Bride of Truckie

Friday night Nordic Boy and I went over to meet our new friend, Baby Soggy-Awesome (and how much of a happy accident is it that my friends' bloggy names hyphenate in just that way?). He was too cute for words and had the biggest eyes I have ever seen for a three-day-old. Huge gorgeous peepers giving me the most adorable staredown, just really. And also, the cutest squeaky noises ever. Cute, cute, cute. Baby Mama and Baby Daddy were both doing great and surprisingly spry considering the new babyness of it all. The perfection running amok in that family, I tell you.

I really don't know how to segue from that topic into any other in my life because nothing else that happened over the weekend could really warrant being in the same post as Baby Soggy-Awesome. New baby! And um, I did a bunch of laundry too! Come on, it's kind of all downhill from here, let's face it.

Still, I shall soldier onward.

About a decade ago (woo-doggy does that time frame make me feel old) Nordic Boy and I bought our first ever brand new car. It was a Saturn. Why did we buy a Saturn, of all things? If you may recall, back in the ye olden days when they still made Saturns, one of the big selling points was that they had a no dicker sticker policy. The price of the car was the price of the car, no haggling expected or allowed. This was a big enough selling point for us in our youth, being the new-car-buying 'fraidy cats we were. The knowledge of no dickering (dirty) was enough to get our business.

We got along for a few years with our Saturn, who I lovingly named Conrad. I named our car Conrad for three reasons.

(A) I always thought it sexist that cars and boats and such were always feminized ("that Corvette, she's a beaut!"), so I had a policy whereby I always named inanimate objects male names, you know, just to even the score a little bit. I have eased up on this policy since I don't tend to name things as much anymore, but it rears its head when necessary, as when we installed our kitchen Lazy Susan, which I stubbornly refer to as Lazy Nigel).

(B) I was in school then and was writing lots of papers on Joseph Conrad, who I had a love/hate relationship with, and who was on my mind a lot.

(C) The Saturn was red, and was the first co-purchase Nordic Boy and I ever made together, and both of these facts had, I decided, vaguely Commie undertones. A communal car? And a red one at that? Definitely Commie. And therefore, Conrad sort of sounds like "comrade."

The inner workings of my mind, ladies and gentlemen. It's a wonder I can manage to dress myself each morning, it's true.

So Conrad has been with us for many years. Nordic Boy used him mostly, for work, and I was more of a bus rider. Then when I was done with all my consarned book learning and got my librarian gig, wherein I have to often be at multiple locations within the span of one work day (as does Nordic Boy), we graduated to being a two-car family with the introduction of our Prius.

The Saturn had started to wear down a bunch this year. I really wanted to replace it with a Smart Car. Nordic Boy really wanted a little truck. In fact, Nordic Boy sees little trucks around town and looks at them with a silent yearning as if his uterus is tugging at him. He has never said anything about this because I think he knows that my opinion of trucks is YICK. I find them big and burly and not pretty. And you know how I feel about the pretty. No matter that he actually has to use a truck for work and home stuff quite often and so we end up spending money on renting trucks. Trucks, I think, have made me make Nina Garcia faces.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had started to think about my silent disdain for trucks, and matching that up with his silent yearning. And I came to the conclusion that I need to stop being a silent pain in the ass. Nordic Boy doesn't have many yearnings for things. But this time he does. So stop with the Nina Garcia stuff, me.

So, this weekend, we bought him a truck. And he is so friggin' happy about it that it makes me happy too. I actually love that truck now. Weird.

Note to self: whenever you can stop being a pain in the ass, then stop it. It'll just work out better that way. Ok then.

Oh, and PS, remember how when we were young and dewey, how we were so afeared of the car dealer that we based our entire decision on what to buy on the no dicker sticker thing? Well, times have changed. Nordic Boy used his non-assholey bossy voice at the dealer and got them to knock $2500 smackers off of the price, plus they bought our Saturn from us for over the Blue Book value. We are definitely grown ups now: BRING ON THE DICKER. BOOYAH.