We’re arguing about who will drive the Camry. I want to, not because I really want to, I don’t like that car. It’s gutless and boring — it looks like a member of some nameless corporate fleet. But I want to drive it because I don’t want to worry about other people being inside the car if the accelerator sticks. At least I drive alone most of the time.

Not that I would know what to do if an accelerator stuck. I wouldn’t even realize the point at which, yes, I should go ahead and panic, because even before that point, my brain would be so preoccupied with worrying about the possibility of the accelerator sticking that it would take a while for it to shift gears into a full blown panic. Is it sticking? No, it’s okay. No, no, that feels like it’s sticking, am I slowing down? Ah, okay, the brake’s working, but better be safe and stay under 50 miles an hour just in case. Oh shit! It’s sticking! No, that’s just my foot. Just like that all the way to work.

The whole reason we bought a Camry — the whole reason anybody buys a Camry — is for safety and reliability. I wish I could trade it in right now, today. Drive it to a Ford dealer and exchange it for an F-150. The kind that tows boulders in the commercial during the football playoffs. That one there. The one that promises invincibility. I’ll take some of that, thank you very much.

Toyota, you’re going to have to do a lot to win back the hearts and minds of American moms. We hate being more scared and worried than we already are, especially when it comes to the safety of our families. You just mashed the hottest hot button we have. In fact, I would say that button is permanently stuck.

I used to listen to NPR every morning and evening during my commute, but I had to stop.

I would hear a story about Iraqi widows and children living in metal trailers with no air conditioning in the baking sun, with no jobs and no way out of their situation, and I would chew on it day and night, wondering what can I do? So many times, I hear something horrific and I don’t know where to put the information, other than to pray about it. Listening to NPR made me feel helpless and sometimes a bit hopeless, so I stopped listening. I am now less informed, but less neurotic. (Still praying, though.)

I started listening to music on my commute — not the funky jazz Bob likes (sarcastically dubbed “70’s porn music” by a younger friend), or the bubblegum hiphop my kids like (”and a Britney song was on, and a Britney song was on”). My taste is my own — Stevie Ray Vaughn, Patsy Cline, Pavarotti, Louis Armstrong. There is no common denominator there, only that I like it.

Lately, not only have I been listening to this music, I’ve been singing to it — loud, in the car, by myself, even at stop lights when someone could look over and see this crazy middle-aged woman singing “Crazy,” at the top of her lungs.

Why am I doing this? To stay sane, I think.

I don’t know how many steps there are from my bed to my desk. The journey takes two hours daily, filled with thousands of small movements and tiny decisions. Green earrings or blue? Pink lipstick or brown? Socks or no? It takes so much energy to propel me forward, to launch into the black morning. Yet most of it is done on automatic pilot. If I thought about any of it, it would take another hour.

There was a gullywasher in downtown Houston this afternoon, and by the time my bus got to the park-and-ride, it looked as if a small tornado had ripped through. Most of the spindly trees Metro had planted after Hurricane Ike were either knocked over or split in two. All the cars were being diverted off the HOV lane into the park-and-ride lot, so it was gridlock trying to get out of there.

On the side streets, the traffic snarled around shredded styrafoam that looked like snow and a trash can in the middle of one lane. The traffic lights were out, so I prayed, “Jesus, help me and all these other people get through this light.” And we all did.

The next light, on the feeder of Highway 59, was also out, and even scarier. Traffic was inching along when I saw her, a homeless woman standing between the lanes with a walking cane and a sign scrawled “Need Help With Rent.”

“Please get out of the road,” I said, but she couldn’t hear me — I had the windows rolled up and I was four cars away from her. I hate it when people go into traffic to beg for money. There’s an extra layer of pathetic about that practice.

So here was my dilemma — do I give her money and encourage her dangerous habit, or do I drive on by her, an inch at a time?

A woman driver in the next lane over rolled down her window and stuck some bills out. The homeless woman took the bills, raised them to the sky and said, “Thank you Jesus.” I could see then that she had no teeth.

Another driver did the same thing and got the same reaction. It was a prosperous day for the homeless woman. Now it was my turn. I rolled down the driver’s side window and gave her all the money in my gym bag. Enough to buy a sandwich in the downtown tunnels.

“Thank you,” she told me.

“Be careful,” I told her.

Our eyes met and she looked as if she wanted to cry.

So did I.