Since we are still in the season of reruns due to the lingering effects of the writer’s strike, it seems only fitting that this weekend will consist of a repeat of this from 5 years ago.

“So the Explorer decided to take these long, lonely nights outside and use them to plot against us. And for two years it watched, and waited, and planned, and then…it struck back at us by filling itself up with The Most Repulsive Odor Ever Smelled By Human Beings.

There truly are not words to describe just how vile this odor was. It was so bad that it was an actual physical presence that surrounded the car and bodily repelled people away from it. No one would go near that car, and on the occasions when we had no choice but to drive it somewhere we were shunned, because we smelled just as bad as the car did.

And the Explorer laughed its maniacal, evil-genius laugh.”

Given that my days are filled with writing, teaching, and managing our household, I spend a lot of my time asking questions. My question range from wondering about the meaning of life, to wondering just how so many disgusting things can come out of such small, furry beings. And why do we let them live with us, again?

But I am only one person, and so obviously I alone cannot formulate all the questions that need to be posed about our human existence.

This fact was brought home to me last night as my husband and I were watching an old episode of “Top Gear”, because I realized that never in life had it occurred to me to ask,

“Can a nun drive a monster truck?”

So clearly, in an effort to meet this evolutionary need, that is why God made boys.

Actually, I really do enjoy my job of tutoring high school kids in Spanish. But there are times, like when I’m having to conjugate the verb “to be” for the eighty-seven bazillionth time that session, that I am severely tempted to claw out my own eyes, just for a change of pace.

But then last night I watched an episode of “Top Gear” and learned that some people’s jobs involve being able to successfully pass the (auto) “industry standard” Escaping From Army Snipers test.

All things considered, I think I’ll stick with grammar.

“All I want is a comfy environment, and for my balls not to hurt.”

-Hugh Grant, when asked what he looked for in a car on the show “Top Gear”

Back in the spring of 1997 when I was driving to meet my husband for a camping trip, my little red Ford Mustang, the car my parents gave me when I turned 17, the car that was completely paid off, began smoking from the steering wheel.

So we took it into the dealership to get serviced, and being the young, inexperienced, newly married twenty-somethings that we were, we accidentally gave off vibes that said, “we might, at some unspecified time in the future, be interested in purchasing a new car,” and thus we became magnetically bonded to a salesman named Rocky, who did not leave our side for the next six hours, until we departed with not just a newly repaired Ford Mustang, but also a new Ford Explorer.

The next day we of course COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT because that was the biggest purchase we had ever made in our lives, and holy cow, what in the world had we just done?! But eventually we calmed down and realized that we could still afford to live in our apartment, and we would not have to stop eating, and everything was just fine.

Fine for us, that is. Apparently, in the Explorer’s mind, our little episode of Buyer’s Remorse was STRIKE ONE against us. [Read more…]