graffiti

We washed my husband's car a week ago, but it collected enough dirt to show a faint word finger-etched on the trunk. I noticed it this evening when I had Stella strapped to my back in the Ergo. We were watering the new sage and wind grass when the four letters caught my eye. It has been a long time since someone has left a comment in the dust. The most common being "Wash Me," of course.

When I was pregnant, my husband got a new job with a long commute and decided with those 100 miles a day, a baby on the way, and a senseless war in Iraq, it was time to hop off the grid. Our car runs on vegetable oil. We don't make our own (yet) but get a 55 gallon drum of B-100 delivered ever 2 weeks or so. The car sounds like a big truck because it's a diesel, and smells like a fryer that needs to be changed, but it gets 30 plus miles to the gallon. Not bad for a big, safe Mercedes. So every other Sunday night, he dons the cow print apron, backs up to the blue drum, and pumps the recycled fuel into the tank. Sometimes he chats with our neighbor who got a diesel VW shortly after we got our car. Charles stops by to fill up his tank when he's running low.

So the tagged car is the car we finally washed. It is navy blue and was covered with dust from a trip to Mercy Hot Springs several months ago. The husband had some big wigs coming in from Japan that he was going to transport to meetings... so he thought it best to wash the vehicle. Then a week later someone scribbled in the new dirt right above our "Powered by BIODIESEL" license plate cover.

It says "LOVE."