MOMENTS OF LUCIDITY
It's been a strange day, mentally, and I want to make it clear that neither alcohol nor any drug, legal or otherwise, had anything to do with it.
It started early with that old "WKRP in Cincinnati" earworm awakening me later than I usually sleep. Kiefer was there beside me, along with both cats. They all seemed a little pissed that I was getting dressed. But I knew that I couldn't spend any time today in that recliner. It's one of those motorized thingies that go back with a push-button instead of a crank. Recently the right side lingers longer than the left, causing a sort of whomperjawedness that twists my back into a modified "S" shape if I stay in it very long. So I went shopping.
Buying air conditioner filters at Lowe's didn't do it for me, so I headed to Lewisville and my favorite cheap jewelry mecca. That wasn't the start of the strangeness, but when I was driving home, I saw a red convertible Toyota Solara. I've never been a top-down person but that one knocked my socks off. Or would have if I had worn socks instead of my wonderful new flipflops that my friend Trimble says make me look as though I should be floating down the Nile on a barge. Yes, they are that wonderful.
But I digress.
The red convertible was as firmly entrenched in my mind as the WKRP song. I drove home and immediately fired up Google to see what they cost and where I could get one. Now I have never been much of a Toyota fan, and I never before wanted a convertible. Furthermore, I can't afford a new car, convertible or otherwise. But now I HAD to have one. Had to. But I couldn't find one in a later model. My guess is that one of the sanity gods saw this whole lapse coming and commanded Toyota to stop making the things.
So I chilled for a few moments and then it happened again. I HAD to travel to New Orleans. Tomorrow, if possible. I've never been there or even drunk a Hurricane and can't afford a vacation but I was on a mission. I checked airline schedules and foraged for a train (not happening) and delved into boutique hotels. I finally got hungry and settled for pizza and one of those Dominoes brownies with melted chocolate in the middle and everything got warm and fuzzy and the urge faded.
I went to bed with a book and a glass of buttermilk. And suddenly, I was CONVINCED there was something swimming in the buttermilk. I didn't see it because I couldn't bring myself to look in the glass. Could it have been a shark? A spider, Dr. Johnny Fever? I don't know. I just kept sipping and not looking and telling myself that nothing was swimming in my buttermilk, silly, until the glass was empty. But something was down there. Maybe something is now doing the breast stroke in my stomach. I refuse to dwell on that.
I believe that had I simply put down my book and gone off to sleep I would be better in the morning and have forgotten this whole day like a bad dream. But somehow I knew you'd want to know about the shortage of Solaras, the price of a trip to The Crescent City and the monsters that lurk in the milky deeps. And now you do.
I'm back to bed now, to dream of nothing much, I hope. Maybe I won't sleep at all. But if all else fails, I always have WKRP. In Cin-cin-atttttttti....
Good night
There's a Solara just as you describe it, in pristine condition, at the Toyota shop in McKinney. However, it belongs to the owner, who's just put it there so people can oogle it in awe...I'm told he'd come closer to selling his firstborn than his Solara.
ReplyDeleteNew Orleans...ahhh yes, that toddlin' town, home to every vice known to man, and some yet to be discovered. It's America's most interesting city (Sorry New Yorkers.) and yeah, the Irish coffee at Pat O'Brien's is really that good. Everybody needs to visit New Orleans at least once, and if you go once, you'll go again. When you do, don't ask what they put in the gumbo...you're better off not knowing.
Kiefer's not gonna know what to do when you replace the old recliner...but something tells me, he'll cope. Dogs are good at that...they'd make good boy scouts, but boy scouts won't take dogs. Gays yes...canines no. What's wrong with that picture?
Unless the buttermilk came straight from the cow, I'm thinking you were just the victim of an overactive imagination. I drink it all the time, cook with it too, and I almost never have anything go for a swim in my buttermilk. Not saying it couldn't happen...but most anything that might do the dog paddle in the buttermilk would probably prefer something else, beer, wine coolers, hard lemonade, the cats' water dish. I think you're probably good to go...unless you drink out of the cats' water dish.
Don't listen to Kiefer and the cats. They have an agenda...just sayin'.