the car update is that it was the battery. >.< the guy from the garage who's been working on it this whole time actually came over - i'm around the corner, it's not far - used pliers to get a better grip on the little emergency key that comes with the clicker, got the door open (yay), and popped the hood. where he hooked something up to the battery to learn... it was dead. he charged it enough for me to drive the car over and called towards the end of the day to say the battery - which wasn't even that old - was defective and he put in a new one. so i went back to pick up my car and drive it home. there's still an issue - every time you open the driver's side door you get an alert that the car isn't in park even tho it is - this alert is accompanied by the kind of binging noise the car makes when it wants you to fasten your seatbelt and it is exceptionally annoying - but i'm tired of leaving my car at the garage so i can be told "we don't know what's wrong with it and no it won't be ready by the weekend" so i'll just bring it back some time in the near future. and in any case i have it back and it works and i'm relieved.

that's all the news that's local. :D in exciting international news the good voters of hungary voted authoritarian viktor orban out after sixteen years (and i somehow doubt he was helped by jd vance showing up to stump for him). it was the highest voter turnout since 1989.

watch the artemis ii splashdown if like me you missed it the first time. space travel and return will never not be fabulously cool.

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother
holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age
hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green
pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

--"Vita Nova", Louise Glück

so i picked up my car (finally) on friday, right? and saturday i'm all ready to take myself to one of my favorite coffee places for a nice bagel sandwich and some time spent on the story i'm working on for writing group and... i can't get the car door open. for whatever reason the garage needed a second clicker (it's a keyless entry) when they reprogrammed the computer so i have two new clickers and neither works. and i know it's not the clicker batteries. there's a little emergency key in the clicker and that doesn't work either. i'm standing in the parking lot next to my car that sat in a garage for a god damn month and cost me a lot of money to fix and i can't get into it which means i can't drive it. (and also means it wasn't entirely fixed either.) and i need to be able to go places - not just the coffee place which would've been nice but wasn't necessary but i also volunteered in the kitchen for the last bonspiel of the season (so i have to be able to drive half an hour to get to the curling club) and last night i met my sister for dinner and a movie twenty minutes in the other direction. i briefly consider calling aaa and getting them to break me into my car but what if i can't get the door open after i'm done at the curling club? i don't want to have to call them to get me into my car every single time i need to go somewhere. for one thing, it takes an hour for them to get to me and i don't have that kind of time.

so i end up with a rental. for the nth time. tomorrow i get to call the garage and tell them what's up and ask them how they're going to fix it. yay.

so that was my morning and part of the afternoon. kitchen volunteering duty was fine - i washed and dried a lot of dishes and also helped assemble charcuterie plates and prepped chicken for cooking (rinsed, trimmed, patted dry, tossed with seasoning, stuck in the fridge). one of the other volunteers made brownies and the whole kitchen smelled so strongly of brownie that people could smell it out in the main room where they were sitting around snacking and drinking and watching whoever was curling. several people stuck their heads into the kitchen with varying degrees of "do i smell brownies?" why yes, yes you do. :D

the movie was you, me, & tuscany which is a romcom with absolutely zero surprises but a really attractive setting. i mean, tuscany. also regé-jean page with his shirt off. there's a point in the movie where a conflict appears and practically the entire audience went "GASP!" and then we all laughed at ourselves because it was such a loud collective response. the movie was more rom than com - i mean, it wasn't that funny altho it definitely wasn't a drama either - and was overall very light and fluffy and reminded me of while you were sleeping except in tuscany during the summer instead of chicago in the winter.

and today i walked to the grocery store because did i mention i can't get into my car? and did my taxes! ooh. i owed the fed and got a refund from the state and it even almost balanced out. mostly it's done and i don't have to worry until next year. and i didn't wait until the last minute, go me.

two things i must share about the artemis ii crew:

victor glover's message to his wife - it's extremely sweet - and an introduction to the crew as if they were the stars of a "bad 80s sitcom".

Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt
the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car,
climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing
and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released

the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll
down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding,
for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head,
Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading

toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding
through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out,
although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough
to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump.

Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes
we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car
did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget
that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and

no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more
like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles
as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost
for loving this dangerous life, living it.

--"Mercury", Suzanne Cleary