We Didn't Expect To Do Quite This Much Nesting

[dr_pretentious]

Dan has demolished the front porch entirely. Rebuilding it is taking rather longer. I hope to have front steps again, maybe even before my baby is born. It would be nice to be able to use my front door as something other than a loading dock. I am inconvenienced, yes, but Dan's every moment, waking and sleeping, at the office and everywhere else, is inflected by his not having finished the project yet, and goodness knows he's working on it. Our driveway is a lumber pile, or rather, a pile of post-consumer recycled lumber-substitute molded from sawdust and old milk bottles. The stuff doesn't look like mahogany, but it's a lot more sustainable, and we'll never need to paint it. Every rain-free weekend day is a festival of power tools.

I, meanwhile, am searching for a new car. My ancient car succumbed to a cascade failure of overheating conditions, and by the time I could pull it over safely, the broken alternator belt had brought down several other systems with it--the radiator actually burst at the seams. Coolant everywhere. It happened in traffic, but no one was hurt, so I'm feeling lucky.

Test driving cars while eight months pregnant would be pretty entertaining, if it were happening to someone else and I got to watch just the highlights reel. You can picture it well enough: the five-foot-even woman with the huge pregnant belly trying to get the seat close enough to the pedals to press the brake, while trying to telescope the steering wheel far enough into the dash so that her fetus will stop punching it, with great visible seismic punches, through her tentlike maternity clothes. My general policy is, if I can feel the baby punching the steering wheel but I still can't get the gas pedal all the way down, I'm in the wrong car. You'd be amazed at the efforts some salespeople have gone to despite the ergonomic impossibility of my driving some of those cars off the lot.

The various writing and editing projects do still creep along, though the total collapse of my car has been a major time sink. Whenever I'm not looking, my brain works on a lovely blog post about cognitive science, teaching methods, and query letters. If I ever have front steps or a non-rental car again, I'd love to tell you all about it.

Comments

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't know. You sure you have enough on your plate??!

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

Are you quite certain you are not living episodes of my life? :-)

"My general policy is, if I can feel the baby punching the steering wheel but I still can't get the gas pedal all the way down, I'm in the wrong car."

Yes, I would have to say you have a very good point here, despite the delusional hopes of various auto sales persons.

And I must say I am very impressed you managed to get the radiator to burst at the seams! In a life in which I have had just about every auto systems failure imaginable, including several that I have never heard anyone else having, I have managed to miss that one, which must have been fairly spectacular for something that presumably happened under the hood with no one exactly watching.

I do think you can give yourself some kind of green award for driving that car until there was obviously not another foot of driving left in it. There is something to be said for using something up so thoroughly before consigning it to the crusher.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The temperature gauge was the first thing to go after the alternator belt, so a lot of systems that should have shut down by themselves because of the heat didn't find out, as it were, that the heat was a problem.

I have taken some comfort in the idea of that hypothetical green award. We really did wring every last bit of use out of that car, but with a second kid on the way, we chose a replacement with room for two child safety seats in the backseat that would still have room for the portable crib and high chair and whatnot in the trunk...so now I've become an SUV driver. It's the smallest of the SUV's, but still. All I want for Christmas is carbon offsets.

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

Well, The Rav 4 probably has better mileage than a lot of sedans, if you look carefully, and buying a car because you need the space inside, as opposed to buying a car because you need the status of having "one of those" - which is why, I am sure, most people buy the really huge honking SUV's, is an entirely different proposition. If it is any consolation, your new car probably gets four times the mileage my mom's station wagon did - I think her best mileage was nine miles to the gallon, but I could be exaggerating. Might have been more like seven...

[kistha.livejournal.com]

I really like my Honda CRV - but that was the 2004 model.

Also there are pedal extenders ( http://www.pedalextenders.com/ ) that you can get for any car, and really anyone 5' should have them, or risk injury and death from your airbag.

Not that I've gotten my shit together and bought any....

Anyway, hope that all falls into place quickly and conveniently.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The poor Chevrolet salesman who was trying to sell me a new Equinox was big on the idea of pedal extenders.

"Okay," I said. "Let's put some on and try them out."

"Oh, you can't test drive with them," he said. "They'd have to be permanently bolted onto the pedals to be safe."

"So you're proposing that I shell out the bucks for a car that just flunked the test drive, make a permanent modification to the pedals in the hope that pedal extenders will fix the problem, and then find out whether I can get into a position to control the car safely?"

"Um, yes?" He was so crestfallen it was hard to be offended.

"Wow, the economic crash must have been as hard on your line of work as all the newspapers say. I hope things look up for you soon."

"That's a no, isn't it?"

"That's a no."

I was ready to love the Honda CRV, but couldn't get the baby-belly behind the steering wheel. The Toyota RAV4's telescoping steering wheel telescoped far enough into the dash to give me more than the 10" of clearance between my chest and the airbag that supposedly would be enough distance if the bags deployed. That was the final deciding factor between the RAV4 and all its remaining competition.

If you ever do try the pedal extenders, let me know how you like them. I've never tried a set.

The firehorn has gone off

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

I will "haul balls" with every magical power tool I can muster. Just give me a time to arrive. Please call and tell me when to be there to help with the porch.
Rook

(ps: Rook has been laid off again after working not even 3 mos at Lutz due to stalled work on the new WTC. So he's got a little time to lend.)

Re: The firehorn has gone off

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is an incredibly kind offer, and we'd love to see you, power tools or no.