Today I was reminded about the time that I REPEATEDLY saw a clown driving a car. The summer before last (June, July and August 2002), many times on my way home from work, I saw a clown driving a late-model, black sedan. Now it wasn't a clown car, per se. Yet it became such a car by virtue of its driver. The first time that I saw the clown driving the otherwise nondescript car, I thought that I was hallucinating. Yeah, it was early evening...after a long day of work...I was tired...bottom line: I could have seen Pope John Paul II driving the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile (yes, such a vehicle does exist, Virgnina) and it wouldn't have fazed me much more. I thought to myself, "Geez, you'd better get more sleep tonight, Belinda. Or you'll be sharing your tuna sandwich with your Fairy Godmother tomorrow." But that was only the first clown sighting of the summer.

After I saw the clown driving the unmarked police car (yeah, that's what it looked like) for the second time, I told my son about it. Leo looked up from his seat on the couch and says, "You're losing it, mom." When I insisted that I had, in fact, seen a clown driving a car, he said, "Yeeeeaaaah suuuuurrrre, mom. You saw a clown. And he was driving a car. Yeah, that's the ticket. Get some more sleep, would ya?" Then he went back to watching a Mets game, which is one of his most favorite things to do, ever. His incredulousness gave me more doubt that I had actually seen said clown driving said vehicle. I let it go.

Then I saw the clown again. I knew that I wasn't dreaming. I knew that I had had enough sleep the night before. And I knew that I had seen that clown driving that car! So I told my boyfriend, Caron. "You saw what?!" he said, with a tone of voice that matched Leo's voice. "A clown," I said, "driving a car." "Was it a 'clown car'?" Caron asked. "No, not really," I replied. "It was the sort car that an old man would drive." "Yeah, sure you did," Caron said, turning back to his computer.

Okay, so now both of the most important men in my life had dissed my repeated clown sightings. Where could I turn? Then I had a dry spell with the clown sightings. I went two whole weeks without once seeing the clown driving the black sedan. I started wondering if I had really, truly seen what I had seen. I moved on with my life and obsessed over other important things, such as, "Is my front left tire really slowly losing air, or are those pesky chipmunks letting the air out of my tires?" "Why can't my coworker 'Jules' stop farting when he comes into my area of the building? Is it so difficult for him to retain those farts until he gets into the outer hallway?" and another favorite, "Just how large do those potholes in my driveway have to be before I'm unable to drive out of them?"

Then one day I was driving home from work with Leo in the car (he was working with my company as an intern that summer) AND I SAW THE CLOWN AGAIN! I yelled, "There's the clown!!" and I hit my brakes. The driver behind me slammed on his brakes, so as to not end up in my backseat, and quite literally laid down on his car horn. The noise was deafening. Because I had just passed under a traffic light, I was now holding up traffic.

My son looked in the direction that I was wildly pointing and saw, for sure, that there was, in fact, a clown driving a long, black car. I had stopped my car right next to the clown's car (who was waiting in traffic to take a left hand turn, but because I was holding up traffic in the intersection, the clown wasn't able to take his left hand turn...he just scowled at me). After a long moment, Leo said, "Well, would you look at that. Mom, just drive, would you? You're holding up traffic." "But the clown!" I yelled, "You saw it didn't you?" "Yes, yes," Leo said a bit sullenly, "I saw it." I then took my foot off the brake pedal and stopped being a traffic nuisance, to the great relief of the maddened driver behind me and the scowling clown to my left.

I drove home on a self-satisfied high. I was SO glad that Leo had seen the clown driving the car. He even corroborated my story with Caron. Unfortunately, that was the second-to-last-time that I saw the clown driving the car. About a week later, I passed the clown driving the car again. I gave him a big smile and honked my horn as I passed by him. He just scowled at me again. And I've never seen him since.

Yo dudes. Okay, so I started this blog and haven't had time to update it until now. Yeah, I suck. What has happened since the day of the first blog to now? It's been two weeks and you would think that I could think of SOMETHING to share with you during that time period.

I went to a bridal shower yesterday in a very fancy schmancy part of New York State. I had to drive 3 hours to get there, with two of my older relatives in the car with me -- an older cousin and my mother. Wow. What fun. They talked politics all the way down and back. And when they weren't talking politics, the cousin was grousing about her mother-in-law. The word "boring" doesn't even come close to my experience.

The bridal shower was held at a swanky private country club. There was a woman sitting at our table whom I would SWEAR has had plastic surgery on her nose and lips. She had those "Melanie Griffith" lips, which are the entirely too big and obviously have at least 6 tons of collagen injected into them. And she had this wierd little (obviously sculpted) nose that was way too thin and straight with a strange little upturned bulbous growth-type ending. There is no way in hell that that is the nose that God graced her with upon her birth. How do I know that? Because she's 100 percent Italian, and I am part Italian myself. Italian people don't have delicate linear noses that turn up at the end. No sir. Italian people have large wide noses like black people. You know what I mean. Thick at the top, sort of flat toward the middle, and wide at the bottom. Other than her obvious surgery-enhanced features, she was pleasant to look at and listen to. She seems like a good woman to go out to lunch with and watch a movie with. She loves to cook and referred to herself as a "food nerd." That was pretty cool, I thought. I know lots about nerds, being a bit of a technology nerd myself, but I've never heard of a food nerd. Interesting.

I sat next to a woman who has an allergy to all foods made with wheat. She says that she doesn't often eat foods with wheat, but on those rare occassions when she just HAS to have a bit of that pizza or brownie, she says that as soon as she swallows it, the food feels like it scrapes her esophogus all the way down and then she's sick to her stomach for three days afterward. Geez, that would suck. I love pizza and brownies. She said she can make brownies or pizza with special wheat-free flour, but it takes more effort.

We all chatted away as though we were on a first date. It was pleasant in a surface kind of way. Being just barely a woman myself, I generally loathe these kind of events, but the ladies at my table made it bearable. The food was very good (the ritzy club must have a ritzy cook). Then during dessert (awesome light white cake with whipped cocoa filling and light whipped-cream frosting...YUM! I felt SO sorry for the lady sitting next to me who couldn't have a piece of that lovely cake. I was guilty the entire time that I was eating it.) the bride-to-be opened the enormous piles of gifts. It took forever. Forever and ever and ever. I contemplated getting really stinking drunk so that I would be able to enjoy (or at least, endure) the unwrapping-of-gifts ceremony. But then I remembered that I had to drive 3 hours to get home. Shit.

What made the unwrapping go on interminably was that fact that the honored guest would remove the wrapping paper on each gift and then take each gift item out of its box to show it to the crowd. I think that the entire day can be summed up by a remark that the wheat-free lady made after one gift was opened and paraded to the crowd. She said: "Oh...what a pretty toaster!" I thought to myself, "No, she didn't just say that. Please, no." But, alas, she did.