new car shopping, or can the baron get a second helping of that humble pie?

last weekend, for the first time in weeks and weeks, the baron felt well enough to stand a prolonged trip out of the house. she's beginning to feel that, into her 17th week of pregnancy, things are finally looking up (well. except for the peeing thing. and the migraines.). the baron and the husband have been putting off shopping for new car, and the sudden reappearance of her health (or some semblance of it) seemed as good a time as any to start. they made a 2pm appointment at a toyota dealership for a test drive; they were interested in the highlander.

the test drive was fine, but the car was not. it sat a little low for the baron's liking, and the console was so busy that the baron was immediately put off by all the extraneous knobs and buttons. also? the speedometer and the tachometer were very deeply recessed into the dash; the baron felt she was looking at them through tubes. this annoyed her. and, to her dismay, the baron learned from the salesman that cars are pretty much no longer manufactured with manual doors and windows; everything is electric and push-of-a-button (and, she thinks, totally more vulnerable to a bum battery or loose wire*).

the baron and the husband had pinned all of their hopes on two cars: the toyota highlander and the honda cr-v. that the highlander would be functionally ugly did not occur to them, and - having definitively crossed the highlander off their list - they decided to visit a honda dealership on the way home (the baron would like to interject that their trip actually started with a trip to target, then on to the toyota dealership, then honda... the baron felt VERY VIRTUOUS for spending so much of her saturday outside the house). they pulled into the honda parking lot, fortuitously into a space right next to a cr-v.

sigh.

it turns out, reader, that the cr-v is rather smaller than the baron would like. she's fairly sure that she'd only be able to fit one of the two bigger dogs into the very back of the car; ideally, the new car they select will fit all four dogs, three humans and chester the cat.

the husband then spotted something called the honda pilot, a car the baron had never even seen before. it's the honda version of the toyota highlander, and reader? its console and dash are not ugly, but are simple and normal looking. the pilot has three rows of seats, the last of which can be pushed down to make room for, say, two big dogs and even maybe a cat carrier. the middle row has plenty of room for a car seat and a least one, say, 30 pound black dog and maybe even a 17 pound dachshund and a suitcase.

the only problem with the pilot, actually, is that it's not the kind of car the baron can see herself driving. before this pregnancy, the baron was sure her next car would be a prius; she was very, very excited to join the green vanguard. her concession to pregnancy and their expanding family was the cr-v, which seemed smallish and manageable, something not too embarrassing in terms of size, but alas. damn the cr-v's lack of canine cargo space!

sigh.

instead, the baron will evidently be driving a honda pilot. she's trying to talk herself into it, into the idea that it's not too big a car, that it's not too much car, that they (the collective 'they', the eight of them - four dogs, one cat, and three people) need a car of that size. and, reader, they probably do. that sound though, the loud jarring one? it's the sound of the baron's ideal version of herself crashing into fragments around her feet, the version that had: no husband, per se, but instead a man she'd refer to as life partner; no children but lots of dogs and no cats; a rented row house in the city rather than a mortgage in the suburbs; just one small car that played second fiddle to public transport.

that woman, whoever she is, will never be the baron, and the baron is thinking she should do away with her aspirations to become that woman. because, reader? the baron's life is pretty sweet - dogs, cats, pregnancy, husband, mortgages, morning sickness, and all the rest. it's pretty sweet indeed.


*these opinions of hers - this distrust of cars outfitted with electric everything - were formed a long time ago, with with one of the very first cars the baron every owned: a 1995 ford mustang. it's a long story, reader, one that ends in flames on the side of the 60 freeway. xtina? remember that afternoon?