Week 24: '81 Delorean DMC-12

Phil Pekarcik, stager and composer of the recent artful photos for Daddy's Matchbox, is without electricity, along with thousands of others, as a result of an ice storm. No power = no car pic.

Rain froze on everything -- wires, trees, cars, farm animals, politicians -- bringing now-heavy branches down, often with disregard for electrical wires or structures beneath.

My family was fortunate in we were without power for less than eight hours, allowing the water damage restoration crew who has been working in our basement to continue their efforts.

For weeks we have been dealing with basement issues -- a filled 20 yd dumpster in my driveway is testament -- and mold and water damage has meant loss of furniture, walls and lots of general stuff.

Last night I helped my ten-year-old with his school project: a cereal box about a president (he was doing Andrew Jackson, and had named his cereal "Old Hickory Crunch"). My son was overwhelmed and stressed, and my main contribution was to help him break down the project into components and to guide him in focusing on individual tasks and not worrying about the overall size or complexity of the project. I even worked on teaching him to take deep breaths and to find the humor and fun in the entire experience,and I guided him in not labeling work good or bad, but just seeing it as what it is.

 Living in the now fifth grade style, so to speak.

This morning as I looked at an appointment I had to attend concerning healthcare coverage for my kids, while pricing wallboard for the basement, while thinking about the task of rebuilding my basement walls, while coordinating an upstairs fogging for the mold, while discussing one-car scheduling for physical therapy for my wife who damaged her knees in a car accident, while calling the trash company to remove the dumpster (which likely would be delayed due to to the ice and snow), while handling paperwork concerning my unemployment,while dealing with ten other time-consuming necessities, I realized I did not have a picture for the blog, or even a blog written, and, unlike the ice, I began to melt.

I couldn't do it - too many parts, so many elements to coordinate, too little money, so many projects outside of my comfort zone, so much to do, so much I didn't know how to effectively do ...

...and it clicked. This was my Old Hickory Crunch.

Problems are relative to our individual lives, but either the advice I gave my son was real or I was just talking.

I believed what I had told him.

I took a deep breath.

I began breaking down my day into small parts, and as I did, I moved past my problems and soon began imagining how overwhelmed others must feel with no electricity, or, even worse, no homes, or no water, or living in war torn countries.

My problems became neither good nor bad, but just parts of my big picture.

So my wife came outside and we took care of one small part of the day: she began snapping pictures of the first 2011 Hot Wheels to show up so in Daddy's Matchbox. For the picture I chose a model year of when I graduated from high school, 1981. Also, I tried to think of the most unexpected car one might find in an icy tree in Ohio, and for me that was a Delorean.

I'm not convinced that makes sense, but it did to me.

Outside, the trees are coated in thick ice, looking mystical or toy-like, as if of spun glass. The sun is peaking through the top branches, and I see bursts of bright green, yellow and red, which I realize is the handiwork of the ice, which is creating prisms to break down the light of the sun into its component colors.

Everything is crazy, surreal, intensely beautiful.

Picture doesn't do justice to the actual visuals. Extra point: can you find the bird in the tree?

Our resident cardinal, wondering what the fuss is all about.

This is a non-commercial blog and most of my readers don't even live in Ohio, let alone the Cuyahoga/Geauga County area, but I nonetheless want to give a true, heart-felt shoutout to Gil Gotlieb and his crew at Airguard Restoration, who did the flood/mold remediation in my basement. Gil and crew were incredible, listening and solving problems at every step, and they made a stressful situation seem not so bad. What an absolutely great company that does absolutely great work, and what an absolutely great bunch of people. Thank you.

As previously mentioned, car picture was shot by my wife Rochelle. The Delorean is number 144/244 of the 2011 Hot Wheels collection, part of the Faster Than Ever line.