Broken Hallelujah

What to do with husband Tidy Stu?





Tidy Stu, my precious soon-to-be-ex husband (just kidding..) took cleanliness to new heights on Saturday morning.





He rushed into the house shortly before noon and had a giant announcement. He was red-faced, which is unusual because he's usually pale from breathing so much Clorox and Comet.





He approached with caution.





"I ruined the cars," he said.





"You did what?"





"They're ruined. I wrecked them both."





"But how? You've been outside scrubbing oil stains, right?"





Stu, God love him, had been loading his van with music equipment when he decided he'd better get the dog out of the way. He had parked at the top of our driveway, and my car was at the bottom, right in front of the glass doors to the basement.





"What happened?"





"It was dumb, really." He explained that the dog was having die-rear (sick stomach) in the passenger seat.





Aarrf. Would have been much simpler had the dog just chewed up a chair leg. My beloved picked up the pooch mid- poop and jumped from what he thought was a parked vehicle. As he set the dog onto the grass, the van took off.





Down the driveway it gathered speed, until it finally slammed into my car, leaving a multi-thousand dollar trail of damage. My first thought was, "Thank God the kids are inside." My second thought was, "What a mess." The door wouldn't close and the mirror was hanging by two wires, and lapped against the dented side like a tired dog's tongue.





What's a girl to do when her husband wrecks her car with his own? Test drive, darling.





I drove to a dealership, window down and the mirror cupped in my hand so it wouldn't lop off and tumble into the path of cars.



I decided to try cars I'd been admiring, including a Forrester and an Outback. The Forrester, it turns out, may be cute as pie, but is the Chihuahua of SUVs. No leg room and not the ideal choice if one has children who talk loud. Then I tried the Outback, a wonderful wagon, but I couldn't stop picturing Crocodile Dundee.





The salesman, who was nice enough not to get angry when he saw my Taco Bell bag upon exiting his vehicles, did some figuring. What he offered, standard for trade-in values, shocked me so much I couldn't swallow.





Rule No. 1. Unless you're rolling in dough, skip the whole trade-in scene. He doodled and did some more figuring, coming up with a payment close to my mortgage.



It's a good thing I still have my natural teeth or the installed kind would have dropped to the floor and begun clacking in defiance.





Some girls were just meant to drive Gremlins.