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So I was raised by a thousand-year-old car geek who comes to us untouched from the late 1950s in many, many aspects of his consciousness, and one of the features of my whole life has been that every car has with it a little booklet, and every time that car is fueled, or has maintenance done on it, you pull out the little book, note down the odometer reading and the date, and then write down what was done-- how many gallons of gas at what cost, or an oil change done by whom; services are glibly detailed just so one can get an idea of the specific areas affected. And then, the idea is, one has an idea of the car's performance and can quickly calculate what kind of mileage one is getting, as any abrupt change not otherwise explained (weather, conditions, leaving the car idling in a parking lot for 20 minutes with the AC on so the baby can sleep, that kind of thing) should be investigated.
Anyway.
Dude has an app for that now, but I have stubbornly not switched over. I know that cars now keep track of these things themselves-- but I was also raised to reset the trip odometer with each tank of gas refill, as gas gauges were historically unreliable and it is good to have multiple places you can check in with such a thing.
I have a little book. Every car I've owned, I've had a little book.
The little book in my Subaru has a place: there is a pocket, next to the seat. No, not in the door-- I have a weird little faux-leather stiff pocket thing that inserts between the seat and the center console, which Middle-Little Sister bought me, and the book lives there along with several pens, a giant lead-crystal thing that hung from my mirror for five seconds after someone gave it to me before I realized that was a terrible fucking idea (giant flashy hunk of glass by my head in a moving vehicle! no), and one of those little plastic pocket packs of Kleenex that I never remember is there.
I got gas last in Troy, with useless-sick Z hunched in the passenger's seat. I saw him retrieve the book from the little pocket, and turned on the ignition for him to write down the mileage along with the purchase.
My car has been on like, one little tick of the gas gauge ever since, and the light's on, and the thingy says I have 50 miles left. (Which is utter nonsense, but I've learned to divide that by ten and you get a good idea; however, five miles is a lot farther than you'd think.)
So I pulled into the gas station this morning; I'm in the car since I have to leave early for the cat maintenance appointment.
And I go to pick out the little book, since I usually write down the date and the place while I'm doing the actual fueling.
No little book.
I look under the pocket, which is detachable. No little book.
I look on the floor, where it would fall if one missed the pocket.
No little book.
I look in the door pocket on his side. No little book.
I look in the glove box, and rummage it quite thoroughly. No little book!
Well, I've just spent all the time I had to get gas looking for my little fucking book, so, I drive away without getting gas, and arrive to work on time.
And I text him, in some despair-- he's not going to remember. Either he put it away, or he didn't. Perhaps it fell out of the car door, maybe it wound up in the seat under him and got bundled up in his coat. Maybe it's in my purse or something, or got thrown into the baggage; the car was full of stuff, and I had to unload it all, and I wasn't looking for a little book. He tells me all the time how bad his memory is (with a side of "so you mustn't expect me to remember anything", when the fact of the matter is that both of us have patchy attention spans that only switch to "record" erratically, this is not some special thing that is intrinsic to him and somehow disabling in me), so he won't recall.
He texts me back, as I'm writing this, which gives this entry a much less understandable tone now that I've written all the above. "Center console," with a definite air of, like, of course.
...
My center console does have a little storage compartment in it, but it also has places to plug stuff into it. I hide money in there sometimes, and I store my USB drives in there, and then I throw fast food napkins in there to make it harder for thieves to find said money, and then I know when my car's been broken into (there's someone in our neighborhood that does it C O N S T A N T L Y) because they throw the napkins all over the place (and honestly I don't keep money in there ever anymore for that reason) and anyway, that compartment is really emphatically not where that little book goes.
As he would have to know because he'd retrieved it from the spot where it goes?
Sigh.
Sometimes we have to submit to the mortifying ideal of being known to be loved, but sometimes nobody pays any fucking attention anyway so we just have to bitch about it.
The little book has a hand-braided wool cord affixing its pen to it so that the pen cannot be misplaced. Anon it will have a hand-braided silk cord affixing it to its pocket so that it cannot be PUT BACK IN THE WRONG FUCKING PLACE WHERE I'LL NEVER FIND IT YOU JERK. I just need time to dig out that silk lucet cord I made, and find a hole punch, and figure out how to punch a hole in faux-leather, or maybe I'll glue it...
Anyway.
Dude has an app for that now, but I have stubbornly not switched over. I know that cars now keep track of these things themselves-- but I was also raised to reset the trip odometer with each tank of gas refill, as gas gauges were historically unreliable and it is good to have multiple places you can check in with such a thing.
I have a little book. Every car I've owned, I've had a little book.
The little book in my Subaru has a place: there is a pocket, next to the seat. No, not in the door-- I have a weird little faux-leather stiff pocket thing that inserts between the seat and the center console, which Middle-Little Sister bought me, and the book lives there along with several pens, a giant lead-crystal thing that hung from my mirror for five seconds after someone gave it to me before I realized that was a terrible fucking idea (giant flashy hunk of glass by my head in a moving vehicle! no), and one of those little plastic pocket packs of Kleenex that I never remember is there.
I got gas last in Troy, with useless-sick Z hunched in the passenger's seat. I saw him retrieve the book from the little pocket, and turned on the ignition for him to write down the mileage along with the purchase.
My car has been on like, one little tick of the gas gauge ever since, and the light's on, and the thingy says I have 50 miles left. (Which is utter nonsense, but I've learned to divide that by ten and you get a good idea; however, five miles is a lot farther than you'd think.)
So I pulled into the gas station this morning; I'm in the car since I have to leave early for the cat maintenance appointment.
And I go to pick out the little book, since I usually write down the date and the place while I'm doing the actual fueling.
No little book.
I look under the pocket, which is detachable. No little book.
I look on the floor, where it would fall if one missed the pocket.
No little book.
I look in the door pocket on his side. No little book.
I look in the glove box, and rummage it quite thoroughly. No little book!
Well, I've just spent all the time I had to get gas looking for my little fucking book, so, I drive away without getting gas, and arrive to work on time.
And I text him, in some despair-- he's not going to remember. Either he put it away, or he didn't. Perhaps it fell out of the car door, maybe it wound up in the seat under him and got bundled up in his coat. Maybe it's in my purse or something, or got thrown into the baggage; the car was full of stuff, and I had to unload it all, and I wasn't looking for a little book. He tells me all the time how bad his memory is (with a side of "so you mustn't expect me to remember anything", when the fact of the matter is that both of us have patchy attention spans that only switch to "record" erratically, this is not some special thing that is intrinsic to him and somehow disabling in me), so he won't recall.
He texts me back, as I'm writing this, which gives this entry a much less understandable tone now that I've written all the above. "Center console," with a definite air of, like, of course.
...
My center console does have a little storage compartment in it, but it also has places to plug stuff into it. I hide money in there sometimes, and I store my USB drives in there, and then I throw fast food napkins in there to make it harder for thieves to find said money, and then I know when my car's been broken into (there's someone in our neighborhood that does it C O N S T A N T L Y) because they throw the napkins all over the place (and honestly I don't keep money in there ever anymore for that reason) and anyway, that compartment is really emphatically not where that little book goes.
As he would have to know because he'd retrieved it from the spot where it goes?
Sigh.
Sometimes we have to submit to the mortifying ideal of being known to be loved, but sometimes nobody pays any fucking attention anyway so we just have to bitch about it.
The little book has a hand-braided wool cord affixing its pen to it so that the pen cannot be misplaced. Anon it will have a hand-braided silk cord affixing it to its pocket so that it cannot be PUT BACK IN THE WRONG FUCKING PLACE WHERE I'LL NEVER FIND IT YOU JERK. I just need time to dig out that silk lucet cord I made, and find a hole punch, and figure out how to punch a hole in faux-leather, or maybe I'll glue it...
