Many of my friends this year have had their first babies, starting off with one of my best friends. In January, after 40 very long hours of labor, she gave birth to a precious baby boy. And today, if the cards are right, my other best friend will have her baby, a little girl. (I hope 40 hours of labor won’t be involved in that delivery. I’m sure she hopes the same thing.) There’s no way that a year with such wonderful events in it could possibly be anything but a good year. And I’m even giving birth to my own little venture this year, which I can’t talk about much for now, but certainly will later on.

It’s just a reminder that there’s much more to life than paychecks or jobs or ridiculously long hours of work. Babies and good friends and good health matter way more than all that.

Yep, Leo, you’re right, but tonight my brain is blank. So my post today is going to be your cool quote and that’s pretty much it.

At some point in my first car’s short life, it stopped being waterproof. No idea how that happened. It just did. The trunk had water in its recesses nearly all the time. The interior stayed humid. Nothing was ever dripping wet. It was just…moist, all the time.

In the winter, not only did I have to scrape the windshield outside, I had to scrape the inside too. It was very bizarre and irritating. A few of the N.C. winters in the early nineties were bitter cold. Since I lived in an apartment, there was no shelter for my car. One day, the moisture seeped into my door locks. I couldn’t get the key to turn at all. I was locked out of my car because the locks were frozen.

I had to get to work so I needed a plan. I went inside my apartment and started running the kitchen tap. Once the water was steamy, I filled up a gallon pitcher, took it outside and poured it on my door. I could hear crackling as if the door and lock were unthawing but I still couldn’t get in. Went back inside for pitcher number two. Poured that on the door and the lock. Still no luck getting in. Went inside for pitcher three. Third time’s the charm. I was finally able to get in the car by carefully avoiding the icy patch that was now beneath my door from all the water. Scraped the inside of my windshield so I could see and was on my way.

If the mornings were warm enough, I had no problems with the lock but it was happening often enough that I figured I should try something else. A friend told me about deicer, so I bought some of that. Didn’t work, so back to the pitcher of hot water. Then I saw an ad for a NOT-SOLD-IN-STORES electric deicer in one of those awful Harriet Carter catalogs. Little prongs on this appliance heated up, you shoved it in the lock, and voila, the lock thawed and the door opened. At least that was the pitch in the catalog. Mine didn’t even get as hot as a curling iron. I put it in the lock and nothing happened. I threw it on the ground and stomped it into about four or five pieces. That didn’t help either. So I packaged it up and returned it for my money back. For some reason, Harriet said no dice.

Nothing ever worked to thaw my lock except the pitchers of hot water. Basically, if you’ve got something cheap and easy that works, then let Harriet Carter, Billy Mays (RIP but I’m glad you’re off my tv), and the ShamWow dude keep their crap. Sometimes the best answer is the one closest at hand that doesn’t cost you a dime.

Like the former RTVMP that I am (you’ll either get that reference or you won’t), I heart TV. In the past few years, I think there’s been a renaissance in TV writing that rivals the mid-70’s. Storylines have been amazing and the creativity has just oozed out of the idiot box.

But I am sick to death of paying $108 a month for cable. That doesn’t include internet, digital phone, or even premium channels. That’s just for cable. That’s $1296 a year. Ridiculous.

Nearly every show I watch I can get for free on the Internet. Well, free if you don’t count what I pay the phone company for Internet service. But still, I’m going to pay for Internet access anyway.

I know there’s a way to hook up your computer to your TV so you can watch shows that way. I don’t quite have all those details worked out yet, but I know I can watch anything on my laptop whenever I want.

Still…I really like my DVR and watching my recorded shows while I exercise makes exercise less of a pain. And I do a pretty new digital TV and all. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m going to cut the cord this week. Or maybe after the new fall season starts.

But that is not what I am going to remember today. I am going to remember before. The moments and hours before. Before fear became color coded. Before that day became that day. Before.

That morning was brilliant and beautiful and everything about a September day that makes me fall in love with September every time she comes around. The sky was a perfect sheet of blue. No clouds, a wide expanse of almost-autumn perfection. The air was the cool kind that makes you want to draw it deep into your lungs. The kind that makes you grateful for mornings like that, for the sheer pleasure of being alive.

It was the cusp of the season’s change, when the temp is a cool reminder that summer is nearly ended and fall is on its way. Those kinds of days that feel full of hope and possibility. Today feels like those moments that came before. And that is what I am going to remember today.

First, my friends nicknamed me Weezie. Twenty years ago (yes, 20!), the movie Steel Magnolias came out. Shirley MacLaine played a cranky old lady named Ouiser. I can’t imagine why my friends would associate me with a character like that, but they did. About the same time as the movie came out, we were all laughing really hard about something and I laughed so hard I started wheezing. In nickname algebra, Ouiser + Wheezing = Weezie. And that is what they have called me ever since.

I HATE this nickname and I particularly hate it when they use it in public, especially in front of people that don’t know me. But you have to pick your battles and this is obviously one I have lost.

I do have to admit it helps us find each other in a crowd. If we become separated or if we’re looking for each other, I’ll hear someone yell, “Weezie!” It doesn’t take long for us to find each other after that because no one else in their right mind would answer to it.

The other part—pedia, as in encyclopedia, Wikipedia, etc.—is because people ask me random questions all the time. I LOVE being asked a question I don’t know the answer to because I find digging for the answer fun.

Just a few recent examples include:

• Do I need a visa to go to Australia?
• What’s a good book about pregnancy that won’t scare the hell out of me?
• Where can I buy test tubes in Raleigh?
• Is jurisprudence one word?

If I could make a living answering random questions, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I think the Magic 8 Ball has cornered the market on that gig. But if any random readers of this blog have a question, send it to me via comment. No existential questions like “Why are we here?” or “What am I going to do with my life?” I can’t even answer those for myself sometimes. But if you want to know the distance from one end of the U.S. to the other or the words to the Slinky commercial jingle from 1962, I’ve got you covered.

I lifted that from a blog I was just looking at. The author wrote those words roughly two years ago. She wrote two more times after that—February 2008 and May 2008. Then nothing. I guess she moved on to other things. I found her site listed on a blogroll of North Carolina blogs. It was a long list. I went down the whole thing and visited each site. I’d say not one in 10 had current content. In fact, most hadn’t been touched in years.

Some of the blogs on that list were pure junk, really bad writing, really bad ideas, and some of it written by wing nuts. But others on that list had some absolutely gorgeous writing, or thought-provoking subjects, or interesting points of view. Sadly, looks like they also have few readers.

So what’s the better way for a blog to die? From neglect, where the author just lets the whole exercise fall by the wayside? Or where the writer creates something that should be seen but never is and it dies from want of attention?

On one hand, blogging is easy. Just about anyone can do it. The proof being that I started two blogs this weekend. I’m not the biggest technical idiot in the world, but I’m definitely also not the savviest. Some of this stuff takes me a little time to figure out, but it is very nearly idiot proof.

On the other hand, having the discipline to write something on a regular basis seems to be the hard part.  I’m only three days into this whole experiment and I’m already wondering if I have enough to write about consistently.

I’m getting ready to add myself to that blog roll of NC bloggers. I just hope in two years someone isn’t looking at my blog wondering why it died.

Yesterday, I talked about buying my first car the only problem was that I bought it not knowing how to drive it. You see, it was a stick.

When I was 15, I got my learner’s permit, which meant I could drive if an adult was in the car and at 16 I could try for my license. My mom’s car was a stick, a white Chevy Chevette. Fancy, I know. God bless her, she tried to teach me to drive the thing. We lurched, sputtered, and died down our driveway for about a week. That’s when mom decided that was all her nerves could stand and she told me I had to wait until she traded in her car for an automatic.

Months later she finally bought an Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra. Again, fancy. But it was an automatic and much easier for me to master. In high school and when I was home from college, it’s the only car I ever drove. When I was away at school, I bummed rides from friends, rode the bus, or walked. Once I graduated, I needed a car so I could get to work.

So I bought my little Nissan Sentra. I had a friend with me to test drive it since I couldn’t. He convinced me it was a great car for the price and he promised to teach me how to drive it. I had the weekend to learn because on Monday morning I started a new job. Failure wasn’t an option because I had to make it to work on my own.

Like me, many of my college friends had just graduated. A few were still in school. We did everything together and I do mean everything. We ALL loaded up in my new car and drove over to a giant, empty parking lot. The weekend entertainment was going to be teaching me how to drive. Only one person in the car knew how to drive a stick, so he was up front with me. Everyone else was in the back seat, along for the ride.

Having a friend teach you to drive is a lot less pressure than your mom. Your mom is terrified that you’re going to die or kill someone. Your friends don’t really care. To them, it’s just a good excuse to make fun of you and laugh. And laugh we did, pretty much non-stop. I still lurched and sputtered, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. It didn’t take me all that long to get the hang of it.

After a bit, I had mastered the parking lot, so it was time to hit the road. I didn’t do too badly. I died a few times, was late changing gears a few times, but not too bad. But then, the ultimate challenge presented itself. I was stuck at a light—on a hill—with a cop behind me! I was panicking, but of course, my friends were laughing their butts off. I was so afraid I was going to choke, but I didn’t. The light turned green, I made it up the hill and didn’t roll back into the cop. I had mastered the stick, all with a little help from my friends.

Buying the car without knowing how to drive it was a gamble, but you try harder when you know failure isn’t an option. And when you have friends in your corner who believe in you and are willing to help you out, failure isn’t even a possibility.

I bought my very first car when I was 20. I paid cash for it; $5,000 to be exact. It was a 1990 Nissan Sentra. She was red, a year old, and I named her Bessie. She wasn’t much to look at—a box on wheels really—but she was my first and I loved her.

So, how did a broke 20-year-old scrape together $5,000 to buy a car? Well, in my teens and twenties I was wee bit of an overachiever. My parents paid for my first two years of college and informed me that it was my job to pay for the last two from the savings they had forced me to pull together from the time I was 12. Always looking for an angle, I figured out I could graduate in 3 years instead of 4 if I took the maximum course load. I knew that would leave me a sweet little stash of cash if I played my cards right. So that’s what I did. Like I said, an overachiever. (Don’t worry; that trait has long passed.)

So it was May of 1991 and I had my cash. I scoured the newspaper classifieds. Yes, it was that long ago—pre-Craigs list, pre-ebay, almost even pre-Internet. Some dad was ticked that his son wanted to (horrors!) add a surfboard rack to the car, so he decided to take it away from his son and sell it. If the boy wanted a rack, he’d have to buy his own damn car.

We (yes, I had my friends with me) test drove the car. It seemed like a pretty sweet deal. So I told the guy I wanted to buy it right then. I can see his face now because I have since become old enough to look at 20-year-olds the same way. He looked like he wanted to pat me on the head and say, “Let me explain to you how the world works.” I knew nothing about transferring title or going to the DMV. I figured I just handed him a check and he gave me keys. I didn’t want to look dumb so I pretended I knew all about everything he was telling me.

The great thing I took away from the experience was how nice it is to be able to pay cash for something. You pay for it and it’s yours. It’s simple and clean, no strings attached and no interest adding up. It was a nice feeling and one I still like because it feels powerful. There’s no arguing over monthly payments or interest rates or what your trade-in is worth. You find a good product at a good price and you walk away with what you want. I figured out right then that I liked the security that having money could bring me. In the years that followed, I lost my way on that. I got into credit card debt and lived beyond my means. I managed to pull my way out of that in a few short years because I wanted to get back to that feeling of security. I’ve only financed one car since then and that monthly payment bothered me so much that I paid it off in one year instead of the three that I financed it for.

Owning that car equaled freedom to me in lots of ways and that only happened because I had the cash for it. I graduated in a recession and couldn’t find a decent job to save my soul. I would have never been able to finance a car based on my income, so saving up that money gave me the freedom I craved. Days after agreeing to buy the car, I walked away from the DMV with the title in my hand, free and clear. Now, all I had to do was learn how to drive. But that’s part 2 of this story.