While in the midst of the polishing the new Tom Hickey novel, whatever I'm inspired to write about, unless it regards the novel or 1920s Los Angeles, I try to shelve. 

Hence, not many posts these days.

Last night Zoe and I watched Chinatown. Not the '20s, but close enough. Of course I had to send my little girl out of the room a few times, and get creative with certain explanations. 

Zoe's questions and observations entertained me nearly as much as the movie did. 

When, during a drought, Jake the detective follows Hollis Mulray to the coast and sits on a rocky cliff watching while Mulray observes water pour out of the storm drains, Zoe got scared for Jake because she saw a dinosaur hiding in the rocks. Which puts a great film into a whole new light.

We have a flexible one hour a day time limit on television watching. Zoe asked if movies counted the same as tv shows. I said if it's a good movie,  longer is okay.  I remarked that a half hour of Sponge Bob might be plenty, while two hours of Mary Poppins seems reasonable. 

Zoe said, "Yeah, because Sponge Bob shows us his underwear and Mary Poppins doesn't."

The moral: if you haven't got a seven-year-old to watch movies with, borrow one.  

I'm not somebody who washes his car every week. Although I often admire shiny cars, making mine shine has never seemed to rate a high priority, unless I'm going to sell the thing. 

But a month or so back, when I stopped into Pep Boys looking for a roof rack, since Zoe and I were about to leave on a camping trip, I spotted a bottle of Turtle Wax Carnuba and decided t buy it, to give the old Corolla a thin skin of protection before we headed off into desert sand storms. 

However, the roof rack took longer to assemble than I'd planned, as did packing. So the Corolla didn't get waxed until today.  

When a car hasn't gotten waxed in some years, stains appear, at least if the car is white. I supposed those stains would remain for eternity, but once I started rubbing, they began to vanish, which prompted me to rub more diligently and to remember The Karate Kid. When Mister Miyagi ordered the kid to polish the cars with a circular motion, that was only to teach him blocking, right?

Wrong. The circular motion works like magic, I discovered today. So does Turtle Wax Carnuba. 

As the stains continued to vanish, I remembered a lesson from long ago, when a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance persuaded me to seek quality in a task I didn't see a lot of value in: paneling the interior of a Ford van. All the pains I went to, and the time spent, proved a small price for the pleasure I got from driving around in an aesthetically pleasing environment. 

Here's the lesson: whatever we approach with an effort to achieve quality not only gives us pleasure, it boosts our ability to devote ourselves to quality in everything else, such as writing, raising children, creating a business, or kicking field goals.

Besides, the shinier my Corolla becomes, the lighter the temptation to spend money I don't have on a replacement. Okay, it's travelled 165,000 miles. But not only did it take me 4000 miles to Chicago and back in June and another 3000 miles around the west in July without a sputter, it's almost as shiny as the new ones.

When the Bible admonishes us to do everything as unto the Lord, it's not just telling us how to make God or our employers happy. It's also serving up some mighty practical advice.

Now, I'll go out vacuum that lovely 2001 Corolla.

Yesterday, Zoe (she's seven) asked who would be fighting in the war at the end of the world.

Pam said, "Probably Arabs and Israelis."

"Which ones are the good guys?" Zoe asked.

After a moment of reflection, I said, "I suspect there'll be good guys on both sides."

"Okay," she said. "But who should we vote for?"

Now, I'm all for a bit of childhood indoctrination, but to ask a seven-year-old to take sides against anybody feels wrong, as my strongest desire as a parent is to help my kids hold on to their innocence as long as they can without endangering themselves. So, I sighed relief when she said, "If Texas was one of the teams, we would vote for them, wouldn't we?"

"Well," I said, "Who would the other team be?"

"Los Angeles. So we should vote for Los Angeles, right?"

How I love that girl.