Through a Spotted Windshield

The wipers swish across the windshield as the drudge of traffic rolls hesitantly on in the falling rain. Huge trucks zoom by at breakneck speed, causing alarm as my car rocks back and forth and is buried in a veil of filthy mist. I sigh.

I average about 500 miles a week between work, family obligations and appointments, and that’s only if I don’t have anything going on during the weekend. I see a lot through my spotted windshield – a lot of ugliness in human behavior, a lot of stupidity. And an occasional glimpse of courtesy and niceness. On the average, I avoid 4 accidents a day simply by paying attention to others who are driving like idiots, and I hope that I am not an idiot that others have to avoid, although I do have bonehead moments. But I also see a lot of landscapes, some of which are beautiful. If I go the back way (the 118), I pass by orchards which for some reason remind me of the patchwork gardens in that ride at Disneyland. There are a lot of blue skies and pretty clouds. Sometimes someone has a dog who is sticking its head out of the window, dog lips flapping happily in the breeze, a thin line of drool following, or if the dog is little, hanging out in the space between the back seat and the rear windshield, basking in the sun.

Driving so much gets hard – hard on your body and hard on your soul. It is three hours of my life every day that I could be doing something else. It is adding to the ultimate destruction of the planet (as well as the padding of my rump). And it gets frustrating when the freeways get jammed and there is no end in sight. But I get to rock out when the music is good, and I get to talk to my mom a lot. Sometimes I just think a lot, too, but more often than not I think of sad things and turn the radio on to distract me.

I pulled into work this morning, grabbed my umbrella and trudged into the office, glad to have made it. And in a few hours, I will trudge back out, ready to do it all over again. Yet I am happy. I have no plans tonight, so I plan to go straight home, make something really nice to eat, and perhaps take a bath with the lavender soap I got for Christmas. A nice cup of tea, my favorite show, and a foot rub later, the Naughty Gato, the Dingo and I will curl up in nocturnal hibernation. Then tomorrow, I will get up and do it all again.