Increase the protein intake, I was thinking when I bought the cottage cheese for lunch. Cottage cheese, and some peanuts, and a little can of coffee product to drink. Then I got back to the office and wouldn’t you know it, no spoons.

So I had peanuts and coffee. Come that evening, I found the cottage cheese container in the pocket of my coat when I got into my car, so I placed it down underneath the emergency brake lever, which is a flat, enclosed and cool space where the little container of cottage cheese wouldn’t slide around if I took a curve too fast. Then I did what? What day was this… This was Monday, so I hurried home, got my cello and my daughter’s harp, rushed to the music school, dropped her harp off with her harp teacher (she had a rehearsal the next day, don’t ask, logistics) and went to my lesson. After my lesson, I don’t know. Had a lot on my mind, stuff like, Am I wasting everybody’s time with these expensive cello lessons or not? Then the next day I had the little clown car and my wife the Dobl

Good hair day *and* the borrowed car both started *and* neither crashed nor conked out on the way to work, what more could a man ask for?

My father-in-law, the greatest FIL of all, fixed the car we borrowed from my wife’s aunt after a lady crashed into my wife’s car a while back, “totalling” it. The borrowed car, a diesel, had been really hard to start. After fixing it, he told me, “I was amazed you were able to start it at all.” I told him I’d driven my share of beaters, was all.

That’s one nice thing about getting older, I thought this morning while driving that little red Fiat piece of crap (like the little cars at the circus where clowns start climbing out, and more and more clowns keep climbing out, more and more and more clowns, clowns everywhere; except this morning only one clown climbed out) to work. Maybe you get older, but the cars get better. More storage space, they start even on cold mornings, maybe air conditioning or power steering or anti-skid systems and other doodads.

Cause it doesn’t start out that way for some of us. My first car was a 1958 Chevrolet Apache half-ton pickup truck, a beautiful, beautiful vehicle. I fixed a rusted-out exhaust system on it with a tin orange juice can and two pipe clamps; my dad and I replaced a blown gasket in own carport with, like, a wrench. It had the bad habit of veering sharply to the right when you applied the brakes forcefully, so after the first time you learned to counter-steer when you slammed them on.

Then there was the Volkswagen Rabbit where the alternator burned up the day after I’d paid $500 to have the fucking alternator rebuilt and my wife, who at that time was my girlfriend and I had to hitchhike back to civilization, and Swiss tourists laughed at us.

Beaters continued long into my adulthood. Japan was nice, I had a one-speed bicycle there.

But here in Austria. There was the little green Peugeot 102, I think, or 104. 103?Something like that. On damp days we had to spray something into the distributor to get it to start. I knew it was time for a new car the morning I looked into the back seat and saw Beta, then about 4, folding her hands in prayer as I tried to start it.

There was the other Peugeot, bigger, better, I wrecked that mother good. Twice, my fault both times. The last time, I drove it home from the wreck site but don’t ask me how. The other guy nailed me soundly in the passenger side, the car was C-shaped. Driving straight ahead the car was positioned diagonally on the lane.

The Mazda after that wasn’t too bad. It went good. Radio worked. Sold it, bought the Dobl

I am beginning to move the fiction to L