I’m occasionally asked how I came to acquire Lola. It is a long story, and it starts with a Beetle.

What’s that?  A Beetle you say? 

I had wanted a red convertible since I was a little girl. In my 40s I decided I needed it before I turned 50, and that it would be a VW Beetle. After two months of searching nationwide, I found the perfect-for-me Beetle. It was at CarMax in Kansas and I asked them to ship it to the North Houston branch. 

To make a long story slightly shorter, the car was destroyed in transit so I had to find something else.  I couldn’t find another suitable Beetle at CarMax or otherwise. Allan suggested I might like a MINI instead so I looked at those on the CarMax site and found a suitable red convertible with turbo in California. They had it shipped to the North Houston branch at no charge and told me that they would fix anything I found wrong with it within the first 30 days. This car was a 2009 model and had plenty wrong with it.  They fixed everything but I was without my car for quite a bit of time soon after purchasing it. 
Once they got the bugs worked out and I was able to spend enough time with her to get to know her, I decided her name was Lola.

Her name is Lola. She is a showgirl. 

A showgirl gots to have some bling. Allan painted her brake calipers a gorgeous red.  I got her chrome letters to spell her name on the left side of the boot.   Not much later we took her to get dressed up Hawaiian style with new racing stripes on the bonnet and tribal tattoo stripes on each side. 

Lola’s first trip or outing other than to work and the store was with our club, the Houston MINI Motoring Society. We and thirty of our closest MINI friends (and their drivers) went on a dam tour. We met in Livingston and drove to Sam Rayburn and then to Toledo Bend. It was a long, fun, and sunburned day for those of us in convertibles.

She is a great car and so exhilarating , and she encourages me to always make sure that I’m fun enough to deserve her. 

So I  get to the office this morning and start feeding all the cats and quickly come to realize that I cannot find Frida. I look in all the usual places she hangs out and can’t find her, so then I start looking in unusual places like closed closets, closed cabinets, under furniture and so on.  No Frida.

After 10 or 15 minutes of this searching I’m a frantic mess.  Where could she be?  Is she hurt?  Is she trapped somewhere?  

And then I see it, A big gaping hole where a window pane used to be. I look through the hole and see the window pane on the ground below. Oh no. Frida has escaped!  

With cup of chow in hand I head outside to look for her. I rattle the chow, calling “Frida.  Frida!  FRIDAAAAAAA!!!”  Of course this attracts every cat in the yard. I hear the faint jingling of collar tags and follow the song to the side of the building and there she is, under the house. I approach her and of course she retreats further into the dark damp abyss. Damn. Thompson is determined to protect me from this horrid beast he knows I call Frida, hiding behind me, hissing and snarling. Thanks for the help, TomTom. 

She is interested in the chow I carry, but not at all keen on the idea of  being scooped up. I figure I might as well let her eat. I pour a puddle of the meow chow on the sidewalk and here she comes. I let her eat a few bites before I scoop her up and head inside. I was sure she would shred me to pieces, especially with Thompson following alongside, still snarling and hissing.  Thankfully I only suffered some slight shoulder piercings, which I happily accepted.

Finally back inside, she is all about her creature comforts she has come to love:  food in a bowl, water in a bowl, indoor litter box. Brother Pablo was so happy to see her, would not leave her side and could not stop sniffing all over her.  Exhausted from a night on the lamb, she is resting quietly in her favorite box of paperwork. 

All’s well that ends well. Now to fix that blasted window pane.