Okay...and now the reason, I haven't put an entry up in 5 days. On Thursday night, I called my parents to ask about their decision regarding the car loan, as I had agreed to do and endured some pretty abusive behavior on my mom's part. Nothing new there.

They decided after talking to Doug that the only cars I could buy were a Saturn or a Toyota Camry and the absolute drop dead cost couldn't exceed $10,000. Well, I was trying to explain that the $10,000 wouldn't buy a Camry and she kept cutting me off and bitching me out. I finally told her to please let me speak and she bitched,"Don't tell me what to do!" I was kind of sitting there thinking,"Die, bitch, die!", but I said,"Mom, I'm just asking you to hear me out." She backed down and it was better, but geesh, my 6 year old says that!

Mike and I went to ever car dealer in Davis that night looking over what they had. The Camry's were out of our range and the guy at the sleazy Toyota Dealership kept trying to sell us old minivans. It's okay, though, we knew we weren't buying there.

This is the same place took a lifetime warranty on an exhaust manifold on my old truck and rather than honor it respectfully, they were obviously mad that I'd bring such an old car to their dealership. They stripped the bolts in the engine block and left out all but two or three of the bolts on the interior parts of the manifold and sealed the outside of it and tried to pass it off. When it failed to continue working, a friend of mine and I took the thing apart and found their shoddy workmanship.

Then they tried the old bait-and-switch with my Yankee trader dad. They told us one price. We took the car to get checked out by my garage and we brought it back and they were going to charge us $1500 more because the guy claimed to have checked with his manager and made a mistake on the price. My father looked at the guy and said,"Oh, ok." and drove down to the next dealership and bought my Nissan from them. That was when I told my dad about the manifold experience. He was mad I hadn't told him about it and I had just figured it was 104 degrees out and I wasn't going to piss him off by telling him about a bad experience.

That night, we came home from dinner celebrating the purchase of the car to find a sad lonely message on my answering machine. It was the same car salesman saying that he'd really had to fight it out with his manager (yeah, right), but that we could have the car at the original price that they'd quoted. I laughed my ass off.

I called my parents and told them, and they laughed their asses off. The next day, the salesman called me and asked me about if I'd gotten the message. I know I couldn't keep the smugness out of my voice when I told him, yes, but that we'd bought another car elsewhere. I think he got the message.

At any rate, we went to everything in Davis and found nothing. We got papers and found one little Saturn in the price range in town. Everything out of town, didn't meet the parameters and if it was in Sacramento, it would be more of a problem to get it to my garage to get it checked out. We went down to Vacaville and walked the Saturn lot before they opened to check out prices. They were all over $10,000. The only thing that wasn't under $10K was a two-door and with two kids, a two-door sucks. Seeing Mike try to put that childseat in the back of our Nissan has been immensely entertaining from a slapstick point of view, but I'd rather have a 4-door.

We had an appointment with a woman who lives right around the bend from us and we drove there from the Saturn dealership. She had a 1999 hunter green 4-door Saturn SL2. I saw the car and started to drool.

We got out of our dinky rental and looked in the car and as were were debating how to get past the gate to the house to knock on the door and we saw her heading out.

She kind of looked like one of the typical educated liberals of our town. I guess she'd have to be, I mean, she's selling a Saturn. Davis is kind of like that anyhow...it's a bunch of educated liberals.

We did the usual...asked why she was selling it (because she didn't need a commuter car any more with a new home business)...asked if there had been any problems with it (an alternater, ironically enough, but replaced nearly a year ago)...how many miles(49,200)...her asking price ($9000 but she was willing to go down, she said)...and then we stood around restlessly.

She asked us if we wanted to take a test drive. We asked her if she wanted identification or something to hold on us and at first, she said, no, and we must have looked at her like she was insane because she said,"Oh, I guess I should." We both agreed and gave her the key to our rental.

We drove the car. It isn't the Nissan. The Nissan has get-up-n-go, unlike the Saturn. Mike loves how powerful the Nissan is. It must be a guy thing. The only time I like it is when I'm going up a hill and I live in the flatlands, so that isn't often. The Saturn will do.

Aside from the power thing, the Saturn does all this cool stuff...the back seat drops flat for cargo space, i.e., a big ass trip to Costco. (Fortunately, for Mike, it only would have two seats then, so he could stay home with the kids while I shop. It would be the best of both worlds for both of us.) It has tether hooks for childseats, a nice stereo, and better gas mileage than the Nissan. The only way I could have dreamt this car better is if it were a station wagon. Oh, and it's a 5-seater...we could fit one more person in, which is pretty cool because it's come up a few times. Fortunately, I don't think we could fit another childseat there, so don't even THINK that, ya sickos.

We asked her how low she'd go. She said $8800 and we gave her a $50 deposit to hold the car. I talked to my parents last night and they're sending the check today.

The final plus out of this is that I should be able to have the Nissan toted off to one of these charity organizations and they'll write me a receipt for the full Kelly Blue Book value of the car, as if it were in mint condition, which my parents can use for a tax write-off.

Well, after we figured out the car, we decided that we could go to the mountains afterall. Mark, Mike's youngest brother had asked to see his niece and we drove up to visit.

Weirdly enough, we had a nice time.

I think some of it is that Mike's older brother, Chris, aka the Family Pothead, was actually nice to us.

But then we found out the reason he was nice to us is that he's having a hard time and no one else will talk to him.

Apparently, Mike's grandparents fired him from the family store because he's never on time to his job. He was supposed to just be doing lunches for folks and would show up three hours late, so they finally just dropped him off the schedule. Now, they are just working on how to get him out of the apartment above the store, which apparently he's trashed. Mike and I went up to change Genny on the porch and there were three bags of trash outside the apartment. I don't even want to contemplate what's inside the apartment.

Mike's grandmother says that he has been letting his pet iguana (yes, that's right) run wild around the apartment and it craps everywhere. He takes beer from the store for all his friends (and doesn't pay for it) and there's bottles for evidence all over the floor. Apparently, he continues to be caught up in his 17 year old girlfriend, who is just as slovenly and likes to smoke weed as much as he does.

Mike's grandparents are thinking they're going to offer to send Chris to a treatment facility, when they go to kick him out. If he doesn't go, then off he goes. If he chooses to go, he'll get a little more slack.

I'm pretty sure he won't go. As Grammy said,"He doesn't see it as a problem."

At any rate, Mark had a blast playing with the baby. I've got pictures coming, so give me a few days to put them up. Genny's started teething and I think she's been sick because she's the grumpiest baby in town right now.