Absolutely Bananas: Seattle mom blog

To trade in or not to trade in. There’s not even a question.

I like to think of myself as a practical and well-informed woman. A savvy woman. A women in the know.

So when it comes to buying and selling cars, I have some hard and fast rules. These rules are based on research and experience, but mainly on what my dad always told me.

1) Thou shalt not buy a new car. Ever.

2) Thou shalt not trade in. Ever.

I will admit to you that every time someone buys a brand-new car (you know, the kind with that new car smell) I feel all judgmental and smugly think, tsk tsk tsk that is SO irresponsible. Every time someone tells me that they (GASP) traded in their car I nearly fall to the floor in horror.

OH THE HORROR OF THE TRADE IN!

DON’T YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH MONEY YOU’RE LOSING?

So yeah. Strong opinions.

The thing is, it’s easy to have strong opinions about things you’ve never done.

And it’s true that, until yesterday, I had never sold my own car.

Selling a car is a MAN’S WORK! is unspoken rule #3. Although I like to think that I’m a feminist and all about equal rights and gender neutrality, the truth is I’m totally not.

The funny thing is, every time we decide to upgrade or downgrade or sideways-grade or otherwise replace one car with a different one, I shout my rules at Jay’s head.

“WE ARE NOT BUYING A NEW CAR!” I holler, “WE MIGHT AS WELL THROW OUR MONEY RIGHT DOWN THE TOILET!”

“But the new car smell… the 0% financing…” Jay’s attempts to change my mind are inevitably met with firm and vigorous resistance. When I know something, it is a fact and therefore NOT open for debate.

If Jay dares to suggest the option of trading in our car I nearly come undone. “WE WILL NOT TRADE IN!” I shout. And taking this stance mandates that JAY handle the tedious and rather uncomfortable process of finding a buyer, negotiating the sale, and doing the paperwork.

This time, though, I decided that I would sell the car myself.

After all, it’s my car in my name and I’m THIRTY so it’s high time I start doing these things. Plus secretly I believe that I’m a way better negotiator than my dearest husband.

I list the car on Craig’s List and Auto Trader. I get it detailed. I start fielding calls and emails.

Check! Check! Check! Easy, easy, easy.

Why didn’t I do this before? Selling your car is totally SIMPLE.

You see what’s coming, don’t you? A big fat breakfast of EATING MY WORDS. Yeah.

The first person who looks at the car decides to buy it.

(I am such an amazing saleswoman)

His name is Happy (I’m not even making this up) and he’s from Canada. Happy is his nick-name, short for something like Hareekmetshex Bazzlemubp.

Here’s the thing. From the day I met Happy, my name has been Irritated. Because that man drives me crazy.

We make a deal, he gives me a $500 cash deposit, and we go our separate ways. Since he’s from Canada and I’m from the U.S., we need to have all sorts of paperwork to finalize the deal. Like, for example, I need to get the title.

I pay off the balance of the car loan and wait for the title. I call Happy and tell him that I’ll call him when the title comes in. I honestly don’t expect to talk to him until then.

WRONG.

Happy calls my cell phone first thing the following morning and leaves me a voice mail requesting that I call him back. By the time I get the message, I have four missed calls from Happy.

“Hello! This is Happy! How are you?”

“Mmm fine…”

“I called you four times and you did not answer!”

“Yeah, well it’s Saturday. What do you need?”

“Yes, I was just calling to check and see if you got the title yet?”

“No. It’s only been one day, and I told you it’d be at least two weeks.”

“Yes, I was wondering, can you drive to Olympia and pick up the title there?” (Olympia is 2 hours away)

“Uh, I don’t think they let you do that.”

“Can you call and find out?”

This is the first of many, many, MANY calls from Happy in which he makes requests and demands.

Can you take the car into the BMW dealership and have the lights modified?

Can you call the Dept of Licensing and find out the status of the title?

Have you gotten the title yet? Have you gotten it now? Is it there now? What about NOW?

Happy seems to be under the illusion that I’m a CAR DEALERSHIP rather than a PERSON WITH A LIFE.

I start to resent this constant intrusion on my life. I convulse in horror every time my cell phone rings. I hear the word “Happy” and want to punch someone.

Finally, I call Happy to inform him that the car will be sold as-is, and that I will NOT be spending my time running around having modifications made to it.

He gasps, as if I am totally letting him down. HOW DARE I not want to spend a day running errands for him? Isn’t that his right as a buyer of a used car?

I say, “You know, this is turning into a hassle for me. How about if I send you your deposit back and you can find another car to buy. I’m sure I can find another buyer.”

Which turns out to be a good approach. Happy immediately starts to backpedal.

Anyhow. After four weeks of Happy’s daily calls I am ready to tear my hair out.

Then, at last, the title comes.

Happy and I seal the deal, sign the paperwork, and I hand over the car.

Jay and I breathe a HUGE sigh of relief. When we get home, we sit at the dining room table in a minor state of shock, just staring at each other.

Finally Jay says, “What a pain. I am so glad that is over.”

“You’re glad!” I shout, “What about ME?! I’m the one whose had to DEAL with that man!”

“I have to admit that I’ve changed my perspective on trading in,” I continue, “I would gladly hand over a couple thousand dollars to not have to deal with that again.”

Jay nods.

My phone rings.

I look down at the 604 area code and then at Jay. “It’s him!” I whisper in horror.

I answer the phone and Happy is talking fast. With his accent, I can hardly understand him. Finally I make out his words.

“There’s a picture of the WHOLE CAR by the speedometer!” he says, “I was just wondering, what is this picture?”

are you freaking kidding me?

I take a deep breath and then say, “Without looking at it, I can’t really say, but I think it’s always there.” I pause, and then ask the question that really needs to be asked. “Did you check the manual?”

“No,” he says, because really WHY WOULD HE CHECK THE MANUAL WHEN HE CAN CALL ME?!?!?!

I hang up and Jay and I look at each other in disbelief. “You’re going to have to block his calls,” Jay says. “You know he’s going to be calling all the time, about every little thing.”

He’s probably right.

I lay my head face down on the table and practice deep breathing.

Eating your words is exhausting business.

I’m just happy GLAD it’s over.

***
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©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.

She listens but doesn’t hear me at all

One of the many excellent features of The Awesome Minivan is that it has cutting-edge voice recognition command capabilities.

(minivans are so high-tech)

In theory, it works like this.

The driver pushes a button and states a command.

“XM radio on.”

As if by magic, the XM radio turns on.

When I learned about this feature, I was really excited. My minivan is on-par with Knight Rider. A talking car? How cool is that?

Only, as is too often the case with these types of new-fangled devices, the voice recognition is a little, shall we say, glitchy.

I say, “XM radio on,”

And the robot in the dashboard responds with a very confident, “High beams on!” and turns on my headlights to full brightness.

I look at Jay. “Seriously? That doesn’t sound at all like what I said!”

He shrugs.

I try again. “XM RADIO ON!” I shout.

(shouting works for people who don’t speak English, so it must work for car robots. Right?!)

“Passenger mirror defog!” responds my ever-so-helpful but rather misguided robot friend, and the mirror starts to heat up.

“NOOOOO!!!!!” I howl, “XM RADIO! ON!”

“I’m sorry, I do not understand. Please repeat your command.”

Apparently this robot wasn’t programmed to understand Hysterical.

I take a deep breath.

“Maybe you should try something else?” Jay suggests.

Ok, whatever.

I push the button and say VERY CLEARLY, “Change station to 103.7 FM.”

“GPS home position set to current location.”

I bang my head against the steering wheel. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! and somewhere in all the banging, my forehead hits the magic voice recognition button. WHAM! WHAM!

“XM Radio On!” shouts the robot.

And, as if by magic, my XM radio turns on.

If you’re feel like it, head on over to Seattle Mom Blogs and check out my latest Essential advice for new bloggers post in which I give many tips for Fitting blogging into your life without losing your mind, relationships, and waistline. Now if I could only figure out how to follow my own advice!

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©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.

Face off: Jenny vs. the GPS

“I don’t want a GPS,” I inform Jay (rather smugly), “I think they’re unnecessary.”

Jay shakes his head in disbelief. “You don’t want a GPS. YOU. Seriously?”

He has a point… I do have a terrible sense for direction and a propensity for getting lost at the worst possible moment.

“I know it sounds weird,” I explain, “but I just think that if I had a GPS telling me where to go all the time, I’d never know where I was or how to get anywhere.”

“And that’s different from now because…?“ his tone is sarcastic.

I pretend not to hear him. (sometimes you just have to do that in a marriage)

I really don’t want a GPS. I don’t want a DVD player either. We don’t need a DVD player in our car. It’s good for kids to have to think… to look out the window… to get bored.

We don’t need heated leather seats or satellite radio or a 6-disc CD player or 12 cup holders either. Yet somehow we get them, along with the DVD player AND the GPS.

What can I say… I’m a sucker.

Also, it’s hard to say no to features when they’re right there all shiny and new. You start feeling the need to collect them like broken seashells.

“My minivan has so many features,” I find myself boasting, listing them off one by one as if the person to whom I’m talking actually cares about the backup camera or doors that open all by themselves.

So now I have a car with many features including a GPS, which I SAID I didn’t want but now I’m finding is actually a really cool thing. First of all it shows my location on a map (which is not really all that helpful to those of us who are direction-impaired, but is definitely pretty and colorful).

Secondly, there’s this feature where the GPS lady comes on and tells you EVERY SINGLE MOVE before you need to make it in order to get you to your destination.

This GPS lady, she has a soothing, pleasing tone and she always knows where to go. She’s thoughtful and concise, and she never says confusing stuff like “West” or “North.”

Still, after following her directions for a while, I find that the rebel inside me starts to rise up.

(I don’t like to be told what to do)

“Turn left in one quarter mile,” says GPS lady.

I grip the steering wheel just a bit tighter. I don’t think I will, I mutter to myself. And what are you going to do about THAT?!

“Turn left here,” says GPS lady.

Ha ha ha ha! I’m NOT turning left! Now what are ya gonna do with me? Huh? huh?

“In one mile, U-turn,” says GPS lady.

Oh no… I don’t think so!

“In one quarter mile, make a U-turn.”

“I’M NOT U-TURNING!”

“Take the next right, and then right again,” She’s trying a new tactic. But I WILL NOT BE FOOLED. A u-turn using fancy direction speak is still a u-turn.

“YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” I howl in gleeful delight.

“Mommy?” CJ peers up at me from the backseat, “Mommy, why are you yelling?”

“Oh never mind, CJ,” I say, “Just put on your wireless headphones and watch your DVD.”

Back to my showdown with the GPS lady.

Oh that’s right, I’m still not turning around. I’m in charge here!

Did she just say, “Turn this car around RIGHT NOW, young lady!”?

No, I must have imagined it.

At last she concedes victory over to me (AHA!) and comes up with a whole new route based on my last-minute deviation. Truth be told, she is surprisingly unruffled by my failure to obey.

I have to admit I admire her.

She’s spunky, the GPS lady.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

***

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Never say never, Part II. The beginning of the end.

continued from this post…

I lug my bag out of the house, down the stairs, and to the curb where my girlfriends are waiting inside Meg’s minivan, which will be transporting us away from kids, husbands and chores for a whole weekend.

Meg presses a button and, as if by magic, the back door magically rises.

I peer inside. There’s so much space! I toss my bag inside, wave one last time at Jay and CJ, and climb in back. Meg throws the van into Drive and points us towards freedom.

The music plays, my seat reclines, and we are young again.

As it turns out, this trip is the beginning of the end.

The beginning of my amazed admiration for the thing best known as the minivan, and the end of my snobbery against this harbinger of practicality.

We make the 7+ hour round trip in absolute and utter comfort.

And when I return, I start looking at my little BMW in a whole new light. A less rose-colored and more skeptical light.

$100 for an oil change? Who has that kind of money?!

It’s so SMALL. So crowded.

I can’t even fit CJ’s bike in the trunk!

And Costco? Ikea? I have to PLAN these trips to make sure I can actually fit my purchases in the car.

Yeah sure it can zip around the city at delightful speeds, but the cup holders leave a LOT to be desired.

And you and I both know that it’s ALL about the cup holders.

I find myself watching for minivans as I drive around Seattle. I notice the people who drive them.

Hmm, she’s actually cute. Stylish. Not at all lame.

I started noticing models and makes and colors and body types. I even started reading about them online.

Here’s the thing. Taking a road trip in a minivan is akin to just having one Dorito, or spending a weekend at a friend’s house with HDTV, or getting your hair done at the really high-end salon, just this once.

When you get a taste of something good… you’re gonna want more.

Suddenly I find that I’m thinking about cars differently.

Why do I put some much emphasis on the outside?

Isn’t it the inside that actually matters? Because aside from walking out to your car in the parking lot, the number of times that you actually SEE the outside of your car is pretty limited. The inside, on the other hand, is something you get highly intimate with.

There’s a greater life lesson here, I just know it.

Outside, inside… oh never mind.

So anyway, this weekend I find myself at a Honda dealership saying the UNTHINKABLE,

“we want to look at the minivans.”

We look at minivans.

And, you know? The minivans speak to me. The cup holders… the heated seats… the GPS… the rear backup camera… the infinitely flexible seat arrangements opportunities… the cup holders (all 12 of them)…

It’s like the whole inside of that Honda Odyssey is just calling out my name.

Jennnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

How can I say no?

And so I buy one. (gulp)

Step away from the unsubscribe button. I’m bound and determined to prove that you CAN be cool and drive a minivan.

As a start, I’ve designed my very own series of bumper stickers. Check ‘em out.

And finally (Kimmilyn, this one is for you),

And that, my friends, is the story of how I became less cool but more responsible in one single day.

The end.
(but isn’t it really the beginning?!)

***
If you’re in the mood to talk about blogging, come on over and read the latest post in my Advice for New Bloggers series on Seattle Mom Blogs, where we talk about Establishing a readership through networking.

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©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.

Never say never, Part I. In which I ask, "If my car doesn’t define me, WHAT DOES?!"

“You should get a minivan,” my mother-in-law pronounces, “It’s the practical thing to do.”

Jay nods in agreement, but before he can speak I silence him with a fiery glare.

“We are NOT getting a minivan. No. Never. That’s final.” I hear my voice getting shrill but am helpless to stop it.

Jay exchanges glances with his mother. Glances that clearly say, she’s being unreasonable again.

“I’m NOT being unreasonable!” I protest, “I just hate minivans!”

One of my friends says that you should never say never, because the minute you say you’ll never do something, you’ve cosmically signed and sealed a deal that you definitely WILL do that thing.

To which I say, HOGWASH.

I am in control of my destiny. If I say never, than NEVER is what I mean. I don’t mean most definitely in the distant or maybe not-so-distant future.

But back to the minivan. You’re probably wondering what I have against minivans.

Here’s the thing. I don’t have anything against minivans, per se. I think they’re really great… for other people.

It’s just that, ever since I can remember, I’ve had a thing about cars.

Some women are really into shoes. Some women love jewelry. Some women are all about designer bags. Some women are addicted to scrapbooking. I like all of those things (well, except the scrapbooking), but I’m not obsessive about them. I couldn’t pick a pair of Jimmy Choos from a line-up, and I doubt if I could tell the difference between a diamond and a cubic zirconium.

I do know cars.

I love cars.

Several years ago I got promoted, moved out of a cubicle and into an office, reached my goal of making over six figures, and decided that I had finally ARRIVED.

I didn’t go out and buy a $3,000 pair of shoes or a Coach bag. I marched down and bought myself a BMW.

(It was used; I hadn’t arrived that much)

And it felt GOOD.

I love my little BMW. I love how much power I have right there at the tap of my toe. I love the heated leather seats and the windshield wipers that come on when they SENSE that it’s raining (because who wants to have to turn on windshield wipers, I mean SERIOUSLY). I love the sleek lines of the exterior, the shiny chrome on the front, and the purr of the engine.

And the thing that I don’t admit to very many people (well, to anyone, actually) is that I love that I drive a BMW. I love that it’s MY car in MY name that I OWN. I love that I beep-beep the little key fob and open the door and get into the coolest car in the parking lot. Well, sometimes. Definitely not the worst car.

I guess, on some level, if I’m really, really honest, I’ve let my car define me.

The problem is, a year ago when I quit my job, Jay and I sat down to figure out how we would live without my income. One of our conclusions was that we needed to be a one-car family. We sold our SUV and planned to sell the BMW as well, and replace it with something practical.

Nearly a year and a half went by and somehow we still have the BMW.

Maybe I just wasn’t all that motivated to sell.

But as time goes by even I have to accept the fact that our car is cramping our style. Literally. We can’t fit CJ’s new bike in it. We can hardly fit three people in the backseat. It’s expensive to fix when something goes wrong and… did I mention how small it is?

I start to get excited by the idea of getting a different car. I read reviews for the BMW X5, which we could get used for a reasonable price and which is obviously the perfect PRACTICAL family vehicle. I research Volvos and Volkswagens and Audis.

It’s possible to be practical AND cool, I think, you just have to be committed.

But in the back of my mind there’s a little voice that wonders, why is it so important to be cool?

What exactly have you learned from this journey in which you quit your job, turn 30, and start to actually grow up?

Isn’t it that happiness often comes from the least expected places?

That it’s SATISFYING to give up your preconceptions and society-induced ideals?

That living with less is actually more pleasant than having more?

It makes me uncomfortable, that voice, probably because it’s always right.

Fortunately I have the OTHER voice to keep things interesting. The one that says, I don’t care how practical it is, you can’t listen to your mother-in-law!

And anyhow, if your car doesn’t define you, WHAT DOES?

That is the question.

To be continued…

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©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.