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mom: i won't have you working for a cheap dive like that.

me: mom. name one place in ballinger that is not a dive.

mom: fine. the italian place on main.

(beat)

anne: seriously? the pizza hut?

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really, all i want to do is buy an old school bus and paint things on it. i can put bunk beds in the back and fix the engine so it runs on corn oil, or maybe just runs, period, which will make the whole enterprise seem less irresponsible. i might even add seatbelts.

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we will name it the hiabus. among the non-negotiable remodeling projects will be the installation of a wood-burning stove, a traveling stage on the roof, and a kind of excessive sound system. we can turn the emergency exit into a drive-thru window where we will sell people things that they need, like crocheted aprons and secret recipes. we will never tell a soul what we had to go through to get them. the recipes, not the aprons. hopefully this will contribute to our corn oil fund.

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if we do run out of biofuel, we can just park that sucker right in the middle of someplace interesting, in the broadest sense of the word, and get busy sampling the local culture and cuisine. there is always the chance that we won't get that much of a say in where the hiabus eventually parks, and we could very well end up somplace uninhabitable like the middle of a desert, or oklahoma. these are risks that women such as us must take. if that happens, we will amuse ourselves by making a campfire out of overly intellectual books that we brought along for this very purpose, and talking late into the night. we can also tell sarah palin jokes.

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living in a bus means that you can wake up early and make pancakes. it also means that you can wake up wherever you want, corn oil supply permitting. it might also mean getting cut off by the 'rents, but i'll still call my mother every (other) day.