Trey becomes a Real Person

Rather like the Velveteen Rabbit, although much less depressingly, Trey is turning into a Real Person, as several people have noted; He bought a car on Friday. We will post pictures of the car tomorrow; he got a 1994 Ford Taurus wagon with 121,000 miles on it and paid $1,600 for it at the auction. Almost everything works except for the two rear windows and the rear defogger which needs to be re-soldered. Even the air conditioner works! It is in very good shape and has four new tyres on it. I insisted on a station wagon on the theory that a wagon would be better taken care of than an ordinary sedan- - it is probably harder/less tempting to abuse a station wagon by drag racing it or whatever. The auction also is not as cheap as it used to be; I was hoping for great bargains, but the thing runs beautifully- it pulled strongly all the way home from Newnan very quietly and without shaking or shuddering or smoking and shifted well. We considered several cars before this one fell into his price range- but one we rejected was a minivan which was being wholesaled by Nigeria Automotive Sales. Now if the Nigerians are giving it up- you know it's no good. Don't ever buy anything used from an immigrant (or people who lived through the Depression) because they will eke every last squidgeon of life out of it before giving it up.

So this is good progress; two steps forward, hopefully no steps back but he is trying. He is being the best Trey that he can be, which is a Good Thing. And not an easy thing, but Worth It. He also had a Deluxe Fit last week, replete with intermission and then Second Act (same as the first); some long, incomprehensible Fit because there was a newspaper and some cigarette ends on the sun porch. He had a sustained Fit for about three hours, and then took a two hour nap, and then got up and had more of the same Fit.

Also we listed the house; we have a different agent this time and this chap will hopefully market it more aggressively than was done previously. He told me not to do anything more to it, which I was rather doubtful about, but so be it; he said the buyer was either going to tear it down or want to fix it themselves so I said fine. The house is listed at 149,840, and if I can get very close to that with commission I will be happy.

The dinner party turned out well. I enjoy cooking immensely. We had homemade lasagna, shrimp with tarragon-cream sauce over wilted spinach, and salad with prosciutto (Alex didn't know what it was; I told him it was a sort of vegetable) and blue cheese and walnuts and balsamic vinagrette dressing which I made myself and we also had tiramisu which no one ate because they were full, and I also made a pitcher of gin cocktails which involved lemons, honey and lavender. Now I know how to make pink lemonade.

Alex requires another intervention; he stated that he thought that doing his taxes by hand rather than on the computer was "fun." "I like to add up all the numbers," he said. This frightens me. In a few years, I can see him talking about which number is his favourite to type. And this scares me! He even offered to balance my checkbook, because it would be "fun" also. I told him about my check writing method, which consists of grabbing whichever checkbook comes to hand and writing checks out of them, and I never write down the amounts or balance it either. I wait for the statement to come and remember what I spent where. This horrified Alex's little accountant mind. You have asterisks all over your statement! He said. Thsi appalled him. Right now, he wants badly to get a girlfriend, but I don't want him to meet a girl accountant and then have little accountant children, that would be scary. So he has to meet a nice, normal girl, by which I mean someone who does not use the word "fun" and "tax forms" in the same breath. Mind you, this is also someone who thinks painting on things with nail varnish is NOT fun and does not like decorating pottery or making curtains or anything interesting (and he glued his tree back together) so I don't see how he's going to meet any nice young lady.

Camilla and Charles got MARRIED, which I do not care about at all except for the fact that there exist, for some reason, COMMEMORATIVE souvenir items of the event. This to me is disgusting; I cannot for the life of me conceive of who would want to purchase an item commemmorating the wedding of two people one does not know and did not attend. I have been to baby baptisms and kept the souvenir, but then it was given to me and I actually attended and enjoyed the food/drink immensely. Probably the worst thing about the Camilla/Charles wedding items is that many of them feature Camilla/Charles' FACES. Honestly, could you pick two LESS attractive people to get married? And to leer at you from a shelf? Yuck. At least they're past the age of conception. That would be one seriously ugly baby. (insert your own ugly baby joke).

Jane Fonda has a new book out, which inevitably talks about her involvement in Vietnam. That witch. I am so envious of her being able to parlay this into an entire career- think about it. Would anyone- anywhere-still be interested in Jane Fonda if she hadn't gone to Vietnam and said what she said? What is she famous for besides going to Vietnam? Perhaps I should go to North Korea or Cuba to achieve notoriety. She hasn't made a movie in years- her exercise videos are - well, no one cares what Richard Simmons has to say, nor do they care about the Tae-Bo guy- and she hasn't been married to Ted Turner for some time and no one cares what he has to say either. If people really think what she said was wrong, they should shut up about it and stop paying attention to it; that would serve her right.