Assorted Breakthroughs

My car has never been so shiny. And the inside? Vacuumed. Starbucks cups from a month ago disposed of. Miscellaneous parking receipts stacked in a neat pile inside the empty dashboard slot where a fancy radio could, but does not, reside.

On Monday I took my car to Schmidt’s Collision Repair on Sheridan Drive in Amherst New York to have an unfortunate blemish repaired, and 350-some-odd dollars later, it has been returned to me in fantastically shiny and clean shape. Even the tires emit a glossy sheen. Shiny rubber! This is what America is all about.

I am utterly thrilled. But I, having been raised in an environment where feelings of guilt are nurtured, feel decidedly guilty. I know this is all a customer service effort, an attempt to lure frequent guardrail-scrapers back again and again with visions of gleaming new fenders and tires that glisten in the sunlight. I know this. But there are some parts of me that I cannot change: the length of my fingers, and my feelings of guilt when other people clean up my messes.

And when those messes are especially heinous, composed of weeks-old GoogleMaps printouts and aged fast-food cups, pay-at-the-pump receipts from scattered gas stations and salt-stained empty containers of windshield defrosting fluid, those feelings are particularly acute. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. My car was still a fully-functional people mover, and the effort required to clear a seat was never what would be described as substantial. Still, I wish I could have picked up a little.

But what’s done is done, and I am most sincerely appreciative, Schmidt’s Collision Repair on Sheridan Drive in Amherst New York. I lack the facilities to do such car detailing, living without a driveway such as I do. Vacuuming, let alone tire scrubbing, would have been difficult (“pardon me, traffic, while I place this vacuum in the northbound lane of Elmwood Avenue”). And further, spending precious quarters to operate a standalone auto-vac at the gas station for several moments would only serve to divert this scarce resource away from the Laundromat, where it is most surely needed. So I suppose it is all for the best: my car is repaired, and cleaner than ever.

Now. Matt asked for more info on the loaner.

It was a white Ford Escort with a tan interior, no more than ten years old. Its distinguishing characteristics were as follows: (1) uncommonly loud engine, operating on the cusp of legality, and (2) violent shaking. The shaking was particularly strong at idle, when the dashboard and steering column moved with such ferocity that the gauges were rendered nearly unreadable. The good features of this vehicle, however, outweighed the bad. Specifically, this car was noted for its: (1) freeness. The 30 bucks I saved by not renting will be enjoyed in the form of beer or other consumables, with which I will toast this dangerously quirky little beast.

All vehicular issues thus addressed, we must now turn our attention to significantly more important matters: I recently discovered the biggest breakthrough to hit nut-butters since, well, the peanut (to which I am allergic). It is: chocolate soynut-butter.

As I child, I occasionally ate but ultimately rejected almond-butter. Now an adult, I am a major connoisseur of soynut-butter, eating the plain or crunchy varieties nearly everyday for lunch (they travel well). The brand is I.M. Healthy, which wins no points for its name, but as indicated above does indeed deserve serious congratulations, if not prizes such as perhaps the Nobel, for its most recent product development. I imagine it’s something like Nutella, but less peanutty, thicker, and also quite possibly more awesome. But this is mere conjecture. Someone who can actually eat both will have to decide.

This culinary breakthrough, however, begs the question: why is there no chocolate-flavored peanut-butter? I’ll tell you why: because the peanut has been lulled into a false sense of security by years of domination in the nut-butter and in-flight-snack market sectors. But take note, because I have a message for all of you to take to your little be-monacled friends: almond and soynut are coming for you, and they look PISSED.

And taste CHOCOLATY.