My friend Denise's webpage is called 'Buy it in every color' (see previous entry about Ruth and her English spelling issues), which when I found it gave me pause to think about what people's nicknames, page titles, email addresses, and so on, say about themselves. In this case, I think Denise's page has to do with her penchant, and talent, for finding cute, efficient, quality clothes. Her advice to me as a youth was indeed, once you've found a piece that works, 'buy it in every color!' and so we do.
My dad has much the same shopping philosophy, and a similar eye for a bargain and for choosing good colours. Add that to decades of a need to provide for a family of 12+, and a plethora of handyman skills, and that might explain a few of the piles and shelves in our storage room.
I shouldn't have been too surprised to come home from England to that my mother's car- the 1998 Mazda 626 (in red), the same one I learned to drive in – had a new friend: you guessed it, a 1998 Mazda 626, in dark red. Daddy had bought the dark red car. It's called Mazda 4, for its four cylinders, as opposed to the Mazda 6, which has six cylinders. Daddy bought the Mazda 4 on the cheap because it had engine problems which he fixed. The car is now running like new, and what's more, gets great mileage.
But that's not all: Daddy was on a roll when I came home and within 24 hours of arriving in Utah I found him online, looking for another car, this one for me. Today we found it: a 1998 Mazda 626, in gold.
