27th Amendment
A long time ago I was having a casual conversation with a British friend about America. We were talking about all of our quirks – charming and loathsome – and he mentioned America’s love of cars and driving. He suggested that owning a car might be covered in the Constitution – like freedom of speech and repealing prohibition.

When we lived in Chicago we had two cars – even though my beloved only “worked” (he was in grad school) just four miles away. I commuted via car when I worked in the 'burbs and via El or Metra when I worked in the city. When we moved to Boston I stopped driving and ended up donating my car to a charity a few months later. We’ve been a single-car family for a while, which has worked our pretty well.

Deeps drives to the 'burbs for work and I commute via foot, bus and train. He gets the car washed once a month and I get a pedicure.

It has been a long, boring week since the car got smashed and went off to the car hospital. We got a check for part of the damage while the insurance people continue their investigation.

I’ve been under the weather and parked on the couch. It’s been raining and Deeps is going stir crazy. How crazy? Yard crazy.

He went out into the back yard to start digging up a new flower bed along the grotty old metal fence. We had talked about planting that area later in the summer, he figured today was as good a day as any to start the work.

We may have hit a real nadir for him – he’s never done yard work unprompted and especially without my help before. I think he might have developed a brain cloud.