Sherri Cornelius

Well, folks, I did it. I bought the '97 Saturn I talked about in the last post. It's just big enough to seat two adults and three tiny-heiny children. I wrote the check Friday afternoon, and couldn't even look at it sitting in the driveway. What if I didn't do enough research? What if I look outside and all four tires have gone flat and the door has fallen off? What if my intuition failed me?

I finally drove it Saturday afternoon, expecting to crash at every lane change on the way to Wal-Mart, expecting the brakes to fail at every red light, expecting the engine to fall out when I hit 60 mph.

None of that happened. In fact, I fell in love a little more every moment. The car runs great. It stops like it's supposed to. All the accessories work, with the exception of the rear passenger window. It's cleaner than any 12-year-old car I've ever seen. Somebody took care of this car. I didn't think it was possible for me (me!) to have good luck with a car. I drove it many more times over the weekend, and now I'm comfortable that I got a good deal.

I mentioned getting a Carfax report on Twitter, and a Carfax employee contacted me and offered me a free report. I didn't see the offer until I'd already bought the car. I almost got took the free report but thought, nah, the point is moot now, and I want to honor my intuition. From the moment I saw the car I was drawn to it. I looked at all the other cars, even chose a second-favorite, but I just kept going back to this one. It was difficult to tell if the nerves surrounding the whole thing was my intuition, or if the initial draw to the car was. Knowing myself pretty well by now, I decided that the nerves were layered on after the initial attraction, and so I should honor that first feeling. I did the same thing with this house, and it has turned out to be just the right house for us.

Still, I wait for the hammer to fall. It seems that Murphy's Law ruled my life for so long that I still can't shake it, even though since I moved into this house, the planets align in my favor more often than not. So since I have confidence in my new car, I feel it's too good to be true. I wait for my new-found freedom to be snatched away when the old van breaks down and the hubby starts driving my car to work.

There's also an element of selfishness that I have to get used to. Yes, we needed a family car. Yes, I did all the work to buy the car. Yes, it is a totally modest used car. But I've maintained a certain level of self-denial for so long that I don't know how to just enjoy something that costs money. Heck, if I spend $10 on a pair of shoes I get the anxiety. I felt the same way when I got my much-needed washer and dryer, even though we got mismatched, dented models at a deep discount. There's no extravagance going on here. I just have to get used to it.

Sometimes things go my way, and it's usually when I honor my intuition.

It would have to turn blustery today, when I'm going back for my second visit to the used car lot.

For those who don't know, this 1992 Plymouth Voyager has been my only car for the family for three years. Hubby drives it to work, while I stay home with the kids with no transportation. I hate buying a car so badly that I'd rather drive <----that embarrassing vehicle than put myself through the ordeal. However, I've put this off so long that isolation has started to become agoraphobia, having passed depression a long time ago. I can't bear the thought of another summer with all the kids home and nothing to do.

So the van will stay with the hubby (since he stunk it up with cigarettes a long time ago, he gets to keep it) and I'll buy another car this weekend. I have my eye on two: a 1997 Saturn SL2, and a 1999 Mercury Sable. Unfortunately their website is acting goofy, so I can't show you pictures. They're both very clean with around 100k miles. Here's a sad little tidbit: After being stuck in 1992 for so long, test driving a '97 felt almost futuristic. It's a 12-year-old car, in case you forgot it's 2009 now.

Anyhoo, wish me luck.

I'm so bored. Bored with blogs, with housework, with TV, with everything. I have so many home projects I could be working on, but I just can't generate the interest. You should be impressed I've mustered up the energy to post this link:

Guest Post: How to Cure Your Writer's Block

One thing that stops me from writing is thinking of how huge the project is. This article reminds me it's not as big as I think.

I think I would like to talk about writer's block someday, when I am further removed from it.

Now back to the boredom....*sigh*

She haunts the kitchen, mostly./ Her pleas echo, though too  ghostly/ to do more than register above a whisper.

The children run straight through her body/insignificantly disembodied

He has flesh and bone, she ectoplasm. So why is she in charge of his orgasm She rails, rattles pots and pans

When I'm on the treadmill the thoughts fly through my head. I like putting them down here as they come to me, but I must admit it's nerve-wracking. Except for minor tweaking of language, the treadmill posts are unedited and uncensored. I don't stop to think about what I'm saying, and afterwards I wonder if I should take it down. And no, it's not because I've said anything horrible or misrepresented myself. It's just that despite my apparent over-sharing tendency I'm pretty guarded in some ways, and accidentally exposing something I meant to keep hidden is my biggest fear, and second to that is offending someone I didn't mean to offend. Both have happened to my detriment, have made me timid.

So I think the treadmill posts are actually good for me. They scare the hell out of me, yeah, but they also expand the boundaries of my self-trust.

I'd planned to discuss love in this post, building on the comments from yesterday, but I'm out of time. Next time, then.

• I'm fat. Can't deny it any longer. I feel skinny, but I'm just not. I think I've been able to deny it so long because I had pretty good muscle tone. The muscles are leaving and the fat is replacing it, so even though the needle on the scale has been stationary for a couple of years, I am increasing in size. My lower body has been getting bigger since I started exercising, I think, because my muscles are getting bigger but I'm not losing any fat. Hopefully this public declaration will help push me into a proper diet. I'm don't like diet helpers like pills or drinks, because I know when I go off them I'll simply gain the weight back. No yo-yo dieting for me. I'd like to eat natural foods and very little sugar and literally exercise my ass off. 50 lbs is my goal. I'll even post my starting weight to properly embarrass myself into decreasing the number: 178.


• Having a teenage step-daughter in my life (Hi, Z) makes me think about love. What is it, really? Is it based in the physical, i.e. a hormonal imbalance leading to temporary delusion? Based in a higher power, moving us toward our soul mate? A karmic fulfillment of your purpose as a human being? I take a different view for each of the different types of love, and I wish to hell we had a different word for each one. LOVE is too broad.


• Which leads me to the question: Should you feel guilty about your feelings? In any case, love is not a conscious decision, so if you "fall in love" with someone (whatever the eff that means) at an inopportune time, is that something to regret, or to celebrate no matter what? The emotion itself is a good thing, right? Or is romantic love inherently disruptive?


• Bohemian Rhapsody just came on my media player. Woo!


• Also thinking about the recent economic downturn as portrayed by the media. People are saying things like, "People can't even send their kids to college anymore!" "This guy can't pay his $7,000 mortagage and may have to go to a smaller house! It's a tragedy!" "They've had to forgo their yearly vacation to the Bahamas! In my world, people don't send kids to college. The kids do it themselves. People live in very modest dwellings and buy their clothes at Goodwill to save money for entertainment. They have no savings. They don't take vacations.  I'm not saying it's fun to have the rug pulled out of you at any income level, and I hate what it's doing to our economy as a whole, but on a personal level I guess I just can't fathom having that much money in the first place, and so I can't sympathize as much as the media wants me to. That makes me sound like a total bitch, probably. From where I am, the middle class is a myth. Am I middle class? I think I am, barely. But the middle class I see represented on tv as the "average"? Those people are rich to me. To say there's a huge difference between $30,000/yr and #100,000/yr is a massive understatement, but they're lumped into the same category. My mind is boggled, that's all.

This was a heavy TftT, huh? Discuss among yourselves.

That's my new superhero alter-ego. Super-Chipper Girl blinds the bad guys with her dazzling smile, and giggles them into submission. Her weaknesses are rainy days and reality checks.  However, her super-chipper energy shield is self-healing, so chinks don't stay long.

This whole thing started as my self-deprecating joke on Twitter and somehow...evolved. Darcknyt got an idea for a Super-Chipper Girl header, Falcon joined in, and the final result is what you see above. Then I bragged about my new header to Ian, who became inspired and promptly whipped me up a lady to go with the theme.

Pretty cool, huh? I'm keeping the new header for a while. It's fun.