Not myself while on vacation

I've picked vacation days this week like peaches. I'll go in on certain days, like when I don't have to labor. Overlook those, you know. But today, they'd have me eight hours on the assembly line. So,Vacation Time! I pick this day.

Friday through Sunday too. I know when to stay home from the paper. Tomorrow I'll go in and read The Times and accept store returns for two hours. (Returns is a simple clerical job but I left some impossibly complicated instructions for my temporary replacement, who is the boxx's secretary. This should leave me in good stead. I can hear him remarking of me: "he's very thorough-going, that what's-his-name".)

So, I've been going in but I've felt like it's been a holiday since Sunday. Could seem like ten days but all in all, but I'm taking only 24 hours (paid) vacation. Have I mentioned, I think they are very generous since I'm still a part-timer and have only been at the paper about 10 months.

The weather is splendid, squinty-August with a daily temperature range of twenty degrees between the 70's and 90's. No rain. I like the grass scrunching under foot, not asking for anything but silently, "water! water!" She doesn't need mowing, isn't making herself a spectacle to shame or distinguish us from the neighboring crack-houses and bordellos.


Something about the evenings, I'll be driving and make an impulsive, sudden, LEFT! RIGHT! LEFT! Into strange neighborhoods. BACK UP! PARK.


ooooh, this doesn't look safe. is this where the tough kids go to school?

I don't linger.

Today I drove my Imaginary Girl-Friend/affectionate Pooka all around town, shopping the way we do, where everything is free and often curbside. Still furnishing her apartment, which she knows I plan to make my Autumn retreat eventually. (Like, when she gets cable. And a bed and a table, chairs, microwave...Boy it's going to be great, I hope she doesn't go 'poof!' before then. Or turn into some other type of animal. Humans are the scariest of all, but still...)

Stuck in traffic (no A.C. in my car so we were both a little teched by now) I spotted this Kiddie-Mobile. It looks just right for a show business family, you ask me. And I happen to know a few!




Salesman came out while I was jumping around taking pictures and made the odd remark, "This isn't a library, you know."

Maybe I looked like a bum who hangs in the library.

I asked all sorts of questions, like, "how many carberators?" and "is it front wheel drive?"

"What kind of engine? I mean horse power."

"How old is she? Any leons on it?" (Mans eyes definitly crossed, that last one.)

It was rude of me, taking his time and not even listening to the answers. I think he said I could have it for "a kajillian dollars", before he turned away and headed back to his air conditioned booth.

I think I got you a buyer, I called, "he's only seven but..."