Once I paid closer attention to gas prices. When one particular gas station would change its price, I'd know it was an early warning indicator that all the prices would go up. Sometimes I'd fill up the car, and other times I'd shrug. After all, it was only a few pennies, and I'd remind myself we were only talking about saving a dime or two.
I've seen times when we couldn't get gas, primarily after hurricanes. After Hurricane Wilma, for years I never let my gas tank drop below a quarter of a tank. And then, that level of vigilance got to be too exhausting for a crisis that never came, and I let that practice slip.
Vigilance, relaxed vigilance, consequences, more vigilance--I see this cycle in many parts of my life.
I've seen gas lines come and go, and we're not at that stage yet, at least not down here. But yesterday, driving home after church, we did see a gas station in the process of taking down the 3 in the price and putting up a 4 to start the price. It's been awhile since I've seen gas prices that high.
We did stop to put gas in the car. I headed to the station that is usually cheapest, but it was $3.99 a gallon. Should we go back to the station that was $3.77 a gallon? If the price on the sign was right, we'd save $1.40 by doing that--actually, we wouldn't, because I still had just under a half a tank of gas left. My compact Prius has a gas tank that only holds 7 gallons, unlike every other car I've had that has a 10 gallon tank.
We filled up the tank at the station that has gas for $3.99 a gallon. My car will tell me how much each trip costs, if I update the cost of gas at each refueling. The last time I filled up the tank, gas was at $3.49 a gallon. I tried to remember the last time I filled the car. It was probably early February, just before being severed from my job, which means I wouldn't be using the car as much, but I didn't know that then.
Gas has gone up 50 cents a gallon in a month. With war in Ukraine, I actually expected gas prices to go up more steeply in the last 2 weeks.
Yesterday on my morning walk, I saw another sign of the times, a more seasonal sign. I walked over to Holland Park, which is on the Intracoastal Waterway and West Lake, and it's mainly boat ramps. But it does have a wonderful board walk that allows people to walk or wheel their way over the water. In the time just before sunrise, I stood staring at the Intracoastal and A1A, the road just beyond it. And then I saw the powerful arch and fin of several dolphins as they made their way through the water.
I stood staring at the water for 10 more minutes. Often one dolphin sighting leads to others, but not yesterday. But still, it was magical, the kind of visit that made me understand those fairy tales where people hurl themselves into a harsh environment where they will not thrive, but they are so attracted to the mystical other that they can't help themselves.
It's normal to see dolphins this time of year. There are more of them in South Florida because the waters are so cold further north, so we're more likely to see them now than other times of the year. It's not unusual, but it's still not common.
In some ways, it was a comfort to see the dolphins--the world may be veering towards a war-torn reality that won't be pleasant and already is awful for so many. But dolphins have not been extinguished; maybe we'll be lucky too.
No comments:
Post a Comment