Adieu, My Rover...

So, we went down to SoCal, to deal with the cars that got shipped here from England. We got to the dock, saw the two Jags, and were incredibly relieved... One never knows whether these things will actually show up! As I was standing around, cooling my heels, I noticed a Rover over in a part of the lot. I walked closer and, lo and behold, it was OUR very Rover -- the one we bought in England, drove around, and shipped back here.

Of course, I was thrilled! We'd been having all kinds of issues with getting clearance from all the right US government agencies to bring the Rover into the country. According to my spouse, there was no issue with the EPA; however, there was an issue with the DOT (Department of Transportation). Apparently, the glitch was that the Rover is a right-hand drive car. And, it's not old enough to be exempt from the requirement that the only cars which can be imported into the US, for sale and use in the US, are left-hand drive cars. (I do not understand the reasoning, but I'm sure some minion, working in a basement somewhere, having been sufficiently massaged by the Detroit/American auto industry, came up with some facially reasonable justification for this requirement.) Anyway, after much back and forth with the US Customs and Border Protection authorities (all of whom were great and sympathetic and immoveable), it was determined that the Rover could NOT be imported into the US. What does that mean? It had to be destroyed! Yes, gunched! So, we scrambled around and arranged for the destruction, and we ended the afternoon watching our car get crunched by some incredible huge insect-like machine; that puppy just ate the Rover in less than a minute. It was awfully scary, and very traumatic. What a bloody waste.

And, of course, we didn't manage to get clearance to get the Jags out of the yard, so we drove home without them, too. How very frustrating! My spouse and our son will drive down next Sunday, and spend next Monday liberating the Jags (assuming that all the appropriate approvals and blessings and stampings and forms and god knows what have been obtained)... I am leaving on my six-week road trip on Sunday, so I won't be able to assist this time.

All very sad. But, somehow emblematic of the way things are turning out in my life. Sometimes, in order to move forward, things that one had an attraction to, need to be just destroyed. Pulverized. Into little bitty pieces. Then, melted down into core elements, and re-used to build something new (and, hopefully, shiny and full of integrity).

Other than that, I'm working on one more dress that I want to take with me on my trip. My vision is that this will be an elegant dress, but one never knows until it's at least basted up. We shall see. It's basically a wearable muslin, using fairly inexpensive rayon jersey that I found in one of our local cheapo fabric stores. I would hate to cut into $15/yard fabric (or even more expensive) and then look like a dog's breakfast! If this dress does work, perhaps I'll wear it with my beautiful Hong Kong pearls... I really like those...

Still working on keeping my emotional well-being in sync. It's really hard. I've been brooding on the implications of betrayal, again. It just gets up my nose when people aren't up front with me. I hate hate hate passive-aggressive behavior, and I've been subjected to that a little bit more than I'd like.

I sense that I'm beginning to ramble. Tomorrow, I shall post photos of my latest two sewing projects, if I can figure out how to actually get the photos into this blog. For some reason, I'm having terrible trouble figuring out how to do it. Jeez.

OK, everyone, enjoy the evening!