Car Shopping with Mr. Big Hand

We spent a good portion of yesterday in the Urgent Care office. Toby is having either some kind of gnarly reaction to the inhaler he uses OR he has pneumonia and the infection is causing his extremities to swell up into monster proportions. I know I sound like I’m joking but actually this is really freaking me out. He has a cartoon size hand. It’s seriously three times the size of his other one. This happened last week to his foot and then the other foot a few days later. When it moved to his hand this week and started swelling up his wrist we started to get scared.

Pneumonia is not that far off for a prognosis because since he has been smoking the evil cigarettes for the last twenty years, there are all kinds of things wrong with his lungs. Plus, he’s allergic to everything on the planet and already has all kinds of breathing problems before even even started smoking. It’s just bad news city when it comes to health issues and Toby.

He’s been coughing like he’s dying of the black death for the last three months. So why doesn’t he go to the doctor or quit smoking you ask? Ah, well that would be the trick question. Obviously, you do not know my super uber (think’s he’s) German husband who is King of denial and is so stubborn he wouldn’t admit the sky was blue if he made up his mind it was green.

Lately the symptoms have been getting scary enough for even Mr. Stubborness himself. With a new baby coming he realizes how important it is that he’s around to be a Dad. We really want him to be able to run and play with his kid when they are big enough to go to the park. So it’s become imperative that we get things looked at and taken care of.

I, on the other hand am Mrs. Paranoid Freak herself and I’ve been diagnosing him with lung cancer and emphysema since the day I met him. So maybe my worry-wart-freakiness has encouraged his denial. Whoever is to blame doesn’t matter now because NOW we are doing something about it.

We sat in the Urgent Care office for about three hours yesterday. Something that did not go unnoticed by my inner selfish birthday girl. Toby got a big gigantic horse shot in his butt of some antibiotic and they had him use some kind of super duper inhaler that made him wired for the rest of the day. It was kind of funny, in a scary sort of I-really-hope-he’s-okay sort of way.

AND THEN… we went car shopping, big fat swollen hand and all.

So here’s my probably obnoxious and ignorant opinion of all the cars we looked at:

You know what? The mini cooper is all show and no go! I’m sure the S series with the turbo charge is fine but the regular model? YAWN! SNORE!!! All you drivers out there who think the mini cooper regular model zips, you need to drive my honda civic. My old honda kicks mini cooper’s ass. It was actually scary it was so unresponsive.

Sure, part of the reason is that we are looking for an automatic now and I’m used to a stick shift with torque like only the racing Japanese can make. The problem with automatics these days is that there is a five million second delay between the second you hit the gas pedal and when you finally pull out in front of the oncoming car. In my honda, no problemo! I’m out of there so fast the oncoming car didn’t even see me. In the mini cooper, I’m sweating tears and watching my life flash before me. It was SAD. Sad. Sad. Sad.

Too bad, so sad for the mini cooper. And as one of my friends called up to say, “Where are you going to put your stroller? On the roof?!!” Hmph. I hadn’t thought of that.

So we left the mini dealership and headed over to Honda. Honda is in a very sad state of affairs. I THOUGHT I might like the Element because I saw a few cool looking surfer guys driving some around in my neighborhood. I thought WRONG! I thought maybe it might be kinda cool to have that big boxy back area where you can throw in the kids and the dog and the equipment… and it would be great for carrying flowers around for all the wedding gigs I get.

Then I saw the huge ugly ass front plastic bumper grill thing. What is going on with those Honda designers!!!??? It looks like a cross between the grill on a chrysler and some kind of transformer robot that’s going to pop wings and get up and start walking! To infinity and beyond Buzz Lightyear! And I so don’t mean that as a compliment. I just hated everything. Those poor car salesmen. They kept opening up the hoods and saying, “But look at the size of that engine!” and I kept saying, I don’t give a fig about engines. I know hondas have good engines. I just can’t see myself driving that ugly monstrosity.

Next up was Volkswagen. In our dreams, we have enough money to buy a Touareg. And if we put off buying a house for another five years we could probably swing it. Toby loves the Touareg. He slobbers over all the gizmos and gadgets and the fake wood interiors. I think it’s just too gawdy. Give me boring gray fabric interior and a rubber coated steering wheel any day. I just don’t go for all the gold encrusted crap. And then when I sat in it… it was so intimidating! It’s so big and there’s this giant console in the middle with a zillion and one cup holders for all your American slob fast food. It just didn’t feel right. Toby says I would get used to it and learn to love it but I think it’s just too big of a jump from my humble little honda civic coupe to a big ass scary SUV that can drive through two feet of standing water. Where am I going to find two feet of standing water to drive through?!!

I was so heart broken. There were no cars for me. I’m just too picky. I just love my old car too much. What to do, what to do.

And then a ray of sunlight shown down from the heavens above, angles sang, and harps played…

Right there in front of our very eyes, was a new car just imported from Germany that we had never seen before! The NEW AUDI A3!!!! A long time ago we thought about getting an Audi A4 but they just seemed too expensive for the lack of wow factor. Not that Audi A4’s aren’t full of wow. They are very nice elegant cars. It’s just that I wanted something with a little more edge. Something that I could get dirty. With an Audi A4 I’d feel like I’d have have to dress up in heels before I drove it. It just didn’t have that rough and tumble friendliness to it. Does that make sense?

But the A3… oh it’s got all kinds of rough and tumble style!!! It’s got a hatch back and that’s all I needed to make me fall in love. I kinda sorta don’t like the big grill on the front but I guess I can’t shake that no matter what kind of car I look at. We’re hoping it kinda blends in on the silver model. What’s the deal lately with the big grills? It’s like the PT Cruiser came out and everybody thought big front grils made cars look like they had that back-in-time gangster charm or something? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting old.

We didn’t buy it because we’re smart like that and we don’t make hasty decisions. Ha! Actually they just didn’t have the color I wanted. But when the new shipment comes in, the dealer is going to call me and I’m going to drive it and make sure it has plenty of zip. We didn’t drive it last night because by the time we found it, it was getting pretty late and my birthday dinner was calling me like only a pregnant woman can hear.

In other news:

1. Toby made it through the night and we go back to the Urgent Care office on Monday to look at his lung xrays.

2. We get to hear the baby’s heart beat today!!!!!!

3. I had a great birthday.

4. I apologize if I’ve offended anyone with my narrow minded opinions of cars. If you drive one of the cars I’ve dissed, please know that I still think you are a wonderful person no matter what kind of car you drive.