This morning started with a jumo. I’m not quite sure how it happened visually – reflections and blurs and half-remembered dreams conspired to rearrange my view of the side of Heather’s head into Brennan staring wide-eyed at me from across the pillow.
I jerked away and things resolved into Heather’s earings. Not quite sure what happened there. Very disturbing.
So much happened yesterday. Unbelievable amounts of stuff. There are SO many pictures. Today I’m sitting happily in my orange pants, half-heartedly watching some Cameron Diaz movie and organizing photographs.
Last night, after watching Aoutar, we went back to my parents’ house to crash. Then we ventured forth into the world, slowly – the bright lights of the shining sun certainly somewhat discouraging ME from emergence. But my mom made me scrambled eggs the way she used to (with cream cheese), and that was reason enough to regain consciousness.
So, my mom went out to weed the garden, my dad lamented about his computer, Heather slept, and I played games until about 1 when my dad tried to get us to go out to the woods for a walk. He had the right idea – the weather really was perfect yesterday… perfect for frog hunting!
And THAT, my friends, is where our story begins.
We’re sitting on the Lloydholme back porch. Heather’s writing poetry, and I’m writing letters and Journal entries. Worrying that yesterday has produced ten pages of pictures. I’m reading emails from new fans – newcomers to the ilyAIMYite fold. The listeners of the Folk Art Cafe are more vocal than most… and I have a tonne of what can only be described as “fan mail” floating through my inbox.
I feel exhausted, and happy, and good. The theramin thrum of the cicada song continues unabated, and I’m hoping for a thunderstorm before the evening’s out.
Last night’s Folk Art Cafe gig was a success. Sort of a success. I’m not being a good independent musician, and we forgot to put out a tip jar and advertise it’s presence.
I thought about it once, and then didn’t think about it again. My fault entirely. But it’s not something that I can do again. Gas prices are beginning to legitimately scare me, and I don’t think people are taking it seriously. I mean – we’ve all grown up groaning about fluxes in the price of gas. Ten cents here, twenty cents there – but I’ve been reading newspaper articles about the reality of $3.00 a gallon gas.
Now, I’m sure our two European fans are reading that and scoffing – but for us that’s about a 200% increase, and that’s a huge number. I’ve been budgeting for gas for a while – and overbudgeting, to make sure we don’t fall short. You know, it’s always a nice surprise when you realize you have more money than you thought. But here we’ve gone from $1.80/gallon being a “high” estimate of the cost of gas to $2.05/gallon being woefully inadequate. With the majority of our expenses being car-related, I’m worried that we’re about to see our expenses effectively double without any possibility of something similar happening with our income. That’s really frightening. How to we like the idea of small independent artists effectively being eliminated by something as stupid as the rising price of gasoline?
And so we come to the hope of finding alternatives… but what are they? There are conversion kits – good for converting your DIESEL vehicle to run on vegetable oil. Heather’s looking at getting a hybrid, if the settlement for the accident ever comes through – but the chances of THAT kind of money falling into our laps, I think, is slim to zero.
The way our world works… it makes sense to me in one way, but… it’s so spectacularly short-sighted. The Baltimore Sun writes something to the effect that it’s not that the price of gas is getting excessively high, but that the price of gas HAD been too low. This front-page article goes on to assert that this is actually a good, thing – that there is always the possibility that the thinning supply of oil is actually a percursor of a shortage – not caused by supply and demand or those pesky brown-skinned AY RABS that we’re all supposed to hate… but caused by the very real fact that the planet may be drained of this not-very-renewable resource.
And so, the Sun asserts – running out is a good thing, as this will teach us the value of conservation.
That’s excellent ladies and gentlemen – but while we’re learning that lesson, how are we getting to work? How are we making our plastics and latex and rubbers? Hehe – we’re all stuck at home with nothing to do and no condoms. THAT will teach us our lesson, won’t it? I’m not a doom-sayer – but I also wonder how much warning there would be… or if the pumps would just go dry one day, and since the government of the United States (and as far as I know, just about every other government as well) hasn’t exactly placed a high-priority on alternative fuel sources, and in most cases, has actively discouraged it’s exploration… well, what happens?
I don’t know, it’s an awful lot like a man taking his sixty foot ladder, chucking it down a dark hole, and hopping down after it. Plus or minus surviving the fall, it’s hit or miss whether or not that ladder’s going to get him back into the light again.
And so… here we are… I can worry about it – and it would certainly be impolitic to purchase a Humvee at this moment in time. Perhaps you place solar panels on your house, but they haven’t been good for much other than heating water up till now. You could vote for the politician that is interested in green sources of energy… but when it comes down to it, we’ve built a system where money talks, and little else has any sort of voice whatsoever.
So we nabbed two and made a run for it.
Buy the hybrids? There are like… four on the market. There will be another four next year perhaps… but there isn’t much to choose from, and the current nine month waiting period (shouldn’t that be signal enough that these are in demand and that supply should follow? or is that waiting list why car companies feel so confident charging $10k+ for a two door compact car?) is reason enough for most consumers to turn their eyeballs elsewhere.
Perhaps you purchase the diesel vehicle and buy the conversion kit. That sounds very viable, and the more reading I do, the more it seems smart. Am I ready to start asking at the back of restaraunts for their left over cooking oil? Not, I think, until I’ve met someone who runs one of these cars and they show me their modus operandi. My ideal world, right now – would be to get a diesel VW Westfalia, perhaps – get the conversion kit, and have at the world…. but at the moment, this is all just dreamin.
Random note – Heather just caugnt me a ligntning bug. She demands that it LIGHT UP NOW!! Hrm – she just brought me a chocolate covered banana. She’s dangerously close to being sweet, and I’m naturally suspicious.
