my car is like a cat. it has nine lives.

Growing up, we lived a few miles from a busy naval air base.  Our house was in the flight path, so airplanes and helicopters and fighter jets flew over the house all the time.  My dad and brother knew the sounds of the different planes, and I can distinctly remember the two of them leaping up and running outside when they heard cool planes to watch them fly over the house.  It's one thing to hear a passenger plane or news helicopter fly overhead, but it's quite another to hear a fighter jet ripping through the sky, shaking the windows in the house and the glasses in the cabinets, the sound lingering long after the jet had flown out of sight.

The base had a huge air show each September, which meant the Blue Angels and the Stealth Bomber even flew over our house a time or two.   We thought the Stealth Bomber was so cool because it was, well, stealthy.

Tonight at dinner Matt and I were talking about the base.  He grew up in the same town, with the same beloved background noise of F-15's and A-10's, and I asked him if he would run outside to watch the planes fly over too.  He said very matter of factly, "Of course.  You ALWAYS go outside when you hear cool planes."

The base had a parking lot where you could park your car and sit and watch the planes.  My dad would take my brother and me up there and we would watch the pilots do touch and go's, or hope to see a cool one come in for a landing.  Sadly, after 9/11, they closed the observation lot, and the gates that used to be open were suddenly armed with men holding machine guns.  The base closed completely a few years later.

Anyway the point in sharing this long background story is that when I've been driving my car for the last many, many thousands of miles, it sounded like one of the loud, choppy helicopters at the base.

I've even seen neighbors run out onto their front lawns when they hear me driving by.

(Just kidding.)

But I was a helicopter who wanted to be a Stealth.

Thanks to an engine mount that had seen better years, I've been barreling down roadways all over southeastern Pennsylvania for the better part of a year, shaking all the way.  I've gotten used to the shaking and the noise, but for a guest in my car I guess it can be a bit disconcerting.  When Emily rode with me over Christmas, she said, "Laura, this sounds dangerous."

Last week was my nephew's baptism in New Jersey.  I suggested to Matt that we take my car for the drive.  That meant Matt had several hours of time in the "helicopter," and guess what showed up at our house a few days later.

A brand new engine mount.

Matt changed the engine mount on Friday night while I made dinner and at one point he came to the back door to show me the difference between the old one and the new one.

He seemed shocked.

"Look at the old one!" he said, "Watch how it moves back and forth! It is completely shot!!!"

I'm an English major with zero automotive training and I could have told you that.

After he was finished, I took my car for a spin around the block.  I finally and officially felt like I was driving a Stealth.

Or maybe a Prius.

I ran my weekend errands with unbridled joy.  I felt like a new person, just tooling around town quietly and changing lanes without hesitation, because the rear view mirror wasn't violently shaking and I could actually tell what lane my fellow motorists were in.

By Sunday afternoon I was so hopped up on my new/old car joy and the spring weather that I decided I was going to do a major car clean out.  I opened the trunk and all the doors and even brought my phone out to plug in and play through the speakers.

I cleaned and scrubbed and even vacuumed every square inch of fabric until every single piece of salt from the winter was gone.  I was just about finished when my music stopped.  I turned the key to get the car going again, but all I heard was a foreboding cranking sound.

Uh-oh.

I had killed my battery.

My Stealth had broken down.

Matt heard the cranking and he appeared at the front door just as I did. He was thrilled with the dead battery news, as you might imagine!

Just kidding. 

But he pulled his big old F-150 close to my car.  He put the jumper cables on his battery and then told me to see if they were long enough to stretch over to mine.

It was then that I learned an important part of car jumping, which I will now share for the good of the general population: one shall never, ever touch the ends of the jumper cables together.  Sparks abounded!!

Life is never dull for Matt.

As it turns out Matt's truck battery is so old that it didn't have enough power to jump my Focus.  So we had to let his truck run for a while and then, finally, and I do mean finally, it had enough juice to roar Old Blue back to life. 

I'm happy to report I've now gone 48 hours without a car problem.

Everything is, quite literally, running smoothly, in my very own Blue Angel.

was that a work training or a therapy session?

Tuesday night I came down a terrible cold, because (here I go with the weather talk again) it still feels like winter here and I think my immune system has given up.

I had a long meeting today and had to leave at the crack of dawn 7:15, so I woke up early to put a roast in the crock pot.  I was feeling so on top of things as I put salt back in the cabinet, and in the process knocked a giant bottle of sesame oil off of a high shelf, onto the counter, and then onto the floor, where it shattered and sesame oil went all over our beautiful new cabinets, new hardwood floor, my pajamas and my slippers.

I have no idea why we had that large bottle of sesame oil in the cabinet.  I don't know when I would have used it, but I do know that a little sesame oil goes a long way, and that large quantities do not smell so great.

I cleaned up the cabinets and the floor and myself, rushed to my meeting and settled in for the morning session, which was about empathy.  Let me preface this by saying that I am a paralegal.  I like laws and rules and policies and things that are black and white.  In work and life in general, feelings, emotions, and gray area are not really my wheelhouse.

But, I work mostly with social workers and that's who the training was geared towards, so I buckled up for the empathy ride and spent the first ten minutes wondering what the difference was between the words "empathic" and "empathetic."

As I poured a second cup of hotel coffee, which I admittedly LOVE, the instructor told us that we were going to do an activity.  In order to feel empathy for others, we have to know our own feelings.  She told us to close our eyes, and for five excruciatingly long minutes, we had to speak positive things to ourselves in our heads.  

I am admittedly my own biggest fan and even I struggled with that.

And then, as a grand finale, we had to give ourselves a big old bear hug.

After the hug and a welcomed lunch break, there was a box of crayons and a sheet of paper with a house on it at our seats.  The instructor told us to color the house and add five favorite things that represent what home means to us.

So I drew, albeit not very well and in no particular order: a book, my bed, Matt, a fireplace, and our couch.

Yes, that's a couch there on the bottom left.  I tried to add some dimension and failed miserably.  I'm not an artist.  

Anyway, the time came for us to share what we had drawn, and we started going around the room.  The first few people said things like "This quilt represents home being a place of comfort and refuge; this welcome mat represents warmly opening door to those who come to it; I drew a champagne glass because home is a place of joy and celebration; this rocking chair sits in our living room and has been passed through generations and ties our family together."

Um, mayday.  

MAY. 

ACTUAL. 

DAY.

My peers had all put such thought into their five objects, and captured feelings and meaning and family legacy.

I drew my couch. 

I silently willed the trainer not to call on me while simultaneously trying to think of a deep meaning for my fireplace.  Luckily there were plenty of social workers willing to share their items, so I did not have to report out  

But my colleague Heather was next to me and she looked over at my paper and whispered incredulously, "Is that...your...bed?"

I was talking to friends earlier this week about "reaching emotional capacity" and how ridiculous it was for a grown up to hypothetically leave his or her job because he or she had hypothetically reached emotional capacity.

Listen.  By 4:00 today I HAD REACHED EMOTIONAL CAPACITY.

Add in a head cold and a girl who has ignored her gas light for the better part of three days and you have me, driving an hour home with my little gas door wide open, just wishing for my bed and my book and my sesame oil slippers.

Training days are a nice way to get out of the office, but I can't wait to sit at my desk tomorrow and write a petition.  With facts.  Based on law.

Maybe I'll report back on my feelings about it.

But probably not. 

is it april or is it january?

Well, I hate to talk about the weather again but I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER AGAIN.

I worked from home on Friday and it was glorious.  I opened all the windows in the house and set my computer up at the kitchen island and turned the music way up loud.  When the clock struck 4:00 I ran over to Marshall's because apparently I was on a minimalism kick when I packed up my summer clothes last year, and donated most of them in an ill-fated pursuit of a capsule wardrobe.

Plus I really want a jumpsuit.

Marshall's had several and I tried a bunch on but couldn't get past the patterns.   So many patterns.  So many large flowers.  So many styles that look like wallpaper from the eighties.  However, I've never worn a more comfortable item of clothing so I think I'm going to go back and get it.

After Marshall's I went next door to Barnes and Noble and witnessed an incredibly awkward interaction between the cashier and the customer in front of me who was doing everything he could to engage her in a controversial political conversation.  He was doing a complicated return so he was there for several minutes.  Finally I just started reading the book I was buying, a children's book about Noah's Ark, and by the end everyone in line was so riled up I just wanted to read it aloud to all of us.

Matt and I both woke up bright and early on Saturday to seize the 82 degree day.  I got the grocery shopping out of the way first and then helped Matt build a windowsill in the kitchen.  After lunch we started on some outside work and Emily came over.  She was home from college for the weekend, and my mom's washing machine broke so she came to our house with a hamper full of dirty clothes and an iced coffee for me.

I'll admit, she knows her audience.

While Em did her laundry we cleaned up the back patio and set up all of the furniture.  Matt was at Lowe's and came home with a big cedar pole and a new mailbox.  Em and I stood in the yard while Matt moved the pole around and asked things like "Could you turn it the other way?  How about a moving it back a tiny bit?  What if you center it under the light?"  

At one point our neighbor Leo yelled from across the street "Hey Matt, a little more to the left!"

Finally Matt decided to just go ahead and dig a giant hole.  This photo of Working Hard and Hardly Working was taken about three seconds before Matt dug a deep hole and hit something hard full force, and then said, "Oh man, I really hope that was a rock and that I didn't just hit that water line."

In the end we decided to wait on the mail box but now we have a giant hole by our front door, and you can imagine my panic when I walked out front Sunday morning and the hole was FILLED WITH WATER.

I thought we may have a major water line disaster on our hands but it turns out it had just rained a lot overnight.

Sunday was Jack's baptism and if you're thinking he looks like an angel, you would be correct.



Work has been busy this week but I can't complain because this week officially starts what I have creatively named "my spring schedule" even though it snowed today.  I saved up lots of vacation time all year so I can take off every Friday from now until mid-July.  This Friday is my first day off, and in an unusual turn of events, Matt and I will be spending the day doing community service on the USS Constitution. 

His company does a day of community service for employees and families.  We got our assignment last week, which is working on the second deck, forward berthing.  I have no idea what that means, or what we will be doing exactly, but you can bet I'll be saying "Ahoy, matey" and wearing some cute boat shoes.

And maybe I should see if Marshall's has a nautical themed jump suit.

today is proof i can write 791 words about absolutely nothing

Well hello.  I decided this week that I'd try to write here more, because I didn't write anything for a month and then after I published that post last week, I felt like I could write a novel.  I guess it's true what they say, that your muscles get stronger the more you use them.

That's why I try to lift weights four or five days a week.

Yea right.  When I feel like I need to build strength I buy a gallon of milk instead of a half gallon and spend the next week heaving it onto the top shelf of the fridge.

But nothing really remarkable happened this week, so I guess I will just write about what did happen.  Please set your expectations very low, or better yet, abandon them completely.

Let me first mention something that I haven't seen anyone talking about lately.

The weather.

Oh, I kid.  Everyone is talking about the weather lately because apparently Mother Nature is having a little bit of trouble with the change of seasons.  It was in the forties here Monday through Wednesday, it was in the sixties yesterday, and today and tomorrow are supposed to be 80.  We're back down to the forties on Monday and so I say to you, Mother Nature, for the love, please PICK A LANE.

Anyway we slept with the windows wide open last night.  I have a lovely habit of lying in bed from anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes after my alarm goes off in denial of the fact that it's morning, which is a tip that you'll hear from all of the productivity gurus.

This morning as I executed what I like to call my time of denial, I heard some weird, loud, chirping type of noise.  I thought it was the smoke detector chirping from a low battery, but the noise was not occurring at regular intervals.

Most normal people might just get out of bed and investigate, but not me.  I'd rather lie there indefinitely than get out of bed before the last minute possible.  I kept on listening and finally realized it was not the smoke detector.  IT WAS AN ACTUAL BIRD CHIRPING.  

HAPPY SPRING INDEED.

Shifting gears a bit to the subject of dinner.  When we first got married Matt got home from work before I did, so he cooked dinner every night.  It was lovely.  Now he has a different job and I get home first and cook, and then we switch off weeks doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen.  

(I am re-reading this to check for spelling and oh my goodness this is so boring.  Next week would you like to hear how we divide and conquer the other household chores?  My word.)

Anyway this was Matt's clean up week but in an unprecedented turn of events he decided he'd rather cook.

How's that going, you ask.

It's...going.

I've noticed something very unexpected about myself, and that is that I apparently have some control issues surrounding the preparation of dinner.  I'm not going to win any Michelin stars anytime soon, but apparently I like things done a certain way.  

My way.  

There's a shock (not at all) for all who know me. 

So, it's been a growth experience for both of us me.  Last night we were having one of our new favorites, grilled veggie and herbed goat cheese paninis.  It's a Weight Watchers recipe but it is DELICIOUS.  I normally roast the veggies on a grill pan on the stove, but since it was so nice out, Matt put the veggies on the grill outside.

And then he checked on the apple trees he just planted, picked up some twigs around the yard and bundled them with twine, and even got out the weed killer and started spraying weeds all over the yard.  He got so excited with the promise of springtime activities that he forgot about the veggies.

We brought them inside and gave it the old college try because if you put enough goat cheese on anything, it can be delicious.

We then made grand plans for tomorrow and from the sounds of it, we are going to try to fit about 476 hours worth of work into one 80 degree Saturday - including but not limited to fertilizing the grass, pulling weeds and prepping the gardens, power washing the house and driveway, cleaning the patio furniture and setting it all up, painting the two back doors, replacing the mailbox, setting up the hammock, washing the cars, putting away the snowblower, getting out the lawn mower, and going for a long walk.

There will be no lounging in bed for me tomorrow morning.

I'll be up with those chirping birds.

it goes without saying that the first meal at the new table will be eggs

Here I am again to talk about my kitchen.  I apologize in advance if you're as sorry about reading kitchen posts as I am writing them.  When we started the kitchen renovation it was Labor Day, and we said we'd probably be finished by Thanksgiving, but FOR SURE by Christmas.

Well those same fools are now well past Easter and just hoping things wrap up by Memorial Day.  

Matt and I were discussing the ideal vs the actual timeline the other day, and he said, "Well, there were just a few aspects that I didn't expect."

"Like what?" I asked.

"For starters, I didn't expect Christmas to come so quickly."

Anyway, this weekend we put up the back splash, and with the exception of a few tiny finishing touches, we are DONE.  We went shopping for a kitchen table the other weekend and I had a picture in my mind of exactly what I wanted - farmhouse style, dark wood top, white or cream legs, and a bench on one side.

Here was Matt's one and only requirement: he didn't want it to be as narrow as our last table, which could get crowded if people were eating on both sides and we had serving dishes in the middle.  He came just short of bringing one of our dinner plates with us to the store to make sure any prospective table was an acceptable size.

What he did bring with him was his own personal tape measure which he used upwards of one hundred times.  He measured furniture I wasn't even remotely interested in and had a wonderful time.

It reminded me of the time my parents went shopping for a toaster, and my dad traced a slice of bread on a piece of paper to bring along to the store so he could make sure the entire piece of bread fit inside the toaster when you pushed the button down.  

Matt and I looked at a few chain furniture stores first, but we didn't see anything, so we decided to go to a local store called Gamburg's.  Gamburg's sells some fancy pieces and as we walked around I felt a little bit like I wasn't quite adult enough to be there, but no one kicked us out so we shopped on.

We wandered around the first floor of the store and saw a few kitchen sets we liked, but as we got to the stop of the stairs on the second floor, there it was.  The table of my actual dreams.

I practically kissed it.

I told Matt "Well, there it is.  The one I've dreamed of," and he said, "Wait, you've actually dreamed about a table?" he asked.

Sure have pal,  it was only of the only things that got me through the weeks when our kitchen looked like this and I was clinging to any shred of hope I could that we could actually eat a meal in there again someday.

The next morning I stopped by my mom and dad's to drop off a bag of frozen potatoes (long story) and my dad was home. He said, "Mom told me you got the kitchen table of your dreams.  That's great.  But if I ever have an actual dream about a kitchen table, I'll know things are bad."

So it seems like dreaming about furniture may be a girl thing.

When I got home Matt was just coming home from a trip to Lowe's.  He had a bag with a few tools and a kitchen mat.

It was, brace yourselves, a giant chicken.

I didn't say anything, but glanced around the kitchen and saw the following items:

Matt stood in front of the rug for a minute, just looking at it.  And then he said, "I don't know.  I  mean, I like it, but do you think we are becoming those weird chicken people?"

Sorry to say Matt, but I think it's too late in the game to worry about that.

I think it's eggcellent.

what i read: march edition

Well it's time to link up with Steph and Jana and share the books we've been reading!  I'm back in my reading groove and have six books to share this month.  I've been sharing my books as I read them over on Instagram too!

First up is Rose Harbor in Bloom by Debbie Macomber.  This won't win the Nobel Prize, but give me a story about a woman who runs an inn in a town called Cedar Cove, a couple of quirky friends, a few romantic dilemmas and I'm a happy camper.  It was a quick, easy read.  You can't go wrong with Debbie Macomber.

Next I read All The Summer Girls by Meg Donohue.  I chose this because it's about a girl from Philadelphia who takes a trip to the Jersey shore with some old friends, and I live in Philadelphia and grew up going to the Jersey shore. I love books that are set in places I am familiar with.  I'll be honest, that's about all this book had going for it.  It was your typical book about three friends who meet up at the beach after several years apart and they have turned into different people and secrets are uncovered but their bond of friendship is strengthened.  But it was nice to read about summer at the beach in the middle of yet another snowstorm.

Several weeks ago my mom suggested Need to Know, and it was finally my turn on the waiting list at the library.  I read the whole book in two days.  It's going to be a series and a movie, and I could not be more thrilled.  I highly recommend it.  Here's a summary: The last thing that CIA analyst Vivian Miller expects to see when she finally accesses the files of a suspected Russian sleeper cell is the face of someone close to her. Someone she thought she could trust with her four children. Someone whose exposure as a Russian spy will destroy her hard-fought career. Miller panics and deletes the file. She knows she's only delayed the inevitable exposure…unless she can use her skills to extract herself and her family.  

After that I read My Story by Elizabeth Smart.  I cannot say enough about this book. It was very difficult to read because it details the circumstances of the kidnapping and everything Elizabeth Smart endured for the next several months, but the strength that she had to survive that torture, and the perspective that she had then and now is really unbelievable.  She is incredible.

One of Us is Lying was up next.  It's pretty popular right now, but in case you haven't heard about it:

Pay close attention and you might solve this.

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
    Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. 
    Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. 
    Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
    Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
    And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.
 
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose? 
 
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

The chapters are short it sucked me in immediately, and I kept telling myself "Just one more quick chapter" and before I knew it, I had been reading for another hour.  I was a little bit bummed with the ending when I read it, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's not because the ending was bad, but because I was mad I didn't solve it.  I was CONVINCED I had the whole thing figured out and it turned out I was totally off base!  I won't be quitting my job to become a detective.

The last book I read was Unplanned, which is the story of a woman who was a director of a Planned Parenthood clinic and became pro-life.  I know there are many different opinions on this topic, but in the beginning, Abby writes about how it's important to read about people who believe in things you believe in, and people who believe differently.  It was really interesting to me to learn how she got involved with Planned Parenthood in college, and how her beliefs changed slightly overtime until she ultimately quit after moving pretty high up in the company and spending a large chunk of her career there.  It was a compelling read.

So that's it for this month.  Right now I'm reading Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham, and have several I'm excited about lined up after that.  I read most of the books this month under a blanket in front of the fire, but I'm optimistic that next month, most of my books will be read in the hammock!

Did you read anything great this month?

take it from me and never trust a mirror inside of a greeting card

Well, I'm back, by popular demand.

And by "popular demand," I mean exactly two people have asked when I am going to write a new blog post: my brother and my mom.  But, I aim to please and so I bring you this slightly unpolished post with a weak narrative structure because my new motto in life is "done is better than perfect."

I haven't written anything here in nearly a month, which is not to say that a thousand blog worthy moments haven't occurred.  In fact, there was the moment just this past Sunday when we swung by the car wash after brunch in our Easter finest so that Matt could wash the horse manure out of the bed of his pickup truck.  As we pulled in, the attendant said "Foot off the brake, keep it in neutral and hey! The farm called and they want their manure back!" 

And a happy Easter to you too, car wash man.

Matt got the deluxe wash which I thought was appropriate given the state of his truck and the fact that it was a holiday.  My great-grandmother always used to fill up with premium gas on Christmas as a little treat for her car and I love that so much.

Of note since my last post, Matt and I celebrated our four year wedding anniversary, on March 8th.  It fell during the week of Emily's spring break, and due to busy schedules and two very unfortunate snowstorms, the only night Emily and I could get together was the 8th.  Em is moving to Minnesota (I don't want to talk about it) the day after graduation so I really wanted to see her over spring break.  I asked Matt 467 times if he minded if I went out with Em even though it was our anniversary.  He told me 467 times that he did not mind and so on March 8th, I picked Emily up and we hit the Applebee's for some appetizers, and Target and Marshall's for some bargain priced skin care.

Emily likes all things beauty, and when we walked into Target she asked me, "So what exactly are your skincare goals? What do you feel like you need?"

And I told her "Well, I feel like I am starting to look my age.  I am in search of the fountain of youth."

What I ended up with was not quite the fountain of youth, but several serums, some sort of hyaluronic acid, an eye cream, various hydrating sprays, and rose hip oil that Emily promised would anti-age me in no time.  And so, for the last 26 days I've been diligently smearing those potions on my face twice a day and while no one has mistaken me for a college student, I don't think I look any worse.



And I would know, because as my mom has always said, I've never met a reflective surface I don't like.  I spend more time looking at myself in the mirror and other various reflective surfaces than your average bear. 

I'm so vain, I sure do think that song is about me CARLY SIMON.

Anyway, given the skincare efforts, it was perfect that when Matt gave me his anniversary card, he said, "I got you one with a mirror in it, because I know how much you love to look at yourself."

I laughed and then I obviously took an immediate glance down at the card's mirror.

And, well, yikes.









Let's just say those new skincare products are fighting a bigger uphill battle than I initially realized.

Matt came downstairs tonight and announced that he is hosting an event here on Friday evening, and I'm the guest of honor.  He's calling it GAWA.  Greatest American Wife Awards.

I don't want to be overconfident but I have a pretty good feeling that no matter the state of my collagen or my under eye circles, or how they've changed in the last 4 years, Matt's still going to pick me to win. 

And in the end I think that's really all that counts.

is it weird i felt emotional about this milestone?

My girlfriend Rose and I talk on the phone several mornings a week, typically when I'm driving into work.  My blue tooth is set up so I can talk hands free, but my car is SO LOUD that it is nearly  impossible for the person on the other end to hear me and I have to disconnect it.  Rose called as I was driving in this morning and when I answered, she screamed "HEY! I HEAR YOU'RE IN YOUR CAR AGAIN."

Yes, yes I was.  And then as I pulled into the parking lot at work, Old Blue hit a big milestone.

100,000 miles.

That's a lot of miles. 

My parents bought Old Blue (which was ironically brand new) and I packed the trunk and drove home from my college graduation to start my life in the real world.  

Which meant I drove right back home to mom and dad's house for a year and a half because #EnglishMajor.

I drove Old Blue to interviews, and my first real grown up job.  And then I crammed that trunk full of all of my worldly possessions and moved into my first apartment.  A few years later I packed the trunk again and drove back to mom and dad's, where I stayed until I packed it one more time and drove to our new condo after Matt and I got married.  

I've driven to weddings and funerals and baptisms and graduations and into the driveway when we bought our house.  I've driven to big work meetings and thousands of regular days at the office and one time I had to drive a detective to a court hearing while I had the snapshot device from Progressive Insurance Company and it beeped every time I accelerated too quickly or hit the brakes too harshly.

Between visiting the beach and my brother, I've driven to New Jersey a bunch of times, which is where I got my first (and only!) speeding ticket.

I drove Old Blue to Maryland with my brother the last time we went on family vacation just the five of us, and the next summer I drove my Mommom to meet my parents and Emily for a few days at a lake in upstate New York.

I've spent a lot of time with Emily in the passenger seat, and consequently spent years saying "passenger door ajar" in my best automated voice trying to convince her the car was talking to her.  

I've sung probably well over 100,000 songs from behind the wheel.

I've written a lot of stories about Old Blue on the blog and it seems I've always been a little unusually overprotective of a car.  

I went to a wedding shower at a fancy place where valet parking was the only option.  I've never had a valet park my car before and I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was nervous handing over the keys.  Would he turn the lights off?  Would he put the emergency brake on if he parked on even a slight incline like I do?  Would he press the lock button twice just to be sure?

-----

I dropped Old Blue off for inspection the other night, and I was very nervous about the whole situation for some reason.  I felt like a mom taking her child to the first day of school.  Completely ridiculous, I know.  But evidently she impressed all of the mechanics with her peppy gas pedal and highly enthusiastic air conditioning system because she passed with flying colors.  And she was safe in the dark, rainy parking lot overnight.  That may or may not be because I left her with strict instructions not to fraternize with the pickup trucks and the tough looking Toyota that was parked next to her.  Just kidding about that last part actually.  It was the Mazda I told her to avoid.

I also wrote about the time I left the windows open when it rained and I had to tragically spread kitty litter all over the seats to soak up the moisture.  

And the time battery died while I was pulled into a stall at Sonic.  

I never wrote about it but I also had an automotive AND minor emotional breakdown in the Dunkin' Donuts drive thru a few months ago.

Maybe I need to cool it with the fast food.

Matt changed the oil once a few years ago and forgot to put the cap back on, and I drove to a work training two hours away without the oil cap on.  When I arrive at my destination I thought it was just foggy, but it turned out smoke was pouring out from under the hood.  A colleague's husband came over with rags and my friend Jen stood in the giant oil puddle I'd created in her CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTINS and helped me wipe oil off of everything under the hood.

That's a good friend.

Since then Matt's successfully changed the oil and the brakes and even dutifully did a full inspection when I told him my foot was feeling a little tired, like it was working a bit harder than usual when pushing the pedals.  

He's actually addressed many non-specific automotive complaints over the years.  

And he made this label a few years ago and put it on my driver's side mirror, where it still remains.

A few months ago Matt came inside and said, "What happened to your car?"  I didn't know what he was talking about but sure enough, there was a GIANT scrape on the front bumper.  Obviously the only explanation was that someone hit me while I was parked in a parking lot.  But I told Matt that it wasn't a big deal, I hadn't noticed the scrape and neither would anyone else.

And then my parents stopped by that weekend and my dad said, "Hey Laur, what happened to your car?"

Bunch of eagle eyes around here.

My sister was home for spring break last week and we went to the store so I could buy some skincare products, namely those consisting of collagen and retinol because as I told her, I'm starting to look my age.

And I think the same can be said for Old Blue.

But here's to the next 100,000. 

May we both age gracefully.

i wish i had some ice cream to eat with my humble pie

Well I was all set to write a blog post tonight about our weekend snowstorm and power outage, but I've gotten sidetracked.

Actually I didn't have to write the post from scratch, I just had to type it, because I wrote it out with a pen in my notebook by candlelight this weekend just like the bloggers used to do in the 1800's.

I turned on the TV and was scrolling On Demand for the true crime section so I could fire up an episode of Criminal Confessions to watch while I typed, just like Ma Ingalls would have done, when I came across an entire genre entitled "For Your Dog."

With TWENTY SIX shows.

I clicked on it out of sheer curiosity, and these aren't shows ABOUT dogs.  They are literally shows FOR YOUR DOG.

There is even one show that just shows clips of dogs watching other dogs on television.  So dogs watch dogs watch dogs.

I think dogs are great, but have we perhaps gone a bridge too far?

And if you can believe it, the shows aren't even all free.  Some of them cost upwards of four dollars and ninety nine cents.  I don't even watch movies for MYSELF on demand unless they cost zero doll hairs.

When I was a kid, my family was watching a home renovation show and the homeowners illuminated the marble counter tops in their bathrooms.  As you might imagine, this decor choice cost a pretty penny, and I remember my mom telling us kids that if we ever had enough money to have illuminated marble counters in our bathrooms, she hoped we would donate it instead.

And so for probably the last twenty years, my family has used the phrase "illuminated marble" when we're talking about something that's a little over the top.

I think paying $4.99 for your dog to watch television might fall into the illuminated marble category. 

I shared those wise, fiscally conservative thoughts on Instagram and then Matt said, "Don't let me forget to plug in the Cozy Coop tomorrow so the chickens aren't cold when it snows on Wednesday."

Well.

I may not have illuminated marble, but I do think I might be living in a glass house.