Man, I swear, my husband and I disagree about almost everything—everything that has anything to do with money in any shape or form, and the spending thereof. He’s cheap. I’m a lot more likely to be freer with the cash for certain things. Like safety. Remember the car seat wars? What nightmares this man gives me.

You can imagine the tension around here lately as Exorcism Day fast approaches. See, we have a rather large French car. Rather large, but not large enough for three car seats and two parents, and possibly The Au Pair. Two car seats barely leaves enough space in the back seat for Marc to squeeze in his butt, and mine? Forget it. No way in hell we’d ever fit yet another baby seat back there, especially one like ours that attaches to a base and then turns to click into position. Ain’t happening. So we need a larger car.

Thus the battle began.

Did I mention Marc’s cheap?

Did I also mention he has strange tastes? (And yes, I know he married me and the strange taste thing is obvious for that fact alone, but honestly, it goes FAR beyond that.)

See, he got this idea in his head a while back that our next car should be the UGLIEST thing on the roads here. And if ugly isn’t the correct choice of word, then just say the thing is very fucking particular. Very.

And for quite a while now he’s been going on and on about this UGLY car and how practical it is and all the wonderful happy joyful things about it. It doesn’t use a lot of fuel, there’s SPACE galore, never have to worry about anyone stealing it. Seriously, would you risk jail for one of these things?

Then his sister, the one of Scary Baby fame, told him about a friend of theirs who was selling his Chrysler Voyager. His 14 year old Chrysler Voyager. His CHEAP, CHEAP 14 year old Chrysler Voyager.

And I watched the dream die.

So we had to go see it, this CHEAP car (that’s 14 years old) and try it out and think loving thoughts about it. And isn’t it a bargain! (Yes, but it’s 14 years old.) And I got really scared, because not only did I see the scary truth that I’d probably have to bundle my three precious offspring into this hideous, crumbling, cigarette-smelling, filthy, ancient beast of a car, but I realized just how attached I’d become to the idea of owning the Worlds Ugliest Vehicle Ever.

And my heart broke.

And then something totally unrelated to the car thing happened. I had a nerve flare up under one of my teeth and OH JESUS CHRIST does that hurt. So after not sleeping all night (slight exaggeration—I did sleep ‘till 1 AM), and being a ROYAL BITCH all day because of the pain, I broke down and called Mr. PainFreeDentist and got fit in Right Away (being 9 months pregnant does have its advantages).

18 pain shots and a root canal later I get a call from the CHEAP husband. Would I be interested in going to see an Ugly Car? What the hell. I mean, I’d never actually sat in one or driven one (although I did accost a lady at the super market the other day and bombard her with questions—all of which she answered favorably), so maybe this is what I needed to help resign myself to the fact that my garage, should we ever be able to live in our house, will be occupied by a Smelly, Old, Piece of Crap Chrysler. I mean, c’mon. It’s an Ugly Car, Surely it can’t be comfortable, or spacious, or fuel efficient, or any of a million other good things, right.

So we drove for an hour to go see this Ugly Thing in all it’s blue, all options but leather, low, low kilometers glory and well…

I FELL IN LOVE. Hard.

And what’s worse…

…Marc did, too. So hard, in fact, that when we got back from test driving it, he didn’t even try to negotiate the price.

I’d like to say we’ll be picking her up soon. But for now, Marc has decided that I no longer have the right to take road trips. So HE will be picking her up soon.

Hi. My name is Doc, and I own an UGLY car.


PS: Anyone interested in a Laguna?