With this past weekend, and the purchase of a new minivan, my little family has put nearly all of our recent car accident behind us. Everyone’s (mostly) healed up, and after some searching around, we were able to get a loan for a nifty new dark red Dodge Grand Caravan. Well, new to us, anyway; it’s a 2002 with 89,000 miles, but oddly enough that’s exactly what our last car was when we bought it.
We don’t know what this car’s name will be yet. Usually they just seem to name themselves. Our late, lamented night-blue Kia Sportage was named “Shadow,” and the old Saturn we’ve been tooling around in picked up the nickname “Shifty” since it’s a stick-shift and Kat is only just now learning how to run one. (I never claimed the names were clever.) We’ll see what develops with our new steed.
Funny how vehicles reflect what you’re doing. When Kat and I were jet-setting newlyweds, the Kia was an ideal sporty little car to get us around. But once you add a car seat and baby bags, it sure gets crowded in a hurry. The minivan is what one of my old friends would have derisively turned up his nose as a “suburban grocery-getter,” but hey, even though I’m very much an urban child, you’ve gotta get the groceries somehow. (Now I would tell my old friend “YOU try fitting two weeks of food for three into a sedan trunk right next to the stroller.”)
Now that we’re squared away, it’s off to the List again — my mechanic to do an overall checkup, a report on the car sales place we bought it from, and now that life has calmed down enough to think more than five minutes ahead, making plans for next spring, fixes to the house and the long-term future.
So I saw my first snow before February yesterday. Every relative I had below the 
A couple of days ago, I experienced what most people avoid and fear — an auto accident. I’ll spare you the details, but the end result is this: My pride and joy, my ever loyal and faithful partner, my trusty friend, my truck is gone. As a result of the impact, my 1999 GMC Sonoma was reduced to a wretched visage of its former self, with a twisted, smashed and broken front end, and it began its journey to that 
Meanwhile, this little nerd-in-training’s father is borderline obsessed with “Speed Racer.” (See where this is going?) So I have to confess a tremendous burst of pride when Armand was sitting on his little Lightning McQueen couch while the live-action “Speed Racer” DVD was on and he got excited during the racing scenes, picked up his toy Mach 6 and Racer-X cars and started banging them together while he made crashing sounds. I swear, it puts a tear in my eye. (He’s got the whole collection of Speed Racer toy cars. Except the Mach 4 – I have to claim at least one for me, right? But I let him play with it all the time anyway.)
I’d rather be covered in motor oil or paint or bruises than hire someone to do the work for me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll do it well. My fixes might be farces, but at least they’re my farces.
Man’s Wife In Kitchen: Dear — as you well know, I’ve just returned to our home after living under a giant igneous rock for the past two years, subsisting on a diet of rain water and pill bugs — so, no, I haven’t heard about these so-called “high” gas prices. 
