It’s somewhat redundant for me to say that the night before Thanksgiving the 105 freeway was a complete parking lot. We made our way toward the 110 at about two miles an hour, and just before we reached La Brea, Bubbles starts fidgeting. Several minutes later, just before we get to Crenshaw, she starts doing a bona fide pee pee dance.

“I have to go bathroom,” she squeaks.

“What? You just went?” is the general reaction. She did go just like, twenty minutes ago.

“I have to go.”

I look at her, and it’s obvious this distress is genuine. She’s sitting on top of her foot and doing that awkward wiggle that only a four-year-old can do because anybody older will have learned to be more self-conscious.

“I think she really has to go,” I tell the others.

Problem: We have just hit the threshold of places in Los Angeles where five white suburban females will not pull off the freeway. Whether or not the legends of bullets whizzing overhead and having our fancy minivans carjacked were true, we believed them. We had to push up through Downtown and make it back to the land of brightly lit malls, big box stores and chain restaurants.

We reached Normandie. Bubbles began to sweat. We reached the 110. Bubbles began to shake. Bam-Bam looked around her and found an empty Burger King cup. It was one of those obscenely oversized soda cups that they made fun of in Super Size Me, but it was empty.

“Here, use this,” Bam-Bam tells her.

Bubbles was always far beyond her years in terms of her snobbishness. She graduated from diapers early and by this age was informing us (correctly) when our outfits “just didn’t go.” She looked at the cup scornfully and shook her head.

“Okay, then,” my mom told her. “You can try to hold it but we won’t be home for at least half an hour.”

This means very little to a four year old. With renewed commitment she tightened her crossed legs and tried to sit as still as possible. But with each lurch forward and sudden stop, her squeals of protest grew louder.

This was getting serious. I could tell by her face that she was either going to injure herself or have a major explosion all over the seat. And I was sitting next to her.

“Are you sure you don’t want to use the Burger King cup?” I asked her, trying to strike a casual tone.

I get the stinkeye. “Of course not.”

“Okay,” I shrug. “But it’s your chance to be in the Pee Cup Club.”

The car got very, very silent.

“The what?!?” Bubbles wants to know.

“It’s a secret society,” I tell her, perfectly calm as I lie through my teeth. “You have to pee in a cup in a car while it’s moving. And then you’re a member for life.”

This concept is intriguing to Bubbles. Her face unscrews from the expression of agony she’s been holding as we pass Staples Center and she looks around the car.

“Are any of you in the Pee Cup Club?”

Some people will tell you it is bad to tell lies to children. I say if grownups can make up all that crap about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, fibbing about the existence of the Pee Cup Club to avoid having to spend an evening scrubbing urine out of the back seat of a Ford Windstar is kosher.

“Yes, I’m a member,” says Bam-Bam, in a grave and hush-hush tone. One by one, we acknowledge that we are indeed members all of the Pee Cup Club. Because she is four, Bubbles believes us even though every single one of us is full of shit. Like I’d ever pee in a cup. Right.

“You guys can’t look,” Bubbles tells us.

“We won’t,” my mom promises. “And I’ll drive really smooth.”

This is the part of the story where, if you are enjoying a nice tasty brioche, you may wish to either put the food down or choose to finish reading at a more convenient time.

Everyone pinky swears not to look, but Bubbles hesitates for a moment.

“Can you hold the cup for me?” she asks me.

Nobody can ever, ever, ever say that I do not love my sister. I nodded. She unbuckled her seatbelt. My mom slowed to try to avoid braking through the traffic. Bubbles drops her flower printed stretchy pants and hovers over the empty Burger King cup.

I remember this moment with surreal clarity. It is dark, and my aim is not perfect. Warm pee splashes onto my hand and I stifle the urge to flinch or scream. I move my hand a bit to the right and the pee rolls down my fingers into the cup.

The ffffffffffffffffssssssssssssssshhhhhhh of warm pee pours down into the cup. My mom turns on the radio. The others take odd halting breaths as they try desperately not to laugh.

The cup was nearly full, and I was getting nervous. But at last she was done and I snapped the lid back on. I placed it in a cup holder and glowered at it while Bubbles slumped back into her seat, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead. She was exhausted.

My hand was still damp with pee, but there was nothing I could do as there weren’t any leftover Burger King napkins to go with the empty cup. I held my hand in front of me for the remainder of the trip home, after which I raced to the bathroom and used half a bar of soap on it.

But I’ll never forget how Bubbles turned to look at me, her face faintly illuminated by the glow of lights from the skyscrapers, and sighed, “Thank you.”

That’s love, dudes.

Before this weekend, I hadn’t been home to LA since August. That’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my hometown, and I didn’t like it. So I figure that when I finally made it down there this weekend, it would be all sunshine and perfection.

It was pretty good. Went to a wedding. Saw Darien, and finally got to hang with Bubbles and Buttercup. Had lunch in Chinatown. Hit up the very cool and speakeasy-like Eagle Rock Brewing Company. Inexplicably came home with an entire suitcase full of new lingerie. Got to see my niece a few times and play the ukulele for her in person instead of over Skype. I played her some Beach Boys tunes. She dug it.

It wasn’t a perfect weekend, but it felt pretty damn good to walk down Colorado Boulevard in Old Town, rip from Burbank to Westwood at eighty miles an hour, and see palm trees clumped casually like old friends on every street corner. In fact, the only part of the weekend that was bad was today. When the, like, one big rainstorm LA gets every year decided to hit.

The 405 is bad on a good day. It’s a nightmare when you’re hydroplaning at 30 miles an hour. The Grapevine is a good way to make your arms sore even when it’s warm out. As we got close to the summit and buckets of water were pouring down, I had to nervously keep an eye on the snow on the side of the road and hope the temperature didn’t get any lower. It bottomed out at 38, thank goodness, and we managed to get over the Tejon Pass without hitting any ice.

But snow! Huh. That was improbable.

The rain continued. We had to make a pit stop at some random fruit stand I’d never tried stopping at before. The bathrooms were immaculate. I thought that was as improbable as it was going to get.

We stopped for food and gas. On our way out, I did a double take. It was a former boss. WTF? Not someone I’d really bother to stop and speak to, but what are the odds that we’d be there at the same time? I had nothing to say to that person and they likely had nothing to say to me. I was glad that I didn’t appear to be noticed from the other side of the gift shop because really, is there any reason to speak to someone when the only things you have in common are sharing the same former employer and making the same pit stop on the I-5?

The rain finally cleared up before we went over the Pacheco Pass, but even then we didn’t get through without seeing a car on the other side of the highway completely engulfed in flames. A fire truck was roaring down the highway toward it. The fuel tank must have been ruptured, because I’ve never seen a car burn like that that wasn’t on a movie set.

And now I’m home, and except for Loki still being at the kitteh hotel, everything is normal again. And after so much abnormality, the normality feels abnormal. What does it all mean? Nothing. Just that if life is going to be improbable, it’s probably going to be improbable all at once.

The content blows

XM radio might be more properly called B-side radio; big hits are few and far between. Turns out that although commercials are annoying on FM radio, they sure do pay for better music. FM radio is brutally competitive; you’ve really got to be good just to do traffic, let alone host a show. Digital, commercial-free radio means content glut. Too many stations, too much time. That means blander content and lousier DJs because it’s too expensive to fill gobs of stations 24 hours a day with the good stuff.

Generic radio isn’t as fun as local radio

XM radio is international and time-zone free, making it generic. The hosts don’t have local affiliations or anything to say about where they are; they are everywhere and nowhere. I like listening to stations in LA making fun of Anaheim and San Francisco. I like hearing DJs echo my gripes about horrible traffic, and I like hearing what concerts and events are taking place around me. XM radio offers none of that, unless I want to pay more to get satellite versions of stations I already get for free on FM.

Th sign l dr ps cons ant y

I like listening to songs without ten second pauses of fuzz, which makes it hard to like XM radio. Because if you drive under, like, a tree branch, XM Radio is all “OMG SIGNAL INTERRUPTION CAN’T FUNCTION FML.” FM waves are pretty good at following you under overpasses, telephone wires, and even into plenty of tunnels. The delicate thread that connects your vehicle to a hunk of metal floating in space is too easily cut, making it hard to enjoy the mediocre content.

I can’t tell the difference

XM radio sounds a lot better than AM radio, but it doesn’t sound any different than a strong FM signal to me, and I have a good stereo in my car. (Thieves note: I also have OnStar.) Add in the constant signal droppage and FM wins out on signal quality.

So, as my XM test drive goes bye-bye, I’m extra happy for the USB port on my dash that lets me connect my iPod to my stereo. Now that’s commercial-free content that’s guaranteed to deliver.

I ordered my Camaro, oh, idunno . . . months ago. It was supposed to be here in April. But it wasn’t. Then it was supposed to be here in May. And then it wasn’t. It was supposed to be here in June, July, August. But it isn’t. The dealer kept putting me off and putting me off. Now it’s supposed to be here in September.

Right.

In the meantime, I have some unavoidable car repairs, vehicle registration, and an insurance policy to pay for. The window of perfect opportunity has passed, and it’s no longer worth it to get the Camaro just now. I’m gonna have to wait for the spring to make these costs worth it, since I definitely won’t recoup them in a sale.

I had three special deliveries that were supposed to arrive this summer, but I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with one out of three. I’m trying not to be too whiny about that, because I really can’t complain about my life. I have it pretty good. But leave it to me to always want just a bit more. So yeah. There goes the dream summer with my dream car, cruising around with special people inside it.

In the meantime, I’ll be over here appreciating what I do have, but not giving up hope for the things I want.

I’m usually not too big on numbers. They’re arbitrary things. But every now and then you look down and see how they add up. I’ve driven this little car all over the state and even out of it once or twice. As I was driving home just now and saw it click over to 100,000 miles, a flood of memories hit. This was the first car I ever bought, that was my own clean and clear. It saw me through good times and hard times and lean times, and it’s taken me to and away from many homes. It was the car that got me through the last half of my twenties, and when my Camaro comes in in the next few weeks I’ll say goodbye to this reliable little Saturn that has putted around without hardly a hiccup for six and a half years.

I won’t feel sad; it’s time to say goodbye. But it’s hard to pass this milestone without taking a moment to reflect on the past.