So what is there to say – at the ending of two relationships, one fond, fairly intimate and long lasting and the other not-so-fond, purely professional and of a year’s duration – except that Blondie and I shared a bottle of champagne last night in sort-of-celebration? Both those relationships ended within the space of 24 hours, having been put into a final count-down stage some days or weeks before.

I sold my car, and I quit my job.

Well, one of my cars, and one of my jobs. Look, it’s the new age, and the new economy: I have juggled a number of part-time jobs off and on since retiring from the Air Force twelve years ago. I think at one point I had five different part-time jobs simultaneously. Maybe it was four jobs and a check for some voice-work, but the bank clerk commented, on the day that I went and deposited that many checks into my regular account, “Hey, lady – is there a place in town that you don’t work for?”
Although I did have some periods – two or three or even four years at a stretch when I worked for just one employer exclusively and full-time – I kind of like the part-time, multiple employer scheme. Every day different, every day something rather new; if I have been able to figure out anything at all about myself, it’s that I get bored easily, and I am pretty good at organizing things … and that, selfishly, I like to do what I like to do, and if I can get paid for what I like to do – well, then, I like to write, I can think about great things and boil them down to something that is understandable to the general public, I have a nice voice and I can talk well, I can think logically about things and come up with the odd good idea now and again … in other words, something like your typical English major, in the old days when being an English major might have counted for knowing certain things. Like being able to spell and put together a coherent sentence, and know who wrote “Robinson Crusoe.

There used to be all sorts of nice opportunities for English majors for fairly remunerative work along that line, before the market was flooded … fortunately, I can do data entry, read a script and understand marketing strategy, which skills made it possible for me to be hired on last year at a telemarketing firm. Let it me known now that I didn’t much like it, and put up with it only because it was local and the paychecks were regular. Until I receive the last of them, everything about the place is a deep dark secret – except that I had filed my resignation two weeks ago, and last night was my final shift. It felt so good to walk out of there, out of a grey institutional building, with rooms full of identical cubicles, bathrooms that smelled of ass, a horrible break-room with a pair of intermittently-functioning computers which were the only two in the building which employees could use to connect to the internet for purely personal purposes – on strictly-rationed breaks… oh, yes, the only bit of rebellion I displayed during the whole time I was working there was that I bailed last night at 9 AM. My shift was supposed to last until 10:00. They say – and I will affirm – that the worst job that you can have, indoors and working in a cubicle – is customer service at a telemarketing corporation. And I will agree – the only good thing about it is that the paychecks are regular. And that they do not bounce. I had planned to last it out until the Labor Day weekend. And so I did – I just reached my ration of **** at 9 PM, Saturday evening.

The car – the Pumpkin – otherwise known as the VEV, a 1974/75 2-door Volvo sedan, which had practically no rust upon it, of which I had been the sole owner since 1983, having had it repaired in five western European countries and three western states, and which was too old to be regular and reliable transportation – went on eBay in mid-August. My dear Dad had bought me a more reliable car, a 1991 Honda Accura Legend, with refreshingly low mileage and in practically pristine condition, outside and in, which made the Pumpkin extraneous to my needs, and left us with one car more than we had parking space for – not that certain of our neighbors seem to be worried about that. But still – parking on the street is an iffy proposition, given that we are at a well-trafficked corner … well, never mind all that. The Pumpkin went on e-Bay and finally scored a winning bid, from a serious local Volvo motor-head, who is now the envy of all his on-line motor-head friends… it’s not like there is a huge community of mad fans of vintage Volvo sedans, but there are a good few, apparently – and they were all madly envious of his mad skilz and luck. We finalized the sale Friday morning, when I signed all the papers, accepted the cash payment, and gave him the keys.

He was a very young-looking guy, with his baby son along with him; I rather hope that the baby kidlet will have the fully-restored Pumpkin to drive to his senior prom, and what his date will think of that, I can hardly think, except that hope she will be incredibly impressed. Anyway, I gave the buyer the keys, said that I would be home a good part of the day, and that the Pumpkin would fire up OK, and that it would probably make it all right to his place, out in Schertz … and that all day, I kept checking to see if he had come and gotten it. No, for most of the day, it was still parked on the street. But it was gone sometime Friday evening – the new owner, the very young-looking ancient-Volvo motor-head guy came with someone else, and drove it away. Funny, I thought I would have been able to hear it, the sound of the engine, and all, since I had driven it so long, and knew it so well. I thought I might hear someone driving the VEV away. But I guess not – the street in front of my house was empty. And I never heard it go away.