"No time for worry 'cause we're on the roam again."

I did not mean to get the car I got. I tried to get them to give me a Camry or something. But car after car was already rented or had the engine check light on or was just plain not available. And I ended up driving off in a Jeep Laredo. Black with tinted windows. Like I'm a drug dealer. Or in the FBI. It's not the car I wanted, but it's better than no car at all. Better by far. and I drove it to Hollywood with the music playing good and loud, and I parallel parked it like a champ. A champ with the propensity to overcorrect.

I used to always notice when it was the Ides of March. I used to always think wryly to myself, "Yup. It figures." Even if nothing bad was happening. I buy calendars now, but only because I like what they're about. My current one is another Edward Gorey-themed desk diary. Just like last year's. But I don't really write in it very regularly. I don't sit at a desk much. I don't carry a briefcase. I don't keep track with the same fervor I used to. That's something I've noticed.

And I don't know if I will be bummed about it later. If I suddenly find myself back on the keeping-track kick. I used to keep a diary of a sordid sort. A tally book basically. And I was dedicated to keeping it up so that one day -- perhaps on my death bed -- I would be able to say, "The number is 'x,'" "x" being the number that it would be at that time. But then I was laid off from a job, and my routine was jangled. The routine of going into the office each day and penning a tally mark or two into that notebook. When I was unemployed and staying at home, I didn't keep up the practice. And all of a sudden, it was a few weeks later and there was no way to be certain that I would be able to recall the tally accurately. And a few months later, when I was in a frenzy of throwing things away to prepare for a changing-up of the living situation, I rashly tossed that spiral notebook into the makeshift dustbin, believing that it no longer served a purpose. And maybe believing that I was only ever going to be with the same one person, so what different did it make what our number was? We were way up there by that point. But now, years later, I occasionally remember that notebook and wonder what could have possessed me to throw it away. It was not important or lovely or useful, really, but it was something I'd had for so long, and it had years' worth of fingerprints and changed pens and fraying edges and bent spirals. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believe that such time-tells eventually bring an inanimate object to life. And that makes me feel remorse for having chucked an object that had been with me for so much of my memory-making. It is not the only time a human being was likely sorry for having discarded something upon having misread its value. And perhaps not the only time that the act of discarding proved irrevocable.

I don't think I would even have noticed that it was March 15 if I hadn't seen it in the blog entry interface. I think when people tell you that time passes faster as you get older, they don't realize that it's because you slowly stop bothering to keep track of it. Movies seem short when you sleep through them, too.

I was surprised I was able to get it into my garage with such a big, black car. And I think it's time for a road trip.