Week 6 Theme: Place

It's a disaster zone; there's just no hiding it.  I have trouble making direct eye contact with anyone who gets into my car.  I'm such an eco friendly person, and yet I rarely have guests riding shotgun. The shame/humiliation is too overwhelming.
It's not always easy being a guest.  You have to wait for me to shift books, old bills, medications and the occasional random bag full of even more random items to the back seats.  Or you may sit down on a pile of papers I deem unimportant enough to be squished by buttocks.  Then there's the unpleasant surprise some run into of sitting on the ever present hairbrush I keep in the seat next to me, like a little silver and black hedgehog waiting to stick someone.
The passenger then has to find foot space between all the empty motor oil bottles on the floor, leftovers that pay silent witness to the horrendous appetite of my car, worse than my own.  They make hollow plastic sounds as they're pushed about by feet.  It reminds me of those play bins full of colored plastic balls that kids immerse themselves in.  Except that my plastic bottles aren't covered with kid pee.
The guests of the back seats (for the few times that my car is full to maximum capacity) unfortunately must fare even worse.  On their laps lay bags and boxes and papers, the occasional road atlas or book.  My trunk is full of a similar mix of such items, as well as an old, rusted spare tire that will be the doom of me should I ever need it.  Everyone's feet makes a scraping sound, as shoes scuff against unvacuumed dirt and crud.  One time I actually had the foresight to clean out my car before having guests cart about with me for the weekend.  I used one of those coin automated vacuums, plunking in quarter after quarter.  I used it three times before I ran out of quarters.  My car hadn't run out of dirt though.
There are some things I'm a stickler for, despite these gruesome descriptions.  One never need fear finding a half-eaten sandwich in my car, or a container of yogurt not completely scraped clean of its gelled contents.  Nor will a passenger ever find crumpled food wrappers or an empty plastic cup from Dunkin' Donuts.  It is true, in the back seat there is a deep red stain that makes it look like I had been sacrificing hamsters to a bizarre and demanding god.  But that is actually just the unfortunate result of an inattentive guest not watching a measuring cup full of raspberry sauce for me.  I suppose I could get carpet cleaner and scrub the seat some more, but it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort for a vehicle that already resembles a run-down abandoned building.
Then, too, are the many oddities one can find here.  The rough draft of my Living Will, something that constantly nags at me and irritates me, especially when I go to the doctor's office and they ask me if I have one prepared.  A colorful card with the picture of a clown, given out by a parade clown.  His creepy clown face stares at me every day, and yet I never seem to muster the energy to stuff him in the glove compartment.  An eraser, with a Japanese label, on the back windowsill that has been to four different countries with me.  Is it special, is there any reason why it has become a world-traveled eraser?  No, not particularly.  A tiny stuffed pug, a birthday present from my sister, hangs hooked on a handle above the front passenger-side window.  My boyfriend always complained about it and I thought he was just being petulant, until one day I sat in that seat and he drove.  The stuffed pug's rear end was constantly threatening to smack my face as we drove.
There are sticky spots on the gear shift, random hairs everywhere (dog and human).  Burn marks are on the ceiling, perhaps from a previous owner who smoked.  The car is a weird salmon-red color that is hard to describe to others and employees at the DMV.  I often leave expensive items, like my MP3 player or my digital camera in my unlocked car, stuffed under papers and books.  I figure if something looks this old and trashed, people are bound to assume there's nothing of value in there.
My mobile wreck holds a special place in my heart.  It starts when I turn the key and the brakes haven't cut out on me yet.  The heater's broken and sometimes the visor will suddenly fall off into my lap, causing me to swear and swerve in startlement.  But in the end this junk heap that I think upon with affection is mine, and for at least a couple of hours each day, it is home.