Arvin Lebec gets a chopper

He don't want a pickle.

 Arvin Lebec turns out to be a motorcycle fan. He's a little large for this Harley Heritage Springer, but Arvin is built on a massive scale compared to his standard 1:12 peers.

I could pick you up and tie you into a pretzel, except you are not articulated.

Arvin Lebec is a 7" Mego Lion Rock Heroes of WWII figure. I haven't yet figured out which one. We were driving home from Santa Clarita at a time when the two antique stores in the Tehachapis, near I-5, were open, so we stopped at both. At the larger one, in Lebec, this highly articulated muscle man was sitting naked and cheerful on a shelf, marked $4. He has 14 points of articulation and can use 1:12 furniture -- he just has to stoop a bit sometimes, which, as a tall person myself, I do not consider unreasonable.

He's currently wearing a pair of pants I stole from Chelsea when I moved her on to a new life, as I haven't had time to sew for him. It would be handy if stores did little sweaters as Christmas ornaments this year!

Hey.

He's named Arvin for the official post-office name of the settlement on the Valley side of Wheeler Ridge, where the outlet mall and chain restaurants are.

I do yoga to deal with my PTSD.

Arvin is incredibly flexible and can touch his own face. He promptly moved into the big gray mansard dollhouse that I built with Mom and Dad back before 2018. Mom had "done" it as loosely period Old West, with costumed inhabitants, which wasn't a look I wanted to maintain. In the past year, I've dithered around about this house, as I want to keep it -- it's got big rooms on a small footprint, it goes with my bedroom, and I put my own effort into building it -- yet I keep feeling like adding wallpaper or repainting anything is messing with Mom's toy. I have a great book of scrap paper for it!

To have a house that reflects his personality, Arvin first needs a personality. We were at the big antique mall in Salida, where a dealer had 1:12 motorcycles for $3 each. I bought two because Arvin will eventually have a friend, and they'll want to ride together.

At the moment, Arvin is living in the upper-floor studio apartment, with my cherished Dolls House Emporium compact kitchen and a sofa bed that Dad built back in the 1970s, as he fixes up the rest of the house.

The bond between a man and his dog...