Wednesday, October 19, 2011

New Car

A couple of weeks ago, I asked Tom if we were going to wait until next spring to look into getting a different car for me to drive.

He asked why I was asking.

I casually told him we have two dance marathons coming up in November which will necessitate me driving with the girls three hours away one weekend and about five hours away another weekend. Then I said that I don’t trust my current car, the one with 315780 miles on it, to get us there safely.

He nodded wisely and said, “Okay, I’ll start looking.”

Last night, he brought home a car. It’s another Grand Prix. We feel like this model has proven itself to us, see above the over three hundred thousand miles on the current Grand Prix we own. The new car has less than half the miles my current car has and it is four years newer.

So yay, new vehicle.

Except, Tom and his brother John have spent about ten hours so far replacing the breaks on the new car. Which is frustrating for them. But they’ve got a lot of experience with the brakes on this model because they’ve replaced the brakes on my 1999 Grand Prix (Alyssa calls it Sylvie) many times and so they’re old pros.

Tom knew the breaks needed replaced when he decided to buy the car, so it’s not as if we were misled.

Sylvie is tired. Sylvie needs a nice long rest. Tom’s not sure he wants to get rid of Sylvie, though. Sylvie has proven to be reliable, when given decent care.

It occurred to me last night as I was drifting off to sleep, that Tom’s really, really good to me.

When we first moved in together, I hated the house he was living in. It was old, it was tiny, the stairs were creepy (I fell down those damned stairs twice while pregnant with Alyssa and then once while carrying Alyssa when she was about three weeks old.)

I also hated the bed we shared. It was a twin and what two adults can share a twin freaking bed comfortably?

He bought us a new bed at my request.

Just before we got married, we bought a house that was so very much nicer than the first one. The stairs weren’t scary, the rooms were bigger, there was more light.

He did this for me. He was actually perfectly comfortable in the previous house. Of course, he'd never fallen down the stairs nor did he have an 80 mile one-way commute to work each day. So yeah, comfortable.

Sure, it took me another eight years to bitch and moan him into agreeing to move closer to family and work but he finally did. And yes, I had to do all the work to get us into our new house, but he never fought me on it.

It appears, upon reflection, that I get my way a whole lot more often than I might have let on. Let the record show that I admit to this even though I don’t intend to stop getting my way. Yes, my life is pretty darned good.

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