News of the (mid) week

Molly Ivins, RIP

Here's the first hot flash - We finally got a car. We've been driving a 1994 Geo Prizm with 104,000 miles on it. It's been a great car but the door is rusting off and the gearshift is failing -- it's a standard transmission -- so the ride is really jerky.

Today, after a couple of years of lusting -- sometimes I think I moved to Amherst just so I could buy a station wagon -- we got a 2006 silver Subaru Outback with charcoal gray interior. It's got a heated windshield and side mirrors, a wiper on the rear window, and heated front seats. Heated front seats! Who ever heard of that! I thought those only came in Porsches and with leather seats, which this does not have. These butt-warmers will be lovely on those 10-degree mornings; I can't wait.

Dave drove it home from the dealer and said, you know those speed bumps by Amherst College? You don't even notice them in this car. It's warm, roomy, warm, comfortable, warm, and apparently easy to drive -- I haven't dared yet. Well, we just got it. Did I mention the heat works really well? It also has one of those LED dials that tells you how many more miles you can drive before you need to fill up. I feel like I'm on the Star Trek set.

We'll keep the Prizm for now, and fix it and use it for what we called in the old country a station car. Dave hankers for a hybrid, so maybe that's next. Meanwhile he got another booster seat for Lily and now we are a two-car family. How bizarre. How ungreen of me, I know, but we do need a reliable car here.

The second big piece of news is that Lily finally made it onto the ski lift last Wednesday and went on an even bigger hill yesterday. Dave said it was kinda scary, steep and icy, and mostly man-made snow. Lily took a tumble at one point and Dave skiied down and found her crying, with one ski here and another one over there. She was fine but had had the wind knocked out of her and she was afraid she'd broken her leg. One more week of lessons to go, and she's still having a ball. This is also why we moved here, along with the bird's nest she found outside our door recently that now resides on our piano.

The third news item is that while they were skiing yesterday I was off getting our skates sharpened. There's only one place north of Springfield, apparently, now that Fenton's in Amherst has lost their lease. That's F. J. Rogers Co. in Florence. I was over in Northampton anyway so I stopped by and had the deed done by the owner.

While I was there I noticed the rack of hockey sticks, and remembering my dream in elementary school, got a puck and each of us a stick. I am a terrible skater, as I've mentioned, and I figured, and the salesman agreed, that having a stick in my hand could help my balance and give me something to do on the ice. So, who knows, maybe I will actually learn to skate.

Finally, Lily had her first dentist appointment here. No news to report there, except that it's stressful to do everything for the first time. It took me several weeks to work up the courage to try a new hair sylist, and she not only did a fine job and I got lots of compliments afterwards, but it cost $22!

Today the car salesman asked us if we missed New York City, and with a very quick beat we both said no. Yup, there's stress, but it's still okay, and we have faith this will work for us, that it is working for us.