The DART rolls again

In response to my posting titled "It's not a minivan, damnit" (12/13/08), an autodealer reader suggested a new name and acronym for my van, Dog Adoption Rescue Transport, or DART. Well, the DART is a 1990 model and is getting up there in years and miles. I arrived home from an adoption event a couple weeks ago with a hopelessly flat tire that could not be repaired. I'm lucky it got me home, the Great Female GSD was certainly looking out for me, because I learned later that I had no idea how to get the spare tire off of its mount under the back of the van. Few things are as frustrating as cars and computers. Computers are at least less expensive to replace.

Anyway, as luck would have it, my birthday was fast approaching when I was needing tires, and it seemed like a great gift idea to me. [With Michael Jackson and Billy Mays both recently deceased at my age of 50, I was actually rather happy to turn the calendar to 51 today.] Anyway, tires are practical, durable, necessary, expensive, and desparately needed -- the perfect gift idea for a mother. To make a short story even shorter, my mother bought two and Clay's mother bought two, so the DART has a new lease on life.

I am exceedingly lucky to have a good relationship with both my own mother and my partner's mother. A couple years ago when we were in New York, I took my mother into a neighborhood gay bar because it was 5:00 o'clock and therefore time for a scotch, lest my mother become testy. We are sitting there chatting and soon struck up a conversation with the guys next to us who were envious of my relationship with my mother. I had never thought all that much about it, but I do know that even now, a lot of gays and lesbians sacrifice their familial relationships when they come out of the closet. Of course I'm thinking it couldn't have been that great of a relationship if it was that easily lost, but still.

I am doubly lucky to have a good relationship with my partner's mother as well. I call her my mother-in-law, she calls me her third son, and it confuses the hell out of many of her old lady friends, much to her delight, I suspect.

Well, those years in law school weren't entirely wasted, because I've managed to make a short story fairly long after all. It takes a lot of things to run a rescue operation, and a functioning vehicle is on the short list of the most essential items. Thanks to the mothers I was able to make the trip up to the Orange County shelter today to pull this girl, an unnamed stray shepherd mix. The DART will be making another trip tomorrow down I-81 to Natural Bridge to meet a young male shepherd who ended up in a SW Virginia shelter.