Zen Laziness

I took an impromptu trip to the parents' house for the weekend, where I believe I took laziness to zen levels. After my mom and I wigged ourselves out about not blinking on Friday night, we seemed to work very hard not to work at all. I mostly just enjoyed the country setting.

The butterflies were really out in force, and it was fun watching them flit around. Seriously, they were more entertaining than just about anything on TV other than creepy angel statues. There was one particular tree in the yard where they seemed to like to rest, and I found that if I went near that tree and stood very still for a while, they'd come land on me. See, zen laziness, going so still that butterflies thought I was a tree. Later, I sat on the back porch and watched a chameleon change colors, which is sort of the natural version of watching paint dry. It would run around in the grass for a while and turn bright green, then it would run up the side of the house and gradually turn a sort of brickish color, starting with the tip of its tail.

Do I know how to party, or what?

Then I balanced out the peace and quiet with a little adventure on my way home. When I was about an hour away from my parents' house, and still about an hour away from home, one of my tires disintegrated. It didn't go flat. The tread just came off. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic and I was able to get off to the side of the road with no problems, and then because I was just outside a small East Texas town, I had a pit crew before I even got the spare out of my trunk. Pickup truck chivalry struck again. Two truckloads of young men who were out visiting the homebound members of their church pulled over and changed the tire for me. So now today's task is getting a new tire. I'll have to see how little money I can spend doing so, since I'm planning to trade this car in within about six months, and there's no point in spending a lot of money on it before I do, since it's not like spiffy new tires are going to really raise the trade-in value of a ten-year-old Saturn. And, of course, it would all have to happen right when my quarterly taxes are due. Just in case, I'm checking to see if this was part of a recall because what happened sounds very much like what went on with those Firestone problems a few years ago, and these are Firestone tires.

All in all, I'd rather be sitting around, watching butterflies.