Published by Deborah on 12 Nov 2005 at 07:55 pm
Testosterone is in Full Throttle at My House Tonight
My husband is a gear-head. When I first met him, he owned a 1971 Corvette and a 1937 Willys, both of which are parked in our garage. Over the past four or five months, he’s been talking about buying a 2005 GTO to replace the black ‘69 he’d bought and refurbished two years ago.
All this week, he’s been agonizing over the sale of ‘69 because he wanted to use the money for the downpayment on the above. Well, today, he sold the it for $12k. No sooner did he return home from the bank, did he want to go out to the dealership. We talked about what would be an acceptable monthly payment (since I’m not working) before we packed the kids up and went.
On the way, he was telling me that he was going to have to quit smoking because he wasn’t going to be able to smoke and make the car payments. He looks over at me and tells me that I will have to do the same.
I’ve been obsessing quietly over getting a Siamese cat for the past couple of months, but have hesitated because how he felt about having pets in our newly renovated house. When he mentioned my quitting (haven’t gotten to that place yet), I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to cajole him into letting me have a pet. He accepted.
We pulled into the dealership. He went straight for the gray model. To his disappointment, it was a demo model with 5,000 miles on it. He was concerned about the type of miles (whether it had been simply driven or thrashed). Meanwhile, I saw a deep blue and a red one that I thought were much prettier.
Gray is such a bland color, and I didn’t like the tinted windows. He wanted a brand new 6-speed with close to zero miles. The blue car was an automatic, so that was out. He didn’t want to get the red, but I kept oohing and aahing over it until the boys started chiming in about how they liked it better than the other one.
After a few minutes, he caved, reminiscing about the day we bought my car. Originally, we were going to get silver or gray, but came home with the red one. So, now we have two red cars sitting in our driveway. Mine (13 years old now) looks decidedly like a piece of crap, but that’s okay because I still enjoy it.
We didn’t get out of that dealership before he just had to call one of his buddies. They’re out right now (my oldest in tow), picking up my brother-in-law to take a spin in the new toy.
Pat Kirby on 14 Nov 2005 at 7:20 am #
I love old cars and hate all the new ones, so parting with the ‘69 would have killed me.
Are cats that destructive? I’m not a cat person. Honesty, the bulk of the dirt and filth tracked in our house is a product of me or the husband. The dogs spend more time in than out and are probably tidier than us.
Except for the hair, but that isn’t anything vacuuming can’t cure.
Deborah on 14 Nov 2005 at 8:00 am #
Parting with the Corvette (even though it’s not mine) would have depressed me because of the sentimental value. My late father-in-law was the original owner of both the Corvette and the Willys.
Cats can be very destructive if you don’t watch them. Back at our old place, we had a neighbor that let her male tabby run wild. The cat sprayed every house to the point where it reeked so bad that we couldn’t sit outside for very long.
Then it got underneath our house and sprayed. The smell permeated the floorboards as well as our clothes. It was awful.
My mother-in-law had dogs that she couldn’t house train. As a result, we had to do a lot of repairs to the floors before we could move in. If we ever had to sell this house, we would have to repair the walls where the dog sprayed.
Those are the worst case scenarios. I grew up in a big family, which included cats and dogs. Somebody was always there to give them attention. As for the tidiness, I would have to agree that the animals are neater than us, lol.