Tis the season...for new cars?

The timing could not be more perfect.  We are a hairsbreadth away from paying off our primary car and getting out from under the crushing burden of a car payment.  Financial freedom, right?  Nope, now we need to get a new secondary car.  It always works that way, doesn’t it?  Get one thing paid off, another payment pops up to take its place…like a whack a mole, but in dollars. 

We are looking at small cars for me to replace my rusty, trusty Honda Accord.  I’m sure it will stay in the family, but after teaching three kids how to drive in it, it’s pretty much run its course…not to mention all those mysterious dings, dents, and scratches that seem to go hand in hand with teenage drivers.  In their defense, though, it’s old enough that perhaps one of those dings or dents is from actually hitting a dinosaur. 

It’s a picture perfect old car, with rust around the wheel wells, a radio that quit working two years ago, and a high pitched squeal from time to time, like a hamster is caught in the engine.  (I checked.  There’s not.)  There are cigarette burns everywhere, which is really hard to imagine because I, the owner of the car, quit smoking 12 years ago.  (when confronted, my then teenage son comes up with some whoppers, such as “a truck driver threw his cigarette out the window and it landed in the car.”  Really.  Really?  That is the best you can come up with?  Come to think of it, perhaps the burns are from the asteroid that killed said dinosaurs. 

My husband and I are having a delicious time deciding what and where to buy.  Nothing too big, such as the Lincoln Townsquare, but nothing too small, such as the Toyota Speck.  We have a real life and need a functional small car, because we buy groceries, have a big black lab to take for shots, and family to chauffer around from time to time. 

Meanwhile, I am daydreaming of what it will be like to have a car no teens will ever drive.  The seats will stay clean and be positioned just like I left them, the radio won’t ever be turned to a scream-o station loudly (which has in the past, caused yours truly to startle and spill precious morning coffee upon starting it up) and any dings, dents, or scratches will be my doing.  Or more likely the doing of some frenzied dork with a cart in the parking lot. 

Plus, I have had this car for nine years.  Nine.  Long.  Years.  We both work, right?  We deserve to have a pretty little car that can go through a car wash without losing large pieces of rusty Honda from the sides, or have the weather stripping peel off the roof of the car, only to have it flap down loudly on the windshield as I drove from the gas station.  Embarrassing but true.     

Stay tuned, the Great Car Search begins soon…subtitled OMG, that’s per MONTH??

Joe Has Three Sisters

For my husband, living in a house with three women must have its advantages.  Sure it does.  For instance, good smells wafting through the air most of the time.  It could be from his wife's amazing culinary talent in the kitchen (snicker), or perhaps the candles we're constantly lighting (and occasionally forgetting to blow out).  Maybe it's the dainty feminine clouds of perfume emanating from bedrooms or even various cleaning supplies we use, guaranteed to turn your house into a "country lane" or "apple orchard", and also, um, well…

Ok, the advantages just may stop there.  Three women in the same house?  It's a special kind of hell.

He was wise to us almost from the beginning, though, almost seven years ago, having grown up in the same house as three sisters.  (Refer to the famous concerto, a piano piece entitled "Joe Has Three Sisters" plinked out in A minor.)  He's experienced with the “feminine way”; he had to be to survive.  He's smart...knows how more than one woman in the house can lead to the following events. 

a) Snarky comments, ranging from the phony, ostensibly helpful, "oh, you must not have had time to do your hair." to the far more dramatic, going-for-the-jugular serious, such as "imagine...you have $20 yet I'm missing $20.  Hmmmm."

b) Women all “cycling” together, resulting in a noxious black cloud, visible from space, hanging over just our house approximately once a month.

c) Interminably long waits for the bathroom, even though we have two.

d) his shaving cream and shavers mysteriously disappearing and magically reappearing in the bathtub.

He has handled it with aplomb and grace for the four years we’ve been married, even if he has had to stop for a beer from time to time after work to mentally gird his loins for the insanity surely awaiting him at home.

Such as, you ask? 

Well, mostly (meaning never) it's actually calm around our house.  That is, if the dog isn't chewing up something important or having horrifying bathroom accidents in unlikely, hard to reach places.  Or if the girls are sniping at each other.  Or I am sniping at them...or the dog, or the husband, or the son.  Sometimes the sniping results in me tearfully hiding out in our bedroom all night in the dark, armed with a cell phone, a flashlight, and a container of Betty Crocker frosting, reading articles on weight loss and snarling at anyone who dares crack open the door.  (wait, did I say frosting?  I meant carrot sticks.)

It's pretty well known by anyone with girls (let's say, oh, 18 and 20 years old) living at home that mostly, they're picking on each other.  It's guaranteed.  Yet, if needed, they will gang up and turn on their parents faster than a snake in a skirt.  That, too, is guaranteed.  If there should ever be a time when everyone is in perfect harmony that is when I will run to the medicine cabinet and check the level in the Nyquil bottle.  Again.

Luckily, I married a man with many wonderful attributes that seem to be greatly contributing to his longevity, most notably a high tolerance for "crazy-psychotic-woman" behavior, an incredible sense or humor, when to give good advice and/or maintain a lip-biting diplomatic silence...but mostly an uncanny sense of when to just quietly, sympathetically pour two Southern Comforts over ice.

I’m sure it was not an easy decision for him to marry someone with three older children but I, for one, am so glad he made the decision to take the chance and dive headlong into a ready-made family, especially after being carefree and single for so long. 

Even if our recycling bin has lots of empty frosting containers but there are no cakes in the kitchen.

(Here's to you, Bear.  Happy Anniversary!)