This is either going to be a fascinating analysis of the material sociology of suburbia or the most boring post in the history of the internet.
You get to choose. Can you feel the power?
I spend a lot of time in my car. It’s kind of an LA thing. And I’m not very good about keeping it neat. It reached a point of critical mass probably 10 days ago, but today I finally got around to cleaning it out (and then getting it washed). And, inspired by those posts that show “what’s in my purse?”, I thought I’d try cataloguing for you what was in my car. The little material remnants of daily life in the suburbs of LA.
So, like I said, totally fascinating or totally boring.
I took out everything that didn’t belong there, everything that had accumulated over the previous weeks of living. There’s plenty more in my car right now, but I have decided that it all belongs there, so it stays.
Here’s the visual of what I found in my car when I cleaned it out:
And now I’ll take you on a little journey through this junk.
1. Dirty rag. I think maybe I used this rag to wipe the dog’s feet after taking him to the dog park, before I let him get in my car.
2. You might remember this sandpaper crayon tee from this post. The 5 year old took it to school last week because it was his “share” week. In his pre K, they don’t have show-and-tell in a traditional sense. Each kid gets a “share week,” during which he or she can share something every single day. One day he wanted to show that he likes to do “projects,” so I suggested we do the sandpaper crayon tees with the class. I came in and each kid drew on a piece of sandpaper, and then I took these home and ironed them on 18 something shirts I’d bought and brought them back at pickup. It was a pretty fun and well-received share.
3. Dirty socks. From the 5 year old. Actually, these have only been in the car one day. When I picked him up yesterday, he was running around the play yard with no shoes or socks. I soon discovered that this was because his socks and shoes were soaked from some water play. So he walked out to the car barefoot and we tossed the shoes and socks in. Somehow, the shoes made it inside and the socks didn’t.
4. Why yes, that is a half-eaten granola bar. And the empty wrapper from another. These are from the 5 year old, too. Damn, I guess the 5 year old is largely responsible for the disarray in my car! He ate part of that one bar several weeks ago and then decided he didn’t like it. I didn’t get around to actually throwing it out until today.
5. Two random caps from bottles of Honest Tea. I managed to recycle the bottles, but these caps were lingering. I think they were from the half tea, half lemonade. I love that drink.
6. Empty Frappucino bottle and half-empty home coffee cup. I do a lot of drinking in my car. Thankfully, it’s not alcohol. Because I spend so much time in the car, it’s kind of my entertainment. It’s a way that I pass the time while I’m sitting there. Probably this is a bad habit, but I’m not ready to give it up.
7. An “envelope” (piece of white paper folded over and stapled) with various leaves inside, and a book the 5 year old wrote. It’s called, “A Job of Money,” in case you couldn’t tell by the title. The 5 year old is such a collector. They did a project at school where they all collected “signs of spring,” leaves and various things like that. This is what was left over, and he insisted that he bring it all home to do something with. And then it sat in my car for a week.
8. Various and sundry hair accessories.
9. Two tubes of eye drops from when I had my LASIK.
10. Small pouch of lip glosses.
11. Although it’s hard to tell, this is a Ziploc bag of 100 small stones. I know! It doesn’t seem like that’s 100. They are tiny. Here’s what happened: to celebrate the 100th day of school (5 year old again!), the kids had to bring in 100 of something. We were pulling out of the driveway that day when I realized we’d forgotten his 100 things. So I jumped out, got the 5 year old out, and grabbed these pebbles from the gardening stuff. While he counted out 100, I got the bag and we packaged them up. At the end of that day, we got them back. Now, you’re probably wondering why our school year is so off and why 100 days has only just happened. Oh, it didn’t. It’s been 6 weeks or something since those rocks ended up in my car.
12. I don’t know why Photoshop was not cooperating with me, but for some reason the “12″ would not come out in black, only this light gray. Whatevs, Photoshop. This is a kids’ menu and activity sheet from CPK, one of our favorite dinner haunts. The 5 year old ALWAYS insists on bringing it home, even though it never makes it into the house and then always sits in my car.
13. A sweet snail mail letter from my friend Kathy. She is the best about sending snail mail. I got this letter the other day for no reason, just because she’s awesome. Isn’t that nice?
14. A broken glass jar and two random lids. I’m one of the co-chairs of the Planting Committee at the 8 year old’s school (finally, evidence of the 8 year old’s existence!). We have a great edible garden that we keep up with the science teachers, and we have two big events each year: in the fall, it’s Planting Day, and in the spring, it’s the Farmer’s Market. I know, that’s kind of seasonally backwards, right? That’s the way the curriculum falls, though, and it’s southern California anyway, so does the season really matter? We’re approaching Farmer’s Market, and for that we help the science teachers provide projects for the kids in each grade to produce– ideally something related to our garden or gardening in general– and then they sell them at the market, which happens on a Sunday in early May. The 5th graders run the whole thing, pricing products and manning the market and packaging the things that each grade has made. It’s a great project for them to learn planning, economics, scheduling, yadda yadda. Anyhoo, one grade is making terrariums. I’ve been saving jam jars and the like for weeks, and I finally took them in the other day. Sadly, this one jar broke in transit (it was perfect for a terrarium!). And it’s been in my car since.
15. Roll of packing tape. I had to mail some packages the other day, and I brought this with me.
16. Various garbage, mostly straw wrappers. I get kind of a lot of drive-thru drinks. Not food, just the drinks. See #6 above.
17. Gum and Tic Tacs that were in a purse at one point and never made it back there.
18. “Treasures.” I’m lucky there weren’t more “treasures” in my car. The teachers at preschool have, for years, tossed various beads and acrylic gems into the enormous sandbox at school. It’s a favorite past time of some of the kids, i.e., the 5 year old, to dig through and find them. And of course, he wants to keep everything. So usually he gets in the car at carpool and hands me a handful of plastic beads. Which I promptly deposit in the cup holder. The other place I find them is in the washer and dryer.
19. This little brown bow was on a crazy hat I bought at Ross Dress for Less the other day. I bought it, not because I needed it, but because the 8 year old needed it for a costume for his biography report. He did his project on Louis Armstrong, and I had to dress him up as Louis. This was not an easy task. The good news is that the 8 year old plays the trumpet, so he brought that along as a prop. The bad news is that Louis Armstrong isn’t a particularly memorable dresser. So I kind of put him in an approximation of a 30s suit and tie and added the hat. With the trumpet, it was passable. The hat had this goofy bow on it that was literally glue-gunned on, so I just pulled it off and it looked a bit more like a hat from the 30s.
20. Receipt from my recent night out to see Cabin in the Woods with my friend Eva. It was a mid-week night out! Very unusual. RD Husband didn’t care about the movie, and Eva and I were super excited to see it. We had some scrambling to make it happen during the week, so I ordered the tickets online. I noticed when I did that the showing we were going to was “21+.” That is, you had to be at least 21 to go to this particular viewing. And I thought, “What the hell is going to happen at this movie?!” When we arrived, though, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the 21+ theater is through the bar (yes, this movie theater has a restaurant and a bar), and you can take drinks into the movie! So we ordered up two Pinot Grigios and proceeded to have a fantastic time at the movie.
So that’s what was in my car. It drives RD Husband crazy that my car is such a wreck. It’s a nice, relatively new car, so the fact that I turn it into some kind of rathole absolutely drives him berserk. He’s the kind of person who cleans out the things in his car everytime he gets out. Usually, when questioned about it, I claim that I don’t have time to clean it out. But you know what? I have time. We all have the same amount of time. The fact is, it just isn’t a priority. I’d rather get out and get in the house and deal with it later. It doesn’t bother me enough to put in the effort every time I get out. I’ll do it all at once, eventually. Is your car untidy? Or are you one of those clean-it-as-it-comes people?
I’ve been reading this book called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think
It’s a fascinating book, actually, so if you’re looking for something to read…
I’m thinking about doing this post every time I get the car washed. Yea or nay?
or similar color
