Why cars are great

You know, I am not overly fond of driving. In fact, I did not drive ever before I moved to LA. And I still know the surface street route anywhere I need to go.

But that said, this morning I woke up feeling like someone had sucked the life force from me. Two days of stupid-crazy, decathlon-style work (like if they made Mountain Dew commercials for nonprofit writers kind of work) and way too little sleep reduced me to feeling like all of the blood had been drained from my body overnight and replaced with something way too viscous.

I'm in my car, driving to work half-delirious, and Social Distortion's Ball and Chain comes on the radio (we love 103.1, which may, on any given morning, be playing Dancing Queen or Nervous Breakdown, depending on DJ whim). And suddenly my entire day was transformed. There is little that brings me more pleasure than singing at the top of my lungs with all of the windows down, especially at red lights when the other drivers look at me like they're contemplating calling an emergency vehicle just in case. I do not have a particularly good voice (to put it nicely), and this morning it was wailing:

Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
I'm lonely and I'm tired
And I can't take any more pain

Yeah. And then, there's the going home part. It's really nice not to have to sit next to anyone on my way home from work. I like being in a pod. I guess this means I've been pretty thoroughly coopted by Los Angeles. (Though my friends have been alerted to perform an intervention if I start talking about fake boobs.)

[Spell check oddity: Blogger wants to turn "boobs" into "bob's" though it does recognize "boobies." I'm fascinated by spell checkers.]