Goodbye Gray Whale, Hello Goldie

I'm beginning to think that pretty soon I'm going to wake up one morning and I'll be in a new body. That's my way of saying: Look out! More changes coming. Yesterday and today were important days. Yesterday represented continuity and today represents change. I know you're all wondering what's going on, so I won't keep you in suspense. Read on if you want to understand this picture.

Yesterday we celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary with Sarah Lynn, Jay (the boyfriend) and his parents. We ate at a wonderful place called "Ronnie's Real Food". This is an insider Austin restaurant that is out in the 'country' in the owner's house. He's a gourmet chef who cooks for 10 people a night from Wednesday thru Sunday. He makes two entrees, a soup, salad and dessert. It's BYOB and it is a fixed price of $25 per person which includes tax and tip. It was terrific. It was like having the best dinner you can imagine in your own dining room without the rushing around to get the food on the table. Our four dinner companions brought us a gift of Teuscher Chocolates for our anniversary. Sarah claims she's never had better chocolate, and she knows what she's talking about. They are divine. They told us there was a funny story that went along with the gift. Here it is.

Jay and Sarah found the chocolate shop, and Jay took Sarah there for Valentine's Day knowing her complete love affair with chocolate. He bought her a rather large box - not just a little four pieces box - as a Valentine gift for her. Sarah was so enthralled with the chocolate that her Only Child reared up when Jay tried to get her to SHARE at least one piece out of the box with him. She totally refused, so Jay has to go back into the store to buy himself a truffle explaining that his girlfriend loved the chocolates so much she wouldn't even give him one piece!

Fast forward to April. Kit and Jeff (Jay's parents) went to buy us a box of the chocolates for our anniversary dinner, and they mentioned that their son and his girlfriend had sent them to the shop. They further commented how much their son's girlfriend loved their chocolates. At which point, the people in the shop said, "Oh, yes, we know who you are - that's the girl who refused to share her chocolates with her own boyfriend!" At the conclusion of this story, Sarah, still being in the grip of chocolatamania, was adamantly unapologetic and unrepentent about failing to share. We all think the episode would make a great TV commercial for the shop. That's my continuity story. Drake and I have been together and supremely happy for over 40 years. Now that's the kind of continuity that makes me fearless about all the changes that have been happening in my life.

Moving on then to today and more change as well as an explanation of the above picture. Drake has been rumbling for the past two weeks that he was not very happy with the Lincoln Towncar's (aka The Gray Whale) performance in pulling the trailer. Yes, it would do it, but boy, could he ever feel the strain as it pulled the trailer up the modest hills from Hurst to Austin. He realized how uncomfortable it was going to be driving long distances with a car at the very edge of its performance capabilities. He felt he would have to be on high alert, grip the wheel firmly at ALL times, watch the traffic carefully since we would always be the slowest on the road, and pray that the Gray Whale could take the next hill pulling the trailer. He didn't even want to think about mountainous terrain. It was visions of the Gray Whale failing to reach the pinnacle of a mountain that started him car shopping. Oh, and in the middle of all his research he paused to sell our red Volvo station wagon since we had previously decided we weren't going to need or want two cars.

This is where the picture comes in. This is the first time since 1973 that we haven't owned a Volvo. It's kind of like looking down and noticing that you're missing a foot. I'm 23 years old in the picture standing proudly in front of our first Volvo. We brought our naive 23 year old bargaining skill to the table with a car salesman and finally bought the very Volvo in the picture from the dealership. It had 7500 miles on it - an almost brand new car!

Fast forward, 37 years and, we're sitting across from a car salesman in his tiny office at a car dealership negotiating for a car. Amazingly, it was all comfortingly similar. As much as the internet has changed the way we live, it has changed very little about negotiating with a car salesman to buy a car. [Drake did confide to me that he thought he had honed his negotiating skills considerably from the last time (1973) that he was in this precise situation.]

The salesman still went to the "manager" to see if he can "sell" our offer to his tough manager. Right. Probably the only thing that's really changed is that the salesman doesn't smoke a quick cigarette before coming back into his tiny office with the counter-offer. Actually, to be fair, the 2010 car salesman isn't sleazy at all, and the negotiation wasn't all that adversarial. I think both Drake and Marc (the salesman) felt like they won the negotiation. We now own a new car - well, new to us.

In the past 30 days we will have : sold our house of 20 years, stored some of our belongings, sold the rest, moved into another house, rented an apartment, sold two cars, bought a car and moved again. You can't say I'm letting any grass grow under my feet. Other than a nanosecond of sadness is letting go of my red station wagon - I just love red cars - all this change has been fun and exciting. I'm so happy to be waking up to a new challenge each day.

Yesterday we went all over San Antonio looking at cars - a specific make of car, actually, - a Lincoln Aviator. It's really ironic that we wound up buying a Lincoln. My father tried for 30 years to get Drake to agree with him that a Lincoln was a better buy and a better car than a Volvo. It's a pity my father isn't here to savor his victory. It was the Gray Whale (my father's last Lincoln) that convinced Drake that yes, now in 2010 a Lincoln is a better car than a Volvo. Especially in light of what Drake needs for his car to do. Drake has had a great time researching a dozen cars trying to isolate the brand and make of car which would be a towing monster hauling our cargo trailer up mountains while offering us passenger comfort while traveling cross country. The final irony is that we bought a Lincoln that handles like a Volvo. It's the best of both worlds.

Next week is going to be another one of the fun ones. Packing up and moving out of the Bee Cave house. I'm interested to see what I've found that I don't need, and how long it's going to take me to pack up. I'm babysitting Nate, the nine month old who's into everything, crawling at the speed of light, and really, really pleased with himself. I get to unpack the entire trailer and set up housekeeping exclusively with what I brought in an apartment in a new place (Bastrop). I'm having deja 'vu. I did this exact same thing in August of 1972. One big difference is I didn't have to live on pain killers in 1972 in order to get everything unpacked but I'm also certain that I know a lot more about love, life, and people.

I moved into my apartment in 1972 out of a uhaul truck and a 1965 Oldsmobile. On Saturday, I'm going to move into my apartment out of a cargo trailer, and oh, we'll be driving a gold Lincoln Aviator. I can already tell that "Goldie" is going to be a great car.