Day Two of Car Buying Experience

Long day of car shopping.

All cars starting to look same...

Some too small...

Some too big...

None just right.

Feel like Goldilocks, only with temperament of hungry, pissed off bear...

Three test drives...

One annoying sales associate, one nice old guy...

Annoying one actually trotted out accursed line, but I cut him off mid-sentence with...NOTHING. Bright spot of day...

Third row seat option nixed...

But, then wife has bad dream about having only two seats in car with dozens trying to get in car...

Thought had narrowed down options to Cadillac or Enclave, but now Sante Fe back in picture...

Rumors flying of possible eleventh hour Mazda entry into sweepstakes...

Going to 9:30 service at church this morning to give us more shopping time for afternoon...

So excited....

Need to pick up new bottle of Tums...

Starting to see Joe Isuzu whenever eyes close...

Pam has fitful night, little sleep, looks overwhelmed...

So wish she drank....

All local car dealers on to us. Inbox overrun with hot deals on hot rides emails...

Will try to concentrate on sermon this morning, but most likely will spend sermon time imagining Pacifica blowing up when dealer take for test drive...

So exciting...

Car buying experience thing of beauty...

Buying a Car in America

I should admit up front that I do not like the car buying experience. I don't even like the expression "car buying experience" since it sounds like so much touchy-feely claptrap. Purchasing a car is not an "experience" anymore than cleaning out the gutters is an "experience" Its just something that has to be done once every ten years or so, that's all. Surviving Auschwitz would be an experience, climbing Everest, an experience. Buying an automobile is a chore. A confusing, disorienting chore.

Consequently, I don't do it very often. I normally drive cars until they no longer are able to cooperate. Sometimes they begin emitting grayish, blueish clouds in their wake, other times they start leaving oily pools of industrial discharge on the garage floor every night. Other times, they like, literally blow up,(my poor, dearly missed Sebring convertible...God rest her soul). This time, it's Pam's valiant Chrysler Pacifica which is moaning out dire warnings of its impending doom. She has been a wonderful car, but is not long for this world. So, for about a month now, we have been laying the groundwork for purchasing a replacement vehicle. In this we have been greatly aided and baffled by the internet. Since last we bought a car, my Cadillac CTS seven years ago, the buzzword in the car game has become...no hassle pricing, a concept which exchanges the hassle over haggling back and forth with somebody's manager about the price with the far greater hassle of literally everything else!

To start with, what in the name of Henry Ford has happened to car names?? My first four cars had the following names:  Beetle, Beetle, Scirocco, Cherokee. Now, everywhere you look it's initials and numbers. You want a Cadillac you say? Which one? There's the CTS, DTS, XLR, STS, SRX, ESV and how could anyone forget the classic EXT? Interested in a Lexus, you say? Well, I can certainly understand why with such a variety of models and styles to choose from...the LS, GS, ES, IS, SC, LX, GX, and RX. Even when you find a car which has an actual name like the Sante Fe, or the Enclave, there's the dizzying array of modifiers that go with the name...touring, sport, premier, limited. What ever happened to naming cars after animals or indeginous peoples? I can remember when the most popular cars were named...Mustang, Maverick, Charger, Cherokee. But, I digress.

In our case, this is Pam's car we're talking about so this will be her decision. Anyone who knows my wife knows that making decisions isn't her greatest talent. In fact, except for the notable exception of deciding to marry me, she's horrible at it. She has never made a snap decision in her life. There is no such thing as an impulse purchase in Pam's world. She's a spreadsheet sort of gal. I avoid even writing the word "spreadsheet." After a month or so of extensive, exhaustive Internet study, she has narrowed it down to vehicles that use regular gasoline. (Just kidding!!) Actually, she has it narrowed down to the Chrysler SRX, the Buick Enclave, the Sante Fe Sport, and something made by Mazda. The sticking point has been the third row seat question. Her present car has one and it comes in quite handy on the half a dozen times each year when we use it. Also, having a larger interior helps whenever we travel to Maine with Lucy for a month.

So, this morning comes phase two of the process. Yes, we will venture out into the bizarro car dealership world to test drive some candidates.

If anybody says to me, "What have I got to do to get you into this car today?" I will battle mightily the urge to punch him/her in the mouth. Maybe I will counter with, "Well, for starters you can promise me to never, ever say that to me again, Sparky" My combative, no nonsense car buying style causes Pam no end of angst. She is so sweet and kind and in her heart of heart...desires to be nice to everyone, while I, uh, strive to, er, uh...ok, I can be a bit rude when dealing with car salesmen. I open my mouth and some borderline hostile sentence comes out, and she dies a little bit inside. I know this, but am basically powerless to stop it. I view the salesman in front of me as a hostile power intent on swindling me. I realize that this is entirely unfair and unreasonable. We all gotta make a living and all...

So, I will do my best to be as nice as humanly possible this morning. I will be patient, even kind. I will endeavor to make the car buying experience as comfortable as possible for my wife.

Wait a minute...Endeavor...now that's a car name if ever I've heard one!

Having a cold with Lucy

So, I have a cold. Not the flu. Not some sort of bronchial disturbance. Not a sinus infection. A cold, that garden variety plague that has vexed mankind since the dawn of time and against which modern science and medicine have been powerless. As I write these words, I have industrial strength men's all cotton handkerchiefs at the ready, since the laughably inept tissues produced by Kleenex have proven completely worthless. Already, only one paragraph in, and I have availed myself of this handkerchief four times. It's been that sort of afternoon.

This day began with such promise. I actually slept reasonably well, and sneezed only once from 6 am until 8. I was breathing rather well, and all indications seemed to point to a productive day. All came a cropper around noon when my nasal passages became overrun by a host of microscopic organisms of unknown specie who gleefully began lashing the ends of my nose hairs with the tail feathers of the world's smallest bird. At each such lashing, which I felt from my cowlick all the way down to my in grown toenail, my body began its coiled response to the invader. I could feel the birth of each sneeze somewhere around my hip area, then the three or four seconds it took for it to climb up into my generously sized nose. The resultant recoil and noise from each sneeze was enough to awaken Lucy, who would lift her head with her ears pinned back in terror, until she realized it was just Dad sneezing for the 50th time since he got home.

Speaking of Lucy, our girl isn't what you would call a snuggler. Sure, she sleeps on the bed with us, and rests on the sofa with Pam, but usually at the opposite end. But, today when I got home for lunch, she took one look at me and knew that something was amiss. It may have been my red and irritated nose, or perhaps the fact that my voice had dropped three octaves, from Justin Beiber to James Earl Jones. Whatever, she knew that something was up and immediately began shadowing my every move. While I ate some warmed up lasagna, she laid on the floor at my side. When I then collapsed on the bed with my head tilted upward to stop the torrent of cascading post nasal drip...she jumped up on the bed and wedged herself as close to me as she possibly could, using my body as her pillow. This despite what became a deluge of sneezes, each more intense and violent than the next. She didn't budge until I finally, mercifully, dozed off to sleep. When I awoke, she was on the floor directly under my side of the bed, looking up at me as though she thought I was going to die.

For all of you who don't quite understand why some of us own dogs (and a few select cats), this is why. For all of their slobbering, butt-sniffing, idiosyncrasies they are so intuned to us. They notice when we are sick or sad. They know. Then they set about to do something to lift our spirits. They always succeed.

Nothing Else is Maine

Lucy wants to be here...

I want to be here...

Lucy is dreaming of this...

I am dreaming of this...

But, this is February and Maine is a full 28 weeks away, or 114 weeks in dog years. And I have come down with a cold. But February is a good time to pull out your Maine pictures and look at them while blowing your nose and coughing up yellowish mucus. There will be lots of fun stuff between now and  Maine. But, nothing else is Maine. 

This Is Us...a review

Pam and I really like This is Us, a new show on NBC. It is an extremely well written, well acted and well produced drama full of compelling characters and interesting story lines. The plot centers around three siblings, Kate, Kevin and Randall...Kate and Kevin part of a triplet pregnancy where the third child was still born. Fate then enters the picture as a third baby, Randall was delivered to the hospital after being left on the steps of a nearby firehouse. Parents Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt the newborn to complete the natural triplets they had been expecting. The entire show is done in flashback mode as each character lives in real time while struggling with the memories of their past. It is a fascinating plot device that works well where it could very easily become annoying. Like every fully realized human being, each of these characters bring a lot to like and even admire to the table, along with their fair share of failings. At the bottom of it all lies a family that truly loves each other.

This brings us to this past week's episode which I have noticed has produced a torrent of praise from many of my Christian friends on Facebook for its alleged poignant life lesson. To which I say, "What...are you people on drugs???"

Here's what happened. Randall is going though a sort of mental breakdown over the fact that his long lost birth father is dying. Kevin, on the other hand, is preparing for the opening night of a play in which he is starring and producing in which he seems convinced that he is going to fail miserably. Along the way of this ill fated production, he has managed to sleep with the original lead actress as well as the playwrite herself. Literally minutes before the curtain rises on opening night, he gets a disturbing phone call from Randall, who is clearly distraught to the point of tears. As the curtain rises and the lights go up, the lead actress walks out on stage and turns to deliver the opening line to Kevin, only Kevin isn't there. He is seen running through the streets of New York to his brother's office where he finds him crying on the floor. In an admittedly heart warming scene, Kevin comes along side Randall on the floor and holds him while he cries. For this, Kevin has become a hero...for reasons that escape me.

Let's get this straight, a narcissistic Lothario walks out on his coworkers, abandoning them in the literal hour of their greatest need, and is celebrated for it? But Doug, but Doug, don't you see? He had had that talk with his step dad earlier and had been told to do what his Dad would have done! He was just following the example of family first devotion personified be his deceased and noble father, Jack!

Uh...no.

I'm pretty sure that Jack wouldn't have walked out on his commitment to his employer with no explanation, leaving them to deal with a public relations disaster, and the ridicule of all of their time and efforts. I'm thinking that perhaps Jack maybe would have called Randall's wife, sister, or mother to notify them of his distress and promise to go to him the minute the show was over.

I'm thinking that Kevin was terrified of failure, horrified at the prospect of bombing in his first live theatre performance and the withering reviews he would surely get from the New York Times reviewer in the audience. When presented with his crying brother he jumped at the chance to escape his pending failure. When it came down to fleeing or fighting, Kevin bolted, leaving the rest of the cast and crew to deal with being abandoned.

Don't get me wrong, Kevin is a quite charming figure on this show. He possesses a fine sense of humor and an ability at self-depreciation that the rest of his family could surely use. But, calm down people. If Kevin's actions described above are to be interpreted as some sort of Christian virtue, then the bar has been lowered to deathcom 5.

Greatest. Scientific. Study. Ever.

I have it on very good authority that the scientists at the University of Edinburgh are really smart. Seriously. But sometimes smart isn't the same thing as wise. Apparently, 63 years ago, the thought entered somebody's head at this fine school to do a multi-decade research project on the effects that aging might have on human personality. To the surprise of absolutely no one alive or dead, then or now, the scientists discovered that personality at age 77 is quite different than it is at age 14. Speaking as someone who used to be 14, I could have saved them a lot of time and trouble, by answering the question this way..."duh!!"

1. When I was 14, I thought that the finest movie ever made was Billy Jack.
2. When I was 14, I thought that a realistic career goal was to become a shortstop in the big leagues.
3. When I was 14, my number one obsession in life was the tantalizing prospect of getting laid.
4. When I was 14, I practiced the guitar until my fingers bled, not for the love of music, but because I thought it might help me accomplish number 3.

So, yeah. . .life at age 58 bares little resemblance to life at 14. But, it's nice to know that a group of scientists have wasted the past 60 years proving what any sentient human being could have told them if they had merely asked. The experiences of one's life do, in fact, change a person. In a perfect world, these changes improve us, burning away the haughty arrogance and pride of youth with the wisdom that comes with humility. But, sometimes the opposite occurs, where the innocence of youth gets exchanged for the cold-hearted cynicism of bitterness. For example...

1. When I was 14, I laughed a lot more than I do now.
2. When I was 14, I didn't categorize my fellow man into political factions.
3. When I was 14, I played the guitar a lot more.
4. When I was 14, I didn't even know what bitterness was.

So, it's a mixed bag. With age has come some good things, and some bad. In many ways I am better at 58, but in some ways not so much.

Hardest. Job. Ever.

Yesterday, for the fourth time in my life, I toured Monticello. Each time I learn something new, each time I come away astonished by such a life. Although he can be included on a very short list of indispensable men to the establishment and success of this country, and his contributions can never be undervalued, at his grave site, the obelisk that marks his final resting place includes only three of those contributions:

Author of the Declaration of Independence
Author of Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom
Father of the University of Virginia

Seeing it has gotten me thinking about what I would want as my epithet. What thing have I done or accomplished that I would want to be remembered for? It is a singularly clarifying exercise to think of such things. Unlike Mr. Jefferson, I don't have a ten volume book full of things to pick from. Still, it's hard to narrow it down to the most essential.

I would want to be remembered as a good son, a good friend, a good brother, uncle, and cousin because these things would suggest that I loved and cherished family. I would want to be remembered as a good husband because that would suggest that I was faithful to the most important commitment I ever made.

I suppose I would want some mention to be made of my thirty plus years of a moderately successful business career. But having just written that sentence and reading back over it, it sounds so out of place, so inconsequential. Sure, it provided the financial means to do many of the other things, but in and of itself doesn't rise to the level of "good son."

But, after much reflection, I've come to the conclusion that I would want to be remembered the most for being a good...father. The reason is simple; It is the single most difficult thing I've ever done and carries with it the greatest potential for a lasting legacy. If I raise and unleash horrible people into the world, they will continue to pollute it long after I'm gone. But, if I can gift a couple of caring, loving, compassionate and gifted people into the world, my efforts will help make the world better for the rest of eternity. Right?

But, it's so hard. You want to teach them to care about other people, but you don't want them to be taken advantage of too easily. You warn them about the dangers of loving money, but you also want them to be good stewards and know their way around a bank statement. You teach them about God, but you don't want them to wind up so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good. You want them to love and adhere to truth but also live a life full of grace towards those who disagree. You teach them to be compassionate, but not a sucker. You teach them that there is no replacement for hard work, but also compel them to stop and smell the roses. You try to teach them how to think instead of what to think, then spend the rest of your life hoping they don't start thinking stupid things. You want them to become self sufficient, but spoil them rotten every chance you get. You play the parental version of tug-of-war between pampering and pestering, too much of either and all might be lost. Hardest. Job. Ever.

So, here's the epithet for my tombstone:

Good Father.
Good Husband.
Passable Writer.
Baseball Fan.

Notice which one got top billing...