operation 08: SOMETHING OLD

hooray! two paper adventure pages, two days in a row! (and this one catches me up...so DOUBLE HOORAY for that!) here's what elise blaha has to say about this week's assignment:

"This week, tell the story of something old.

Something loved. Something worn. Something passed down. Something treasured.

Or not.

Maybe your old object is something you need to throw away. Something that keeps breaking down. Something that needs to be retired."

this assignment could not have been better timed for me...because i just happen to have an old thing that's both treasured AND needs to be retired! for the last couple of months jeff and i have been talking about replacing my car, which is...DON'T LAUGH...no really, i will be very insulted if i hear laughter...a 1985 nissan sentra. (STOP LAUGHING RIGHT NOW, i mean it!) (thank you.)

(red glossy cardstock & page from a notebook; value chart from a car manual; photoshopped pic of a nissan sentra... (not mine, but one like it!) ...miscellaneous stickers & rub-ons by: making memories, fresh cuts, 7 gypsies, creative imaginations, boxer scrapbooks, marah johnson; other: paper clips, staples, colorbox inks; uncle typewriter and ck typewriter fonts)

ok, ok, i know it needs to be done, but for some reason i have been dragging my feet. the other day, whilst out and about, the car and i had a small mechanical mishap, which resulted in the two of us being brought home by a very nice lady called jan, who drives a tow truck. which got me to thinking about *WHY* i am so un-excited about parting with the car, particularly as it means for the first time in my life, i'll be getting a brand new car, that i choose, that has never been owned or driven by anyone else, ever!

(closeup of the altered car photo; the text gives stats of the car, "make: nissan, model: sentra, year: 1985, mileage: 65,000, purchase price: zero, monthly payment: zero, resale value: zero, luxury/cool factor: less than zero, sentimental value: priceless" the phrase in white is the what i say when teased about driving a near-antique, "two more years...and it's a classic!" )

in the course of completing this page i realized that a big chunk of my reluctance stems from the fact that this car (which had been my mom's for a decade before i got it) was "handed down" to me right after my dad died, and that it had been his idea to do so. i am slightly surprised to find that (quite uncharacteristically) i'd become a bit sentimental about that fact!

once i could see what i was doing, it suddenly became completely obvious, and completely easy to let go and feel totally fine about it. because i know that the *IMPORTANT* gifts from my father are not things at all. they're intangibles like a logical mind, and the ablility to stay calm in a crisis, and a great--if admittedly weird--sense of humor. i see these gifts every time i sit down to do my taxes, every time i watch my brother with his children, every time i hear my sister telling a funny story. and none of that is going anywhere. plus, oddly enough, having commemorated the car, and the story, in my little book... (sorry, i'm afraid going to use a cliched scrapbooking truism here!) ...well, it really is a way of keeping it forever!

so...car shopping...here i come! :)