I got my car washed yesterday. It was a spur of the moment decision, made possible only by the sheer fact that my gas light was blinking urgently at me and the station where I stopped happened to have an automatic car wash, and when I had filled the tank I was faced with the choice of saying yes or no and it occurred to me that perhaps the last time I had actually washed the car was far too long for me to even want to admit. So I paid for the highest upgrade they had and drove my car around the back and pulled into the machine and sat there and watched the it spray water and soap and wax all around me and then I pulled out of the carwash and drove home and did not think anything of it until I had to find my car later in a parking lot and actually did not recognize it.

The color of my car is officially called sea mist green, which really is just a kind of dull middling sort of green that is neither dark enough to be striking nor light enough to be pretty. It is just green, which is usually one of my favorite colors, but this green doesn’t have enough oomph for me to really care one way or the other. The only reason I got this color was because it was the only color that was not one of the million shades of white (champagne, silver, gray, whatever) that seem to be the predominant theme in cars these days, and I pretty much refuse to ever buy a car in one of those shades unless I can immediately take it somewhere and paint it a personality.

The problem is that since we live in the Sacramento valley and since I am surrounded by farms everywhere I drive and since those farms (plus all the wind we get around here) produce a lot of dust, and since I already mentioned above the whole issue of how long it has been since the car was last washed, I was used to my car being a lot lighter in color. More of a grayish green color, actually, instead of a true green. And now it is not. It is definitely green (sea mist green, yes, but that’s still a true green).

This ‘new’ darker color still startles me every time I see my car. Perhaps I should get my car washed more often. Heck, one of these days I might even break down and get the inside cleaned as well. Although at least there I can be reasonably assured that the upholstery will not magically change colors on me when that happens. Dusty it may be, but not dusty enough to turn brown upholstery any other color than what it already is.