Fix or Repair Daily

I have vehicle envy right now. Every once in a while, my current vehicle gets to the point where I get this itch to ditch it and get a new one. Have you seen the LG washer commercial where the woman dreams of destroying her old washer in order to be able to get a new one? Well, I've started having those fantasies (note: if something DOES happen to my car in the near future--a tree falls on it, a sudden hailstorm squashes it like a bug, a freak tornado whisks it away to Kansas--I assure any and all insurance adjusters who stalk me and find this blog that I had nothing to do with it!!).

We bought our first Ford right after my husband moved to Connecticut in 1998 (I moved later, but that's a story for another day). OK, he bought it, and told me later. During our (large)-dual-income-one-kid period, this was not really unusual or a big deal, and he had asked me about it beforehand. He just didn't wait for the official concurrence. He traded in his Volkswagon Cabriolet sport coupe for a Ford Explorer after he decided that the combination of being out of warranty, not liking the service at the (then) one local VW dealership, and slipping on icy roads in October did not bode well for his sporty little pre-kid Grapemobile (yes, reader, it was PURPLE). It was a wise transaction, and the only lingering bit of annoyance I hold is the fact that he had conned me into trading in MY Saab 900S for our minivan because he really wanted to keep the sports car, and then, less than a year later, he got rid of it. I mean, I gave up my heated leather seats and sporty spoiler for this?

Our second Ford came about by happenstance. We had decided to get rid of the Dodge, as we did not really need two large vehicles, and the Explorer was, by far, a "keeper." So, I started shopping for a New Beetle. The terms of the loan from our credit union were extremely good, but the trade-in would have negated it (there was a minimum loan value), Beetles being not that expensive to begin with. So, we decided to sell the Dodge ourselves. Right about then, Consumer Reports rated the 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan as one of the worst deals in used cars (which was true--as I mentioned, Moby was a lemon). Plus, the husband I married--the one who subscribed to Smithsonian and National Geographic--started subscribing to Motor Trend and Car and Driver. I suppose this was his mid-life crisis. A wad of Navy severance pay and Moby in hand, my husband went to his trusty Ford salesman and purchased a 25th anniversary edition Mustang convertible, trading in Moby for $8000, which was far more than he was worth. We call it Convertible Summer: my husband was out of the Navy and very happy in his new job; I was preparing to get out; we were renting a home at the time, having sold our house in Virginia; and we had one easy-breasy toddler child. It didn't last long, but it was certainly fun while it lasted. That fall, he went back to his same trusty Ford salesman and sold back that Mustang for only $1000 less than he'd paid for it. So, we essentially laundered The Great White Whale for $7000, in a deal that I don't think we'll ever repeat in this lifetime. The proceeds of the sale were the down payment for the house I'm sitting in now.

So, now we're on our third Ford. We bought the Windstar when I was pregnant with Child Number Three (trading in the Explorer, which we really liked--it wasn't big enough for two carseats and three kids, though). It's been paid off for over a year and, like any six year old vehicle, it has its share of quirks, the biggest being that, despite repeated repair attempts, the internal lights don't work and neither does the now-totally-useless entertainment system (our number one suspect is the mouse that my husband trapped in the car a few years ago). It's a little disturbing to travel around at night and get in and out of the car with no cabin lighting. Unfortunately, our dear Beetle bit the dust two years ago, after setting the record for Longest Held Automobile, coming in at 8 years in service and over 150,000 miles traveled. My husband bought a 4WD Subaru Impreza for his commuter car, and it's a great little automobile. Luckily, he gets home from work in time for me to use it for my evening activities, so I don't very often have to drive the Lightless Wonder after dark. I say "unfortunately" because we really can't afford two car payments right now. Plus, we're at kind of a crossroads in the car-buying zone: we're almost to the point where there's only going to be one car seat to worry about fitting in.

That said, I don't know. My husband and I both remember car trips with three or four kids in the back seat of the car. Cars were wider back then, I guess. At least the seats were. Plus there was that really cool station wagon trunk to roll around in. We rented a medium-sized SUV on our trip to California, and the kids were crammed into the back seat like sardines. It wasn't very pleasant. But, they persevered and, really, we are considering buying a mid-sized hybrid sedan or SUV. In the meantime, we can afford to repair Wonder Windstar, and we're having fun looking at cars, discussing alternative energy sources, and seeing what we can see. Not to mention, dreaming about sudden car-destroying meteor showers!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Mm Mm Good

My husband's birthday was on Tuesday, but, between weeknight activities and a his last-minute trip to D.C., we rescheduled it. So, since I'm getting ready to spend several hours making a cake and, later, coq au vin, I figured I'd pick on him for a bit!

My husband is a coffee snob. Now, he comes by it honorably because his dad was the ultimate coffee snob, ordering beans by mail and grinding his own back before Starbucks made it fashionable. I, on the other hand, grew up in a household where last night's coffee becomes this morning's coffee with a simple flick of the little red button (or, in a pan on the stove back in the olden days). Have I mentioned that I left my parents' home not liking coffee?

Early in our marriage, my husband started getting coffee through the mail. Every month the little Starbucks box would show up. The rise of internet ordering meant that he could tweak his monthly order, adding more or taking away depending on our usage, and switching out blends based on his current fancy. He took great pleasure in this tweaking and in grinding his own beans and raving about how good the coffee was.

Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, he got a letter from Starbucks, informing him that they would no longer be providing mail order services, and directing him to his "local" store. At that point, the "local" store was a good hour away. (My husband is also a former retail manager and is, therefore, a retail snob. Sometime I'll have to post about his rants on the shelf-stocking policy downfalls of Target.) Enter a month that included great rants and letters written to Starbucks. Ultimately, he switched his loyalty to Peet's, and now claims that Starbucks "tastes burnt and really isn't good coffee anyway."

He's mellowed a bit over the years. He orders it pre-ground now, rather than grinding his own. He figures that he uses it fast enough, and Peet's grinds it just prior to delivery, so it's a toss-up. Last year his trusty old coffee pot at work died (yes, you read that right--he made his own coffee at work), and he decided that he would discontinue the tradition. I bought him a new stainless thermos for Christmas, and now he gets up early, brews it, and takes it with him. He could fill up a big travel mug with it and take it all (I would!), but he doesn't. So, every morning when I go downstairs, there's at least one large mug of freshly-brewed coffee left in the carafe for me to drink while I chivvy the kids out the door to school.

And that's my silver lining for today.

A Vacation from the Vacation

That's what I need. Even though I did several loads of laundry on our trip (thank-you, sister dear, for loaning your machine, and, of course, the Embassy Suites free-wine-fiesta is quite amenable to waiting for the laundry to be done!), it has piled up again. Where did it come from? It was all done before we left, and we came back with only the dirty clothes from 2 days of travel. But, here I sit staring at 3 or 4 baskets (now clean) and another two (still to be washed).

Enter Halloween. I thought I had two weeks after we got home from an eight-day trip to California. Nope. Cub Scout party, this Saturday. Happy, happy, joy, joy. My husband e-mailed me from work yesterday to remind me (and, yes, I should have known, since I do the Cub Scout newsletter, so stupid on me). Luckily, or so I thought, I had the stuff already--my son and I bought the materials Sunday when we went on a mall trip. But, then the trouble starts. My husband and son have apparently totally redesigned the costume, against my better wishes. Several dozen e-mails have gone back and forth between yesterday and today, as well as some quite livid in-person conversation last night (which ended with me declaring that, as I was in the process of leaving the house for choir for the evening, they could do what they wanted, but leave me out of it). Then, when I got home, they couldn't find this, and this isn't working, and could I just...sigh. So, more e-mail this morning, and sarcastic words and then nice words. And, we've worked it out.

We started e-mailing each other years ago (the Navy is kind of a hurry-up-and-wait workplace, with massive lulls in between the gotta-do-it-yesterdays, so we'd e-mail to chat back and forth), but, since having the third child and realizing that we either (a) got so busy that we forgot to talk about things in the evening that needed to be discussed or (b) were so tired by the time the kids went to bed that we got nowhere, it's really become a useful tool. My husband is funny, too, because, unlike the stereotypical wife bothering her husband at work with trivialities, most of the time he starts the conversation ("By the way, don't forget that we have_______"...of course, half the time, I didn't know in the first place, but that's another topic!). For two introverts who are of the type to need to think a little bit between volleys, it's helpful, too. Or, sometimes it's as simple as a stream-of-consciousness "Help me remember to talk to you about _______ tonight" (although, I usually send those to his home e-mail, so he sees it when he's checking it while I'm making dinner). And, if there's a sticky issue (money, kid behavior problems, our-parent issues, etc.), we can work it out without the kids around to hear it (particularly with a twelve year old now staying up until 10 pm), which is better for them, too. In the end, even though it's probably an odd way to handle it, I'm glad we've discovered it.

And that's my Silver Lining for today.