I wonder if I can get a vanity plate that says "Stampy"

So this morning I was cutting back the jungly overgrown shrubs on the side of the driveway in the blazing hot sun. OK, so today's high is actually only 89 degrees--when you're wielding a machete, it feels like more. I was lopping off branches from the 75-year-old landscaping and then putting the branches into big brown yard waste bags.

Since the branches were fairly large and I only had three yard waste bags, I had to do a lot of chopping to make the branches fit into the bags. Lop lop lop. Chop chop chop. Stuff stuff stuff. Drag out to parkway. Repeat.

And why was I indulging in these enjoyable driveway aerobics? I wanted to drive the new-to-me 2005 Toyota Sienna XLE AWD down the driveway and get it, if not into the garage--because I'm not even about to attempt that--at least the hell out of sight.

Yes, that's right folks. Yesterday I bought a minivan. And yes, that makes two cars in a month. Both way uncool cars, but both immeasurably better than the beaters I'd been driving.

I can now test the theory that my crappy beater cars were one of the reasons the other mommies haven't made friends with me. In general, this is a big-honking-SUV kind of neighborhood, but if you must drive a minivan around here, you iconoclast, you drive either the Sienna, a Honda Odyssey, or the Chrysler Town and Country. So I figure the other mommies have got to want to bond with me now. There are two other Sienna drivers on this block alone, not to mention dozens of them in town. So now we have something in common. Right?

Of course, for me to be seen driving the Sienna, I'll have to get the damned thing back out of the driveway. To get it back there in the first place, I had to hack away at the forest primeval for an hour, fold down the rearview mirrors, and have someone spot me. Getting it out again is going to be quite a challenge. I feel like the person in Manhattan who found a parking space on the street and then left his car there for years because he couldn't stand to lose the spot.

Damn it, I got that big boy back there without scratching the paint. Who's to say I'll ever be able to do it again? I mean, those bushes are growing back even as we speak. And frankly, I think riding an elephant--even, as in this case, for the first time--would be easier. And the elephant comparison suggests itself because the Sienna and an elephant are pretty much the same size.

Remember that Simpson's episode where Bart won an elephant from a radio show and it lived in the Simpson's back yard for a while? And was really cranky and ill-tempered? And eventually ran amok?

Excuse me; I have to go bring the minivan a few yard waste bags of landscaping.

--P.