No! Please Don't Take My Car!

"The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond." --Edward McDonagh

I watched a "Save Energy!" cartoon clip on Eutube earlier this week. (For IR. I'm afraid I don't usually watch the European Union's promotional material just for fun.) Of course it featured
all those things that magazines and elementary schools all promote today--change your lightbulbs, turn down the thermostat a few degrees, caulk any gaps in your windows, turn off the water when you brush your teeth, unplug appliances when not in use. Yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and there's one more that's always mentioned: either walk, bike, or take public transportation to work/school if at all possible. Carpool if you absolutely must.

It reminded me of a growing trend throughout the world today--not just the green trend, but the trend towards seeing the car as the enemy.

On one hand, I completely understand it. Individual cars are definitely a problem when it comes to carbon emissions, and carbon emissions are an enormous issue in the fight to stabilize the planet's temperature. Global warming frightens me; I don't want to hurt the earth, especially since I live on a skinny strip of beach that rising temperatures and sea levels could easily put in jeopardy.

But...excuse me for stereotyping liberals, but I can't bring myself to quite take the same view of the liberal greenikins (my word. isn't it great? and I do fully approve of many things the greenikins do. I'm even one myself in some ways) about cars. It may just be that I'm selfish. I was happy when gas came down because it means that driving is cheaper for me, if not any better for the environment. I love driving. (I mean, I can't for the life of me identify what most things in my car are, and I've no idea how to tell most cars apart, but cars are just part of life...I mean, seriously. My daddy owns an auto repair shop. They just are. And we've had enough different types in our driveway over the years, rom the bronco to the MR2, that, well, you don't just cut cars out of everyday existence.) And I can't help but think that an awful lot of people feel the same way I do--we want the environment to be healthy, but not to give up driving. After all, driving is part of the American dream, right? An endless expanse of roadways through the countryside from sea to shining sea, the freedom to jangle the keys and be gone in a moment, that magical 16th birthday, simply the feeling of riding down the highway with the radio up and the wind blowing through your hair. The mobility, the independence, the feeling that we're all united under the fickle whims of oil prices. Pickup trucks, 18-wheelers, jeeps, hybrids, minivans, luxury cars...all together on one ribbon of highway. Just think about all the driving music out there--it's basically a requirement of every country and most rock stars to sing about the joys of driving at some point in their career. C'mon: Life is a Highway. We Rode in Trucks. Roll On Eighteen Wheeler. Drive. All I Wanted Was a Car. Maybe everybody does it, but it still manages to feel like freedom manifested. You have distinct control over your car. Driving feels downright patriotic!

I don't want to take public transportation. Or carpool, really. And I certainly don't want to bike--it's cold outside!

Driving with friends can be fun, certainly. The teenage roadtrip has an eternal place in the American heart. My friend Myles and I drove what amounted to seven and a half hours to and from Virgina a few weeks ago, and had a fantastic time; some of my favorite dance memories involve the times all the advanced girls used to pile into Korie or Elissa or Olivia's car, turn the music up loud, and seatdance all the way to Mama Kwan's or Barefoot Bernie's. It's fun to ride and gossip in the backseat of Dr. Hall's car with Kate and Natalie. I love car rides with my mama, or being in my car singing every word of "We Didn't Start the Fire" or "Devil Went Down to Georgia" with my brothers. Some of the very best times David and I have had resulted from driving to and from school or Wal-Mart or simply driving for the sake of driving and having time to talk...down the bypass, up the beach road, down Moreshore, down Kitty Hawk Road, down the bypass, up the beach road, down to Duck, the back way back to the bypass through Southern Shores, down the beach road, down to Manteo and back...singing loudly or musing about how whenever he gets married, I get to be his best man (maid? whatever) and how one day we're both going to be famous and rich and save the world.

Don't laugh. We're young and dreaming is free even if gas isn't.

Yes, I realize that teenagers in Europe have lots of fun on the subway. I've ridden the Parisian subway system and the public taxiboats in Venice. Heck, I got lost in the tube station in London! And my friends and I had a marvelous time grabbing onto the poles and giggling at each other as we tried to keep from falling each time it jerked. And sitting on top of each other. And putting pop rocks in Connor's mouth when he was asleep on the train. (Hey, it wasn't my idea--I just participated. Insert conniving chuckle here.) But seriously, I think if it hadn't been a novel experience for us, it wouldn't have had the same funness factor that riding together in a car does back in America.

And also...there's nothing like driving by yourself. I should know. Driving by myself to dance nearly every day at first, and now driving the 231 miles home as often as possible, I've spent a great deal of time in my jeep (both my beautiful blue jeep now and my lovable old gray jeep now in David's custodianship). At the moment, my car is the only fully me spot in the universe. There are just so darn many people in the world, and they're always in the places I want to be. I mean, I've got my spaces. I've got home...specifically my bedroom. But that's over four hours away. I've got my house and room here. But I live with 21 other young adults. There's nowhere I can think of except my car where I can sing really, really loudly (and not very well) and not worry at all about it. And talk to myself--or to anybody else who needs a good talking-to or lengthy explanation of my side of things (it's not a requirement that they be able to hear me). Come to think of it, I've probably spent more time crying in my car in the past year than I have anywhere else. A car is just a very private place. It's your own little bubble, complete with the temperature the way you want, your music the volume you want, and the windows the way you want. Plus, driving's one of those things where you see results relatively quickly, and I enjoy that. It's just...individualistic, whereas public transportation is decidedly not.

I dread the day when I have to take a bus to get somewhere and leave my keys gathering dust.

That's the end of my driving-obsessed rant. I do apologize if anybody fervently against individual transportation takes offense to this. But I don't think I have anything to worry about.

Welcome to Awkwardsville.

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. ~Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Yes, I just used that quote. I used it because I am dealing with this right now. Not directly, of course.

I have been sexiled.

In case you're unfamiliar with the term, the Urban Dictionary defines sexiled as "When politely asked or forced from one's room in order to create the private atmosphere most roommates need for coitus with their special friends. Incidentally, it is what I am right now." I'm not joking. That's how it's defined. Go check out http://www.urbandictionary.com/ if you don't believe me. (It's not a site that tends to use pleasant language, but it's very popular around here.)

My roommate's boyfriend is over for the weekend. I really do love her, and I really can't blame my sexile entirely on her...she meant no harm; she thought I'd be out of town from Friday until Monday because I was going to my grandmother's house. Except I'm not out of town from Friday til Monday. I'm out of town from Saturday monday until Sunday afternoon. But I didn't realize that our ideas of "Katherine is leaving" differed, and at this point, I have no wish to crash her weekend. Or sleep three people in a room with two beds. Awkward. Intensely awkward. So instead, I'm letting her think I am out of town, and after being in the library for a little while I realized I didn't want to spend eight hours in the library and now I'm sitting in the Hearth Lounge at Moselely. There are plugs here for my laptop, so I'm pretty content with it, plus I can people watch and get refills on my Cherry Coke. Tonight I'm going to be sleeping in the lounge upstairs, which is ironically enough DIRECTLY above my room, and cutting into my own bathroom via my suitemates' door (the rest of the dorm is aware of my unfortunate predicament, and fully supportive, although they seem to think it's rather humorous. Which it is. Only not if you're the one sleeping on the couch with only a few blankets when it's snowing outside. And I'm serious about the snow, too. Frozen precipitation is in today's weather forecast, and it was white when I woke up this morning).

Now, I would feel guilty about putting this out there online except that Mama already knows about it and I'm certain that there aren't any children reading this. My roommate does not know about this blog. In fact, only Mama and Aunt Tonnye and maybe Aunt Brett read this, so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to end up with the horrid publicly-spilling-all roommate award.

I would be doing a bit better if I hadn't been inadvertently banned from Facebook. See, my roommate and I are obviously Facebook friends, and seeing as how she thinks I'm driving home right now, it would look rather odd if she checked her Facebook and saw all this FB activity. For one thing, I haven't any internet in my car. So instead I'm restricted to messaging. Not being able to change my status every fifteen minutes is seriously killing me, you don't even understand. However, FB exile should be lifted around six, because that's when I usually get home, so that's the limit I set for myself. In the meantime, I think I'm going to blog again. I have a really good topic that's been in the back of my mind for a while. :]

Sigh. I can't WAIT for tomorrow morning. Being sexiled is about as much fun as having class on Monday and Tuesday when so many other colleges are out for Thanksgiving already, or doing the writing part of my Global powerpoint.

In other words, it's rotten.

Craftiness

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Isn't that a lovely quote? I really like that one. Sewing has always been one of those things I've really enjoyed--well, craftiwork in general--from when I was pretty little to now. I just don't have as much time anymore.

However, lately I've had a little more free time than I have in the past. That might possibly be a lie. I don't know that I have any more time, necessarily, but since I was at school all last weekend and I worked really diligently, I did have free time on Sunday, which I used to begin a little bit of needlework, finishing a little fairy doll I started long, long ago. When Lora got home Sunday night, she looked at me on my bed with my bits of felt and thread and asked if she could make a dragon. Of course! So we spent an hour or so being the only two college freshmen on campus spending any part of the weekend playing with craft supplies and musing about whether her dragon or my wizard would win an Arthurian battle. (Correct answer: my wizard.) And then I wanted to try out some of the new stitches in my embroidery book, so I began practicing with silver thread on some fuschia felt (this is really nice, soft, thick, smooth felt, I ordered a lot of it from--I think it was Hearthsong--around two years ago) and although I eventually had to go to bed, leaving something uncompleted just bugs me...so every spare moment--and a few that weren't so much spare as procrastination--for the next week, I spent stitching this and that. It's been a really long time since I had time to do anything like that, and I forgot how soothing it was. My mama likes to quilt; I'd like to but don't really have the patience for long, straight lines and the big-projectness of it. I would've gone crazy hemming sheets in the olden days. I like to see results more quickly, and embroidery does that--you can spend days on a flower, or minutes, depending on how you feel, but it's gonna get done in a decent amount of time, and you get to use pretty colors and different types of stitching, and so it's interesting, but you don't have to count, so you can let your mind wander a little.

To put things in perspective, I haven't had the chance to work on this poor little doll since last Thanksgiving at Aunt Brett's house. Although I have managed to knit a little so far in college (and I mean, it's November. It's been a while), I began a new knitting project on Saturday, too. My dorm (well, nine people from my dorm, anyway) spent Saturday in Old Salem, but at 11 that night seven of us squeezed onto the couch in the classroom to watch Casablanca, and, since I don't really need to be able to see or think all that hard about simple seed and stockinette stitches, I worked on a dishcloth. And on Monday night, when I had to go halfway across campus to the Koury Business Center Digital Theatre to see a documentary on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called Standard Operating Procedure, I took my knitting and got quite a bit done. Who knew torture and knitting would go so well together?

I admit that I did get a strange look or two at the documentary showing. It reminded me of the old ladies who like to peek over my shoulder when I knit at my grandparents' church, certain that the scarf I'm knitting is really a pair of baby booties. (Insert pair of rolling eyes here. They're nice people, but they breed them suspicious over there. I think they feel they're justified as long as they remind me that "Jesus loves you forever'n'ever, child, no matter what happens!" Sigh.) My ethics teacher, who was sitting behind me, seemed very interested in my work, at least, and Dr. Swimelar smiled at me. (She's liked me better lately, though, because I've started talking more in class.) Plus I got two inches done, so I really didn't care what anybody else thought.

Now, this weekend I'm here again, and I need to spend time on homework, of course--I have a huge paper due for Global on Tuesday, and I want to make it seriously excellent, plus work for other classes--and I'll be sure to spend some time with my dormmates, but I'll probably have time for some sewing and knitting, which makes me ridiculously happy. Recharging time!

I wanted to post some pictures, anyway.

1. Coaster front (the back is plain green). Bordered in blanket stitch, then, somewhat in order, pekinese, heavy chain, bonnet, herringbone, feather, double feather, wheatear chain, coral, wave, star, sheaf, closed feather, basque, open chain, Chinese knot and backstitch, lazy daisy and coral, spiderweb + coral + lazy daisy, Jacobean couching, vandyke. It looks a lot better in real life, seriously.

2. This is my Thanksgiving-colored dolly, no name yet. That skirt was originally in four tiny pieces, and now it's adorable, right? I love her.

3. This is Lora's voodoo doll and my dolly. No comment.

4. I was on my bed; this is Lora crafting on the floor. I'm afraid I have no pictures of the epic dragon. Haha, oh well.