A Couple Of Thoughts

I seem to be all over the place lately -- many different projects happening at once. Thus, today's blog is a combo platter. Well, maybe not a combo platter, maybe more like a value meal...

…SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME

I'll admit it. When I'm at home alone, I do not close the bathroom door while I'm using the facilities. I think that this is due in part to my experience growing up in a house with seven people and one bathroom, and then, of course, moving on to college where I shared a bathroom with many more people.

Our bathroom door is directly across the hall from our bedroom door, which is directly across the room from our bedroom window, which overlooks the alley. Yesterday, as I was preparing to leave the bathroom, I felt as though someone was watching me through said window.

Not only was this unsettling since I was sitting on the toilet at the time, but it was also frightening since the bedroom window is two stories up with nothing near it to lend access to it.

Except for a telephone pole.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my glasses on. I could see the curve of something like the top of a head and eyes? did I see a pair of eyes? They were gone when I squinted to see more clearly.

I flipped the door shut, completed my bathroom protocol, and then grabbed my glasses from the hallway shelf on my way to the bedroom window.

I carefully approached it from the side trying to be as quiet as possible.

Sitting just as quietly on the windowsill keeping his head down below the window was Rocky the Squirrel. He wasn't wearing his usual cap and goggles -- but it was him!

My four-word exclamation did not startle him. He merely stood up and looked at me. I asked him what he was doing out there, but he didn't respond. He was holding a piece of brick that he had chosen from the assortment that rests on the ledge from our last tuckpointing extravaganza.

He started to nibble on the brick. I asked him if he was feeling okay. He pulled the brick from his mouth and looked at me as though I had said something stupid. Then he scampered back down the telephone pole.

I should note here that some observers of nature claim that strange animal behavior is a predictor of natural disasters. In December 1990, many earthquake-types were predicting that the New Madrid (MA-drid; not like the city in Spain, first vowel as in cat) Fault was going to blow. Sales of bottled water and granola bars went through the roof, schools closed, general craziness ensued in communities along the fault. My sister Lucy was in St. Louis at the time (a city that would feel it if the fault actually did something). To this day she claims that as she did dishes one night she looked out the window and saw a squirrel standing on a tree branch and staring at her.

Now, there are tons of squirrels in and around my parents' house -- seeing one on a tree branch is no big deal. Lucy said this one was different. She said that when she noticed it and stopped doing the dishes long enough to look at it, it looked right back at her and began patting its head with one hand and rubbing its stomach with the other. She swears it.


BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR

David and I bought a new car last week -- our first big purchase as a married couple, and our first joint purchase of a car. Well, that's what he's saying. Now instead of his car and my car we have the Focus and the Metro.

We traded in his '98 Volkswagen (my '96 Geo Wagenschen still has a home with us). The road to the purchase was paved with visits to the garage for various VW ailments. The car had over 105,000 miles on it, so while it was frustrating, it wasn't really unexpected.

I did some research on new cars (Dave claims it was a lot, I like to think of it as thorough). It's amazing what you can learn online these days. Dave gave me an idea of what kind of car he was thinking about. Most days when he came home from work I had a couple of file folders with some stuff for him to read.

We narrowed the field and I did some inventory searches of local dealerships to zero in on what we wanted. Since Dave has been extremely busy at work and since no one wants to spend more time at a dealership than is necessary, I was hoping that this specific information -- I had invoice costs, MSRPs, current financing deals being offered, and even the damned vin's -- would aid us (and the dealership) in a near painless purchase.

I won't bore you with the details of how wrong I was. I am shocked by the gall of salesmen (yep, all men) to lie to my face. I am surprised at how difficult it is to give a company thousands of dollars knowing that at least a couple of them are profit. I am astonished at the surprise of salesmen that I would know anything about the car I think I might finance for thousands of dollars and 60 months besides the color.

In the end -- after two dealerships and walking out of "negotiations" at one point -- we got the car we wanted at the price we wanted from a salesman who reminded me of the Willy Loman-type salesman on The Simpson's. I'm thinking more and more that I may travel back down to Rantoul, Illinois -- in the far far away future when it is time to buy another car -- to go to the great dealership where I bought my Wagenschen. (Click here and read My Little Car for more details.)

I'll blog later about our new car. It doesn't have a name (or a gender, for that matter) yet, and we're still getting to know each other.