stench felon. Then I took a swig of water from a bottled water bottle I had bought a few days earlier... BUT the bottle of water stank (so I thought) so I dumped it out... and since I don't like to drink un-Brita-cized Chicago tap water I thought I would just grab a bottle of my favorite iced tea... so I did what any normal person would and I opened the door to the refrigerator: holder of many things thirst quenching and hunger reducing - NOT exactly the place you expect to be greeted by the warm, fetid air of four days worth of unplugged refrigerated food - which had morphed into the smell of a decaying corpse! And that was just the  refrigerator section...

Upon fearfully peeling the freezer door open, I was immediately accosted and MORE sickened from the kick in the gut/face/nostrils I received by the rude, overly boisterous, attention hungry smell of rotten chicken and fish, AKA: salmonella! I have never felt more nauseous from an odor, except once when changing a baby's diaper at too young an age with overly excitable gag-reflexes... I know what you're thinking, "why was the chicken and fish rotten if it was in the freezer??" Now, come on, would I leave you hanging like that? I might IF I thought it would teach you a lesson... I digress...

If you missed the sentence with the words, "UNPLUGGED REFRIGERATED FOOD," here it is again in all it's glory... that being retyped means if the refrigerator was unplugged, the freezer atop the refrigerator section was TOO! This is where I housed my organic boneless, skinless, chicken breast and fish from well-known organic and specialty food retailer. The frozen vegetables, breakfast food and frozen confections shared this cold abode with the salmonella drippers' also... EVERY THING WAS DEFROSTED, MELTED AND PACKAGING BLOATED  from sitting neglected by the circuit breaker that went on vacation shortly after I did. It was quite a sad crime scene.

So, at around 1:30 IN THE MORNING I was up to my yellow-latex-gloved-eaten-by-previous-cleaning- supplies elbows with paper towels and disinfecting wipes in hand to sop up all that was sacrificed to the electrical system's absence. I gagged. I winced. I did what I had to do: clean it up and throw it all away. Hundreds of dollars worth of food... it made me furious and sad at the same time!! Poor innocent food. Poor innocent budget of mine.

This all came to pass because I had lodged an order for repairs to an area of the plaster ceiling that was hanging down from water damage due to water leaking in the apartment above mine. This damage was found in the living room and bathroom. There were also some electrical problems with the light switches in the bathroom. SOOOOOO while they (the apartment maintenance people) were doing their job, they thoughtlessly forgot to complete the assignment. Whilst "fixing" the light switch in the bathroom they used the circuit breaker box and turned off most of the electricity to my apartment. I didn't discover this until an hour after I had returned to my little home... I found my alarm clock flashing how many hours it had been off, silently shrieking to me to reset it and give it a semblance of its former time kept routine. I did what it quietly requested... and I continued with my headache... and then I approached the kitchen and that's when the rest of this entry unfolded!!!

This morning upon sluggishly evacuating the premises of my ravaged by destructive smells of salmonella apartment I ran into one of the people who work in the leasing department. We are "friends." I told her of the events of my return to my apartment and the loss I have experienced and asked her what I should do and if I would be reimbursed for all my lost groceries and she offered her condolences, shrugged her shoulders and said, "Do you have renter's insurance? If not, a whole lotta nothing is probably going to happen in your favor."

Why thank you for those pleasantries. I look forward to more harrowing experiences in the windy city... the city of big shoulders that get shrugged at me frequently!

I shouldn't "SHOULD" all over myself!

So, I SHOULD be working on completing my 40 page thesis document (RIGHT NOW) so the $80,000.00 USD I spent on graduate school won't be in vain... but since beginning this blog thingy the other day... I find myself thinking about it and wanting to write... to empty my "grey matter" so others can probe around in it and see their reflections in it or not! Wow, that was kinda Hamlet-ty! I DIGRESS... in more ways than one! HA!

There are all these "shoulds" I keep encountering in my life:

I SHOULD have been married by now.

I SHOULD have had children by now.

I SHOULD have become a famous actress by now.

I SHOULD, I SHOULD, I SHOULD, I SHOULD... ENOUGH!!!!

I SHOULD, BY NOW, know better than "should-ing" all over myself because it produces nothing more than a whole pile of shame and shoulds!

I received yesterday, via certified mail, my lay-off notice from the school district I gave only one school year to... I am happy to have finally received it. It was the most challenging teaching assignment I have ever had. I can say I hated my time there. I have never disliked a job as much as I disliked this one and I feel I "SHOULDN'T" have... perhaps because I learned so much about the students and the community in which I was teaching. Now, they SHOULD be unhappy and hate their lives, but they don't. They don't make excuses for where they live or HOW they live and they certainly don't complain as much as I did... but maybe I SHOULD give myself a break since I had no idea what I was getting myself into and these students' of mine and their friends and families grew up in it and are thriving... maybe just surviving... or really maybe thriving because they don't allow the poverty, and the crime, that surrounds them to dictate how they SHOULD feel about themselves, their lives, or their futures.

I, on the other hand, take things to heart a lot. I don't know WHO I think I SHOULD be, but often I feel like I need to be Wonder Woman to those I see as less fortunate than me. Is that arrogant? Perhaps. Maybe I am the less fortunate one because I haven't acquired the thick skin that most of my students have at such a young age, and I think I SHOULD have by my age. But I really feel a deep sense of need to give of myself to those that haven't had the same opportunities that I have been blessed with, but how, if when they look at me they see something so different from them just by the color of my skin? You see, I SHOULD have been born in another era. I SHOULD have been born another race. My skin SHOULD be a different color. Or should it? 

As the school year wound down, my students and some of their family members, stopped seeing my skin color as a disadvantage at reaching and teaching them... so much so, that at the end of the year, my students said, "AH, Ms. Cunningham you SHOULD come back here to teach next year!" "They SHOULDN'TA laid you off, you're the best teacher this school ever had!" I didn't know how to explain that when your position is eliminated and you've been told you're laid off you can't do anything about it. The funny thing is my students' knew how I felt about working there. They knew I didn't approve of a lot of their behavior, especially one class period. However, they also knew I loved them and they didn't get it... I don't get me sometimes either. Maybe it's because I SHOULD have had children by now... and I guess I DO... my students', many of them, are like the children I have yet to birth... IF that is even ever to happen. I do love them. I SHOULD love them, they came to love me even though I really SHOULDN'T have made it through the school year. I was determined to prove to some of my "brats" that it doesn't matter what color your skin is, you SHOULD try to embrace everyone because you CAN learn from anyone.

One disrespectful student disrupted my class one day to verbally punch me with, "Ms. Cunningham, you're not going to last here!" He meant the school year. At times I thought he might be right and perhaps to spite him, I stuck it out to the bitter end. This same student became one of my cheerleaders... he didn't like his classmates' being rude to me or even getting close to me because he felt protective of me in some ways... it was kind of sweet the seeming jealousy he acquired toward me. He shouldn't have had this transformation, but love does that sometimes. Love SHOULD NOT see color, or any other life circumstance get in the way of its transforming ways... I guess it didn't. I shouldn't have loved that student. I shouldn't miss any of them, but I do - that's what love SHOULD do... to me too.

I SHOULD get to work on my thesis now.

Dreams Realized...

I have had the fortunate luxury of having some of my dreams come true... but what do you do when they have "come true," or, "come to pass," or, "come to fruition?" 

There is something viscerally satisfying about the struggle of pursuing a dream that seems to wane upon realization... it seems to settle down into your toes like a fungal infection that goes undetected for a while... or maybe not... that's too dramatic.

It's just simply sweet to have a dream realized... perhaps the painful part is figuring out what to do when you have a dream realized. For instance, when I was 16 or 17, I saw my first dream car. It was what looked to me like a miniature Jaguar... what I discovered about this little classic car is that it was a 1966 122 S Volvo Amazon. What I didn't realize was how rare they had become at that fragile time of my teenaged years when everything was important and shaped who I'd become (eventually) after treading the shallow waters of the baby pool that was my adolescence. 

When I look back at this precious dream realized, I see that I was just as stubborn and hearty, as the body of this dream car I lusted for for sooooooo long. The 122 S Volvo Amazon is the reason Volvo has its reputation today for being the safest car on the road and having never seen a dead person pulled from the wreckage of one... I, on the other hand, have been unable to avoid accidents in their varied forms: car, heart, clothing, social, etc. I have, however, been able to survive these collisions because of my sturdy frame... but, back to the car...

The day I saw my first classic Volvo, it was over. I searched high and low for one of my own and whenever my little eye would spy one of these beauties I would squeal and guffaw and visibly salivate almost to the point of choking! The day I was able to take a test drive, actually sit in the passenger seat of the 4-speed dream running on 12-volts, I was beside myself. I was even more beside myself when my parents decided we could not afford it for my first car. That was okay. I couldn't drive stick at the time... so when I was blessed with my first car, a 1972 baby-blue VW Beetle, I learned quickly (all by myself) how to drive stick and then it only took me a measlely 15 years (after seeing my first classic Volvo) to FINALLY get my own 1967 122 S Volvo Amazon.

I drove Beepy Vuh-Leep, named for its penchant for beeping intermittently on its own, randomly and usually at awkward moments where hot men were sitting in their not-as-cool-cars at a stop light with us - perhaps to keep me humble - but I drove her till she decided she didn't like being driven and just wanted to sit in the driveway and watch as the other younger, newer models drove by with their precious cargo on board... I think she was trying to kill me at some points because the gas fumes that leaked would get to me. That is when I discovered Beepy was sick. She needed a lot of work like any antique that needed restoring... or any dream that has been deferred for a while... and so she saw her share of mechanics. She was blessed with many specialists, so usually their diagnosis of Beepy was not as bleak as how she responded when she was released from their care. 

At times it felt like Beepy didn't want to be with me in the driveway of our home, but on her own in an assisted care facility where she could relate to other classic Volvos! I didn't want to let her go... ever! And I didn't. Perhaps like a negligent family member, I ignored her cries for freedom to roam to another garage where she would have undoubtedly found more pleasant pastures. But there was something in me that thought I could help her. I could save her. I didn't have the ability or the technology; she would not become the Bionic Woman or the 6 Million Dollar Man VOLVO! She would become the hood ornament of my youth. A reminder of how I pursued a dream and didn't let go until it was realized and how it hurts to not see a dream realized right away and sometimes hurts more when it is realized and unable to be kept alive on your own gumption!

I was merely the second owner of my baby... my DREAM car... my California black license plated, 4-door, 4-speed, original 33lbs. of  ivory paint, 12-volt, 122 S Volvo Amazon. I felt so cool driving around town in her... sometimes scared when it felt like her brakes were going to fail, but cool nonetheless during a time in life where nothing seemed nor felt cool... and I'm not talking about my teens... remember I didn't get my "dream" car till 15 years after I saw my first one... I'm talking about my 30's...

Let's steer away from that for a moment. I will revisit my 30's on here at a later date. I want to continue to wax nostalgic on my dream car I had for a few years... yes, only a few years were had with the beauty, otherwise known as: Beepy Vuh-Leep, because as of a few weeks ago she went to her 3rd and final home. Let's hope it's her final home/resting place where she will be pampered and restored to her former glory... something I couldn't afford and didn't account for when I initially invested in her. Sometimes you don't realize what it takes to realize and, I guess, maintain a dream... but someone else may... and I hope it's this 3rd owner.

Knowing I will no longer have my dream car feels a little bitter and sweet. Sweet that I was blessed to realize a dream, bitter that it had to be let go. Yes, it was just a car with 33 lbs. of lead-based paint, but I didn't eat any of the paint so I'm still alive to attest to the fact that dreams can come true... even if it takes a while and you don't get to keep them forever... the memories will forever stay alive in my mind and on my flashdrive through megapixels and jpegs.