And He Rode A Pale Horse

Wow. Three and a half years since I wrote anything on this blog. Enough time has passed that I had to do some serious searching to remember where I even had this blog set up at. Don't get me wrong, I've considered writing before this, but it's hard to comment on the inane or even infuriating events of the recent past after dedicating the last few posts to the subject of Avery and how her passing has affected and effected us. Of course this post is not going to be different.

I have a nighttime routine with Wesley that includes reading to and talking with him. It's an immense joy to hear what he is thinking and learning, and lying there in his bed together I get a real sense of his life and how he's growing. We have a small shelf of books that he picks from and he knows them well enough that on occasion he's "read" a few of them to me. But I really like talking to him. We talk about what he did at school or while I was gone the week before. We talk about upcoming plans for the weekend or vacations. We sing songs or count or talk about things we did while playing that afternoon. Two weeks ago we found a dead bumblebee out by our playset, and I tried to introduce the concept of death to him. Some of you may think it's too early, but here was my reasoning: my boys love being outside. They go outside every chance they get and I'm happy to let them be out there as long as we can. I want them to have an understanding and respect for nature then, and that includes all of the animals and plants around them. I point things out like the lilacs, tulips, peonies and daffodils that have been blooming in our yard. We watch ants and worms and the big droning carpenter bees. We watch the squirrels and birds and rabbits working around on the property. When we found the dead bumblebee I tried to explain to him that the bee was dead and that meant it couldn't fly or move anymore. It couldn't go buzzing from one flower to the next for food. But, it would now become food for other insects. I went all circle-of-life on him. He accepted it and even, unprompted, covered the bee's little body up with a few rocks. I knew this was only the first step in a lifetime of coming to terms with what death means. Tonight we took another small step.

During our pre-bedtime conversation I asked him who his brother was. Just a simple connect-the-dots query forcing him to associate. However, I followed this up by asking who his sister is. We've always told him who Avery is and that she is his sister. He can point her out in photos and name her, but I knew there was a huge difference in him being able to name Sawyer as his brother, who he plays with on a daily basis, and recalling that Avery is related to him too. He was unable to name his sister, so I reminded him. I then told him that her birthday was actually coming up soon. Wesley reminded me that HIS birthday was coming up soon too. I said that was right but that Avery's came first. He then let me know that Avery could come to his birthday and I found my head spinning at how to address this. Sure, I could have just brushed it off or given him some non-committal answer that sated his three year old's ego, but instead I found myself telling him that I wish she could be there, but that she had died. His response? "Bumbum." And again. And then again. I thought perhaps he was saying something that like so often I simply couldn't understand at first. But it was in fact the kind of cartoon sound effect that comes after something sad has happened; the stereotypical 'wah wah' of the bass. "Oh god," I thought. "I've made a mistake. He isn't ready to hear about this." Here I am with tears running down my cheeks at the memory of the loss of my daughter and he is now telling me how some imaginary thing killed her and repeating the "bumbum." I know he's tying what he's just learned from me to some schoolyard play with his friends and the games they play. I can just imagine him talking to Erin the next day and innocently telling her how *something unintelligible* killed Avery. I see her being blindsided by this and the emotional devastation that would follow. Oh god, what have I done? When I told her about the mistake I felt I had made though her response, along with some tears of her own, was that she thought it was good that he know why Avery couldn't be at his party. And, she made me promise to write a blog about it so that we could always remember this night. Perhaps I'll learn something from it for when it's time to explain things to Sawyer. Probably I'll make a mess of that too

How About Love?

In the opening piece of the award winning musical Rent, the characters wonder how a year should be measured. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes? Cups of coffee?

"In truths that she learned

Or in times that he cried

In bridges he burned

Or the way that she died"

How about love?

A year ago today a piece of our hearts died. Avery's all too brief time here with us ended and we were left with a hole where she had been. But the love remained. It sharpened the pain we felt at her loss. The level of our heartache was in direct correlation to the strength of our love for her. We wailed and raged. We sobbed until our breathe left us. We buried our daughter and mourned the life that had been taken. We cursed God and Fate and THAT WOMAN who left her alone. We asked "Why us?" and "What now?" and "How will we go on?"

How about love?

Our friends and family were there; strangers were there. You all lent us strength and gave us your love to shore us up before we could fall. You cooked us meals and gave us money or a shoulder or time or the space we needed. You let us know that you were there for whatever or whenever we might need you. Never in my life have I felt that much love and caring. It was and is amazing. Your love for us was a lifeline that we clung to at times and kept those waves of grief from overcoming us. Despite all of that though we still felt alone.  Except we had each other. 

Measure in love.

This week my friend reminded me that true strength is revealed by adversity. This ordeal tested our strength, not just as individuals, but as a couple. What we found was a strength of love and caring for each other that we had hitherto only theorized about. "How much do you love me?" "Bucketfuls." An arbitrary answer for a question previously unanswerable. "How much do you love me?" I love you so much that in the darkest moments of my life, when everything feels pointless, it's you I'll cling to and cry on and eventually dry my eyes so that you can cry on me. When I wear my polite but sad mask for the world, you'll know how underneath I can't stop crying, because I've shown you and shared with you everything already. And when I can't seem to open my heart to you any further, we'll come together in the dark and love just a little more.

Seasons of love. 

The poet in me can't help but notice that Avery was born in the Spring, lived through the Summer, and passed as the rest of the world around us was dying too. Our house was cold and grey this Winter for more than the season. Now, though, we have Wesley. This new Prince of Summer, Son of Sun, was born in June and has reminded us how to be happy in love. What a blessing he is. What a blessing she was. Today we'll take him out to see his sister's grave for the first time. His parents will be emotional wrecks, but as we sit there in the heat so reminiscent of the Summer of her life, we'll try to remember that it's been a long year full of love. 

Seasons of love. 

Etymology Lesson For Bigots

In ancient Etruscan society, and later in Rome, the Fasces, a bundle of wooden rods with an axe blade passed through, was used as a symbol of power. It continued to be used in heraldry even after the physical item became outdated. In fact, the term fascism, government deriving power from a strong, central leader, militarism, and conquest, is based on this symbol. Interestingly, the United States also uses the Fasces in a wide variety of places such as the symbol of the National Guard, and decorative motifs in the Oval Office, chambers of Congress, and the Lincoln Memorial. This is particularly appropriate because it's believed that the Fasces used a fascis, or bundle of rods, as opposed to a single shaft, to demonstrate strength in unity. Works pretty well for a country which had the original motto of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one), don't you think?

Later, in the 16th century, it wasn't uncommon for an elderly woman with no husband, family, or other means of support to resort to collecting sticks in order to sell the bundles and thus make a living. In Rome those bundles would have been called fascis (or whatever the latin plural is), but because English is a bastard language and so many of our words are mispronunciations of the originals, those bundles of sticks instead were called faggots. The faggot gatherer, being generally scorned and considered relatively useless, became a symbol of the dregs of feminine society. A woman might be called a faggot gatherer as an offensive means of expressing the said woman's social worth. As time moved on, the "gatherer" half was dropped and the woman would just be called a faggot. With the tendency of English speaking societies to consider homosexual men as more feminine, it should come as no surprise then that a derogatory term meant for women would also be adopted for use towards gays. Eventually, any ties of the word to women were forgotten and it became a slur exclusively for gay men. However, this appears to be the case mostly just in the US. Use of the term in media has broadened its influence to other countries, but only just recently. For example, in the UK the term "fag" still refers to a cigarette and is thus much closer to the original definition of a bundle of sticks. 

So, now that you have a little background, the next time you call someone a fag you'll at least know why. Jackass!

It's a Boy Oh Boy!

   This post is an admission of guilt. I am guilty of being sometimes cruel, most times stupid, and always a boy. I have no other defense or explanation for the things you're about to read. 

   When I was very young, my mom had a simple day care that she ran out of her home. I have very few memories regarding that day care other than those where I tortured a baby. There was only one, but for some demented reason I liked hearing it cry. So, when my mom would leave the room, I'd reach over the side of its play pen, and stretching my little arm as far as it could go, I'd swat that baby's nose. It really was a reach for me and often as not it was no more than a grazing of fingertips across nose tip, but it was always enough to set the baby off. My mom would rush back into the room to soothe it, and I would sit back and listen to a job well done. Yes, I was a monster. To that unknown child and its parents, my heartfelt apologies. That was around the same time that I showed some older kids during an open house that it was perfectly ok to pee in the corner of my bedroom. I proceeded to show them how. 

   In kindergarten, as my friends and I walked unsupervised to school (it was a COMPLETELY different time) we threw glass bottles over a fence around the school's track just to watch them shatter when they hit the other side. That same year, I threw a stick like a spear at my best friend, cutting his head and forcing him to get stitches. I ate a clump of dirt from our compost pile that was rich and black and I mistook for the Oreo I had in my other hand. I broke my collar bone when I fell backwards off a slide. Not the top of the slide, and not because I'd gone down the slide backwards. I'd been sitting calmly at the bottom of the slide when I lost my balance and fell over the side. Snap! I went through a whole roll of my parents' film taking "modeling" photos of two of the girls from church that I had a crush on.  That wouldn't be the last time I used that move. In first grade I nearly lost an eye when I had a pine branch I was attempting to break off of a tree suddenly let go and snap back into my face. I sat and cried for a while and never told my parents. A good friend hit me in the back of the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Somehow I retained consciousness and we went back to playing. I was given my first pocket knife and promptly had it taken away after threatening a neighborhood girl I didn't like with it. In second grade I had a student teacher, Miss Fox, that I was constantly trying to see down her shirt or get a peek of bra. In fourth grade, when turning in a school library book, I accidentally included an illustrated booklet of sex positions tucked in the pages of the library book. Somehow I convinced the librarian to give it back to me AND not tell my parents. Between first and fifth grade, a number of events occurred that I can't say when exactly they happened so I'll just lump them all together here. I broke into several "abandoned" houses, one of which had all kinds of treasures like kitchen knives that we (including my pre-k sister) took and threw at things. The neighborhood kids had an apple fight one afternoon, throwing apples at one another until one of my throws hit my friend's 6 year old brother right in the face. He ran straight to my mom and that game was done. Because apparently we really liked throwing things, we took my dad's hatchet and axe out into a nearby woods and practiced throwing them at trees. Another afternoon we spent time taking turns jumping one kid's bike off the road into a drainage ditch as far as we could without smashing into the low hanging tree limbs in our way. We did that until the bike broke and then everyone left and let that kid walk his broken symbol of freedom home. I fractured my collar bone again. This time while playing tag. I cussed a neighborhood kid out until he cried only to turn and find my dad standing behind me. Between sixth grade and my sophomore year of high school: I ate live ants on a dare; found them to be sweet. Shot my sister with a bb gun after she made me angry. She in turn pulled a knife on me. My best friend and I hunted each other with bb guns. A year later we'd have a fist fight in the church over boy scout poinsettia sales. Fought another boy in the church yard; tripped him flat and as he got up, I kicked him in the ribs. In front of his girlfriend. Then my dad came out. The same kid and his friends thought it would be funny to antagonize me on the bus. I wrapped my fingers around his trachea and we got in-school suspension together. Cut the back of a kid's neck with a dull planer blade that I thought was a ruler. Then cut my own thumb to see if the blade was sharp. Had the cops called on me when I tried getting into the locked church through a window. Was banned from Mammoth Caves State Park for harassing a female cave guide. Never did get her number. Made my mom cry when I told her I planned on having sex with the first girl I could. Found a loose circular saw blade while exploring new construction sites with a couple of friends. We used it like a frisbee and threw it through the walls of a new house. Along those same lines, I made a set of sheet metal ninja stars and threw them at my bedroom wall. Junior and Senior year: I explored my sexuality with my girlfriend in her car, a bean field, a cemetery, two schools, and a church basement. Got a three day suspension for carrying a knife at school. Spent hours exploring inside the ceilings of the school. Crawled through gaps in the concrete block and out along trusses or conduit. Even went so far as to cut a shortcut in a wall. These kinds of things certainly didn't stop after I graduated, but I think this sufficiently illustrates how I was. SO, when I'm asked whether I'm worried about having a son, the answer is fuck yes I am. However, I'm also ridiculously, stupefyingly excited and happy. I can't wait to meet our Wesley Charles and get to work at protecting him from himself. Wish me luck!

A Gift For the Grieving

The wounds are still there. They may not be as fresh as they once were, but they still hurt and may tear open unexpectedly. It's a rare thing that an hour passes when I'm awake that I don't think of Avery at some point. Only yesterday I dissolved into tears thinking of how beautiful she was. I sat there in our living room, talking to Erin on the phone, surrounded by pictures of our daughter when it struck me. I admit that I'm biased. Every parent believes their babies to be the prettiest or most handsome. At that moment though I was again overwhelmed by the thought that I'd never get to see exactly how lovely Avery would grow to be. That is heart-wrenchingly painful. 

   I could fill pages on how painful this has been; chapters of tearful moments. That's not what this entry is about though. Three months ago, in my last blog post, I wrote that Erin and I had not given up on a family. I told of how we still wanted children and around a week later we learned that Erin was once again pregnant. To be clear, this was not planned or expected. I had written of rhetorical futures and hopeful dreams. In truth, without going into the details, we believed it wasn't even possible at the time. As we clutched at each other, desperately trying to find comfort from the only other person who could hurt as deeply, there was only one baby on our minds. Here we are though, seventeen and a half weeks into a new life. We are hopeful and terrified by turns. We're also happy to be expecting, but saddened at how the joy we should be feeling has been tempered by our loss. In the end though it is our hope at a brighter future that is pulling us from the sea of grief we've been adrift in. For that, and other reasons left unwritten, this baby is truly a gift to be thankful for. 

I Dreamt a Dream

As early as 1996, I knew definitively that I wanted to be a dad. I've always loved kids and gotten along well with them, so it made sense to me to want a few of my own. I know that this desire is due in part to the fact that I had a great dad of my own. My dad had a great dad too, and I wanted to carry on with this tradition of excellence in fatherhood. After all, we emulate our heroes and those two smart, compassionate, loving men have ever been a pair of my biggest. The ken to be like my patriarchs wasn't the only factor, but the rest eludes my ability to describe. I know it was largely love that drove my dreams, but otherwise I can't explain it. I imagine that a large portion of my female readers can empathize with me. There's a ...need not just to procreate and pass your genetic heritage on, but to make something so special that you'll love it immediately and forever; do things for them or give things up that you wouldn't do for anyone else. And now I've tasted it. I was given a brief, shining moment of glory and grace with my Avery Marie. Life is cruel though and the same fate that blessed Erin and I with her for those bright summer months, snatched her away. There was no warning. There was no chance to say goodbye. In the morning I woke her and fed her and smiled at her smiles. Always the happy baby, Avery opened her eyes and instantly smiled at me. By evening though her smiles were gone forever, stolen from all of us for a moment of inattention. I will always remember that last smile, but painfully, I will also remember wailing in the hospital room, her still body growing cold in my arms. I will remember the incoherent phone call from Erin where I could understand her just enough to ask to talk to the officer at her side. I will remember driving 90 mph across back roads, violently shaking and half blind from tears, madly thinking that if I could just get there in time things would be ok. That didn't happen though, and things aren't ok. I've caught myself going upstairs to wake Avery up only to realize halfway that she's not there. I'm insanely jealous of other parents. Erin goes into a panic whenever she sees or hears an emergency vehicle now. My daughter is gone and it's not ok. 

I know from others who have experienced a similar loss that the days get easier. I understand in my head that the pain will ease and that we'll keep moving down the road of our lives. My heart trembles at the prospect of the future though. Erin told me yesterday that she used to count weeks to mark how old Avery was. Now, she counts weeks since we lost her. Today is the third week and it's hard. Saturday will be the day she would have been five months old and it'll be hard. And next month? Hard. Thanksgiving? Christmas? Her first birthday? The anniversary of her death? The births of friends' babies? All hard. Still, we know we want children. That dream is still alive in us. I know that the immensity of my heartache is a reflection of my love for Avery, and I refuse to let that love die with her. Her younger siblings will all know about her, and we will love them with the same ferocity that we loved her. I love you, Avery Marie. I miss you. 

Auto Car Wrecks

   I'm a staunch believer in laughing at the things that would otherwise make you cry. So, along that vein, let me tell you a funny story before I suffer a psychotic episode.     As most of you know, I currently make my living as a courier. I drive around all day, delivering items from point A to point B(oondocks). I've delivered everything from payroll to office supplies, human tissue to tires, pharmaceuticals to bank bags and I drive a lot! On average, I travel about 300 miles each day. Or 75,000 miles per year! Let's put that in perspective. Each year I drive the equivalent of three times around the planet. And I do this all in my own car. Awesome! Anyway, what all this driving means is that I have to do things more often than most. If YOU drive a lot in a week, you might need to fill up your gas tank twice. I have to fill mine every day. Sometimes twice! YOU go 3000 miles or 3 months before changing your oil. I go 3000 miles or 2 weeks. YOU might be able to make it three years or more before you need new tires. I have to get new after about 6 months. Stuff wears out faster. I risk more tickets cause I'm on the road about six times more than the average driver. I found all of this out pretty quickly after starting this job.     Prior to the winter of 2010 it had been a pretty easy job. Loads of fuel, but nothing major apart from a mystery clunking in my front suspension. Mostly it was mysterious because I hadn't bothered to have it checked. I knew it had something to do with my suspension, but that was about it. Eventually though, my deliveries took me to an auto shop where I asked them to take a look at it. "You have a worn out lower ball joint, and a broken tie rod. Also, sigma tau theta, epsilon pi zeta." I knew the first bit was in English, but as far as my knowledge on cars went, it might as well have all been Greek. In fact, all I really understood was that they wanted $600 to fix a little clunking. Thanks, but I'll pass. I bought my first set of new tires not long after that, and reveled in the feeling of not fish-tailing every time I crossed an overpass. My excitement was short lived though. My car began acting erratic and soon became nearly impossible to accelerate. I made the rookie mistake of taking it to the dealership where they charged me $90 just to tell me what was wrong with it and that it would cost another $2400-3200 to repair. Fuck a duck in a light blue truck! Erin and I wrestled over what to do. I won cause I had wrestled in high school, but we still didn't know what to do about the car. Should we repair it, or buy a new one? Would we get anything on a trade-in with a broken engine? Lame ducks for sale! Lame ducks! In the end we opted to go the repair route. However, we switched to a mechanic that my parents used and who offered to do the work for substantially less. Plus, he explained to me the dangers of driving on my suspension problem and I said to hell with it, might as well fix it all. To this day, I'm still not clear about what was fixed. It had something to do with a bad cylinder and pitting on the flux capacitor that lead to the ballcock valve of the overflow circuit. My mechanic had never seen anything like it. Ha! That's because on the rare occasions that things go bad for me, they do so spectacularly! Regardless, we left it with our guy and he repaired it. And repaired it. And repaired it a little longer. Honestly, what he really did is better defined as waiting. Three times his shop had to re-order the parts because Daimler-Chrysler had them packaged incorrectly. Oh what brilliance! What confidence inspiring business practices! Huzzah, Chrysler! Huzzah! Nonetheless, after over three months of waiting, my car was up and running again. The engine purred and the ride was smooth. I was ready to give Erin back her car and put mine to work again. After all, I still had brand new tires! Alas, Fate had different plans.    It now being April, those epic storms so common to Indiana springs were sweeping through. Up in our new house in Arcadia, Erin and I were scrambling to gather up the animals and move us all to the cellar since the tornado sirens were wailing. JUST as Erin was stepping through the back door, half of one of the three large maples in our front yard came crashing down on my car, blanketing it in leaves and limbs. I'd had the car back for two weeks. I recall how in the light of the next morning I thought of Charlie Brown and the kite eating tree. My tree apparently had greater appetites. With the help of our neighbors, I cut and cleared the tree away until I could finally see all of the damage. The final assessment: the roof was warped and buckled, a smashed taillight, a shorn off side mirror, a dented hood and front fender, a broken headlight, numerous scratches, and a spider-webbed windshield. Nothing too terrible. Certainly nothing to keep me from driving it. The insurance company's assessment was a little different though since they totaled the car out. I wasn't too torn up about that however since the check they cut covered the remainder of my car loan, and left enough to buy the car back on a salvage title as well as pay for the parts for me to make it road worthy again. The car was still beat up and ugly, but my car payment was gone and my insurance was less. If only that had marked the start of good things to come.     Let me move through the next several events quickly. On my way to South Bend, I received a speeding ticket and promptly forgot about it until several months later when being pulled over by ANOTHER state trooper. He informed me that 1) I'd been speeding 2) my license was suspended for failure to pay my other ticket and 3) it was illegal to drive with a cracked windshield, my one major holdout from the tree incident since I could find no one willing to replace it due to the buckled roof. He gave me a verbal warning for the windshield, a written warning for the speeding, and a ticket for driving without a license. Thank you officer. I'll get this taken care of right away. On the very morning of my planned trip up to pay for the original ticket, I get pulled over. This time It was for an expired plate. Son of a bitch! Oh, and because I'm driving on a suspended license, they're also going to impound my vehicle, leaving me at the side of the road with all of my courier jobs for that day. My routing department at work sends another courier to pick me up, and together we complete my day. Of course then I got to start working through the red tape of getting my car back. The impound lot would not release my car without proof of a valid license which meant finding a ride to take me an hour and a half north of Indy. My dad came to my rescue, playing the part of the hero and shuttling me around to various stops over the course of that afternoon and the other necessary to get my ducks in a row. I bought him lunch. Twice. And made a silent promise to find him the best retirement community his money can buy when he's gone senile. ;) Love you, Da. So, with one ticket paid, my plates renewed, and an unreasonable sum forked over to the impound lot, I'm free to take care of the other tickets on my own. Ticket number two had the charges dropped by the superior court it was held in because I'd resolved the issue promptly. Ticket number three, I wasn't so lucky. I paid fines for two offenses and court costs. Bugger.     It's around this time that my car starts making intermittent noises like a diesel and the check engine light starts appearing randomly. Having learned my lesson about ignoring noises, I take the car back to my mechanic. As luck goes though, that day the car performed fine. The fuel injectors were a bit noisy but nothing like what I'd been hearing. Roughly two weeks later, on my way into work, my "electrical system failure" light came on. This meant one of two things; the battery I'd just bought a few months before had already died, or my alternator was about to go. I put my money on the alternator and spent the day performing "one of the easier mechanical repairs." Easy that is unless your car happens to be one  of those designed by the monkeys at Daimler-Chrysler. Where most cars have their alternators located up on top of the engine compartment, the Dodge Caliber's is snugged up in the middle, tightly fit behind the AC compressor. Terrific! Anyway, I got it fixed and the car ran like new. Until I crashed it. Seriously.     It's mid February and I'm on my way into our office. I'm on the tail-end of a minor chest cold; cough, runny nose, congestion. No big deal. Except that on that morning, with traffic backing up on southbound 37, I sneeze. I sneeze all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. Sometimes I've sneezed 12+ times in a row. I've tasted blood after finishing with a sneezing fit. This time though I sneezed up a wad of phlegm. Yeah, I could have swallowed it. I could have rolled down my window and spit it out into the freezing air. But that's not what I did. I was warm and comfortable. My body was obviously trying to expel whatever this mucus was carrying. So, I reached down into my passenger side footwell, and grabbed an old fast food bag to spit into. It's at this moment that the slowly moving traffic transformed to stopped traffic and I, not watching, didn't see in time to stop. I hit my brakes, just not in time, and rear ended the Envoy I'd been following. They in turn hit the car in front of them, who hit the car in front of them. It was a lovely little mess that everyone drove away from but me. I was fine, but my sad little abused Caliber had had its front grill and the radiator and radiator fans crunched in by the Envoy's bumper. We were going nowhere on our own power. I had the car towed home, got it into the garage, and there it still sits.    Quickly now; my sister loaned us her old car that had failed due to alternator issues. I replaced it and got it running again. Erin drove it while I started using her Caliber. The alternator on her Caliber started going. Luckily, I had a nearly new alternator I could replace it with. Next came the AC in the Grand Prix borrowed from my sister; it just blew hot air so I had to put in 24 oz of new refrigerant before it would start cooling again. Then, just this July 4th, the Prix overheated. Its coolant reservoir was dry despite having just filled it a month before. I thought it was the lower intake manifold gasket and spent a day disassembling the upper bit of the engine to find that the coolant leak wasn't from the gasket (which I now had to replace anyway) but was from a tiny little $5 pvc tubing elbow. The coolant had corroded the plastic until it broke open, spilling all the coolant. I replaced it and re-assembled the engine. Now it didn't run properly. Fuck me. My cousin believed it to be a vacuum system leak so I scoured the parts I'd dealt with for problems and found them. Broken fuel injector o-rings, bad seals between gaskets, split rubber connectors, faulty mass air flow and manifold air pressure sensors, dirty air filter. The issues kept piling up and getting fixed until at some point it all came together and the car started working again. In fact, it seems to be working even better than before. I'm so pleased with how it turned out that I can ALMOST forget about how I've come full circle. The ball joint on the Caliber has gone bad. Different Caliber, same joint. I started working on it last night. It's proving to be more problematic than expected.  *sigh* I miss riding my bike to work.