Tested and Failed (Again and Again and Again)

Earlier today, I was paging through the Infant Owner's Manual (What? You didn't get one? Clearly, you didn't tip the nurses in the delivery room well enough.), marveling at the number of things nobody ever told me. For example, everybody talks about the whole no sleep with a newborn thing, but HELLO! that is not the worst of it! Newborns and their inability to sleep several consecutive hours is logical, predictable, and I think, tolerable. It's when the one-year old randomly wakes up at 3:30 in the morning and won't go back to sleep that kills you. (Right, Jayesel?) Seriously. With a newborn, there are no expectations. Nobody expects you to cook, clean, look human. By the time they hit that first birthday, though, you're supposed to have your act together. The expiration date on whining is long past due and you're left stumbling through your days in a sleep-deprived fog. Fast forward to two, and it's a whole other level of cruelty that goes on with sleep deprivation.

(Alexis--Feel free to accept that as a challenge and stay in your own darn bed all night tonight just to spite me.)

Another thing missing from that Owner's Manual is instructional guidance on how to survive the daily tests kids put you through. Sure, the tests change from day-to-day, but why didn't anyone warn me that the rules to the tests change from minute-to-minute? I've lost like eight consecutive games of LELLO CAR! because I didn't know cars on TV were eligible, or that you can call the same car several times in the span of five minutes. So.not.fair.

I failed yet another test last night. Alexis and I were taking a walk through the neighborhood. As per her usual routine, Alexis was pointing out everything she saw and telling me what it was. And, as per usual, she decided it was time to test me by seeing if I knew what various things were.

"What's dat?"

"A tree," I replied.

"What's dat?"

"That's a house," I told her.

"What's dat sound?"

"That's the birds chirping," I reported.

"No, it's elephant," Alexis corrected with an incredulous look of disdain that I could be so stupid as to get that question wrong.

How am I ever going to pass all these tests if I don't even know the difference between a bird and an elephant?

He Didn't Know What Hit Him

About a month ago, I made a BIG HUGE GIGANTIC IDIOTIC mistake. I had just surveyed the occupants of our driveway and made note of the two gas-guzzling SUVs and the gas-guzzling over-sized ugly truck and muttered the syllables "new car."

Mr. Husband's man brain snapped out of that Wife Filter setting, defying the laws of nature as he actually heard the words that came out of my mouth. That rarely occurs. In fact, I'm still intrigued by the fact that his hearing is suddenly just dandy when I say words that he WANTS to hear. I could stand inches from his ear and yell, "PUT YOUR SHOES AWAY, PLEASE!" and he wouldn't hear a single syllable.

Anyway, Mr. Husband has spent weeks researching and exploring and generally driving me crazy as he found one "perfect" vehicle after another. I mostly ignored him as his Wife Filter kept ignoring the part where I insisted that the vehicle be cheap and get better gas mileage than anything we owned.

Then yesterday I made a new BIG HUGE GIGANTIC IDIOTIC mistake--I let Mr. Husband drive through some car lots. That action alone is all it takes for him to come home with something. We've bought at least six vehicles together over the past 14 years, and each time it's the same. He sees a vehicle, he buys the vehicle. There are no steps in between those two actions. In fact, his vehicle negotiations go a little like this:

Mr. Husband: "How much is that car I'm going to buy, even if you tell me it's over-priced?"

Salesguy (it's always a guy): "It's twice the Kelly Blue Book value, but I'll give you a deal and whack $100 off the price."

Mr. Husband: "Will you take double that?"

Salesguy: "Um, sure."

Mr. Husband: "Great! It's a deal!"

He will vehemently deny that this is how it all goes down, but he will not deny that since I took over the job as Official Price Negotiator in our house, we have paid significantly less for things. Recently, in fact, he called me a loony toon for thinking I would be able to buy the gas-guzzling over-sized truck for less than a third of it's Kelly Blue Book value. I bid my super-low price anyway and HELLO! it's in our driveway.

So, we set foot on a dealership parking lot and I knew at that very moment that we would be coming home with a car. I instantly made my traditional conversion to Clueless Female. Can I just say, the salesguy fell for it hook, line, and sinker? He totally bought into my "You talk to him, honey" and "I know I'll be the one that drives it, but I trust you're opinion, so you go ahead and do the test drive and tell me if I'll like it," spiel. (I'm not entirely sure that Mr. Husband doesn't fall for it, too. If that's the case, Mr. Husband, sorry, but yes, I have been using your manliness to get us a better deal. You can thank me with a new Coach watch.)

I know the guy fell for it because when it came time to go over the amount they wanted for the car and how much they were willing to give us for our trade-in, it looked a little like this:

You could have built the Great Wall of Pittsburgh through the chasm on the table. The salesguy tilted that offer sheet in such a way that only Mr. Husband could possibly see it, then proceeded to yammer on with his back directly to me. To be honest, I'm not sure that Mr. Husband saw the smoke coming out of my ears. If he did, he may very well have mistook it as me sending smoke signals for him to shut his trap. Either way, the men at the table were both taken aback when I ripped the offer sheet off the table and scrawled a counter-offer on it. I was trying to play the role of Clueless Female, but this Clueless Female has more than a little input when it comes to car negotiations.

As the salesguy slowly realized that nobody was spending any money unless I said so, he dove into typical salesguy crap and tried the lines about having to keep his boss happy and not having the kind of wiggle room on the price that I was requesting. I revved up to Bitchy Wife mode and told him I didn't really care. Meet our price, or we were leaving.

There was the usual hemming and hawing, but in the end I managed to get the price down to an acceptable level and we drove away in a new-to-us 2003 Audi A4. The salesguy was kind enough to apologize, admitting that in sales school they taught him to never ignore the wife, and that he had clearly committed that sin. He may have even thanked me for sparing his life.

Next time you may not be so lucky, Mr. Clueless Salesguy.

Real or Real Creepy No.2 Answers

Here are the answers to last night's questions:

43% of people got it WRONG. That creaptacular doll sold on eBay for over $500 about a month ago.

40% of y'all called that uber-cute (dare I say "too" cute) baby a freaky doll. Hang your heads in shame.

At least y'all got that one right. The creaptastic doll is for sale on eBay and bids start at $199. Shockingly enough, so far there have been no bids.