jimsjournal
| Paternal Celebration Day -- 06/20/04 |
jimsjournal |
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Wishing a joyous Paternal Celebration Day to all the paternal care-giving units out there. Yeah, okay, just another one of those holidays invented by greeting card companies and retail advertising managers, but still... I really miss my Dad. As the kids grow I keep wishing that he could see them, that he could see Adam become a father himself, that he could have held his great-grandson, that he could see Gillian grow to be a young woman, that he could see Jeremy becoming a man. Jeremy was only six when my father died so I'm not sure how well he really remembers him. Oh, yes, of course he remembers him, but... and yet Jeremy is so much like him. When he became a teenager I realized that I was seeing what my father must have looke like as a teenager. Last summer we bought an old Mazda pickup truck to be Jeremy's vehicle. It was very handy to have the capacity of a truck for carrying stuff around, buying mulch for the garden, etc. -- one time Jeremy and I took a whole truckload of junk from the basement and garage to the town dump (oh, okay, they don't call it that anymore, it's a resource recovery and recycling transfer station ya-da ya-da blah blah appropriate environmentally correct something that translates to "town dump") -- and, since Nancy didn't like the thought of him driving on the highway up to the community college in this vehicle that was new when he was in nursery school, she would often swap vehicles with him so that he would drive her Camry and she would use his truck to drive to her school (which was less than three miles away). A few times her students saw her driving the pickup (with a noisy muffler) and thought it was cool that their math teacher drove a truck. Jeremy has been wanting to get a new (used) car. At first he was interested getting a Jeep Wrangler -- until my sister-in-law (who works for an insurance company) pointed out that insurance companies don't like them and so I checked with our insurance agency and they said the company that writes our current policy would not cover a Wrangler at all but they could get us coverage with different company for $2675 per year -- at which point Jeremy decided (since we also told him he would be responsible for the insurance) that he was no longer interested in a Wrangler. He does like Honda Civics -- I had a '92 Civic I had bought used back in '98 and drove as my commuter car until I bought my Corolla and gave the Civic to Jill (who was a high school senior at the time) and she drove that until last year (when she bought her Honda Accord). We had to get rid of the Civic -- it couldn't pass the emissions test -- just failed by a small percentage on one of the subtests, but our mechanic could not tweak it enough to pass -- so it was on a one-time waiver but when that ran out, it could no longer be driven. However, Jeremy had enjoyed driving it during those last weeks that we had it around until we bought the pickup. We'd been checking the classified ads and checking online -- and finally saw an ad for a '95 Civic in yesterday's paper and went to check it out. It's a nice car -- 5 speed, lots of goodies, well-maintained, etc. -- so Jeremy made an offer and came to agreement to buy it. Now we have to do the financial paperwork tomorrow (I'm going to get a car load from the credit union and Jeremy will repay me) and get the title and bill of sale, etc. tomorrow night and then get register it and get plates from motor vehicle dept. on Tuesday and then go pick it up. We can only have a maximum of four vehicles on our insurance policy, so that means that the truck has one more day that it will be insured (and, thus, driveable).
Jeremy also needs/wants a new dresser for his bedroom, so while we were in the Warwick area looking at the Honda Civic, we decided to hit a furniture store as well. We went to one of those huge furniture stores, acres and acres of furniture (I always feel I should leave a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back out of this maze of beds and dressers and chests and chairs and...). The cheap stuff (i.e., just under five hundred dollars) seems to be glued and stapled together. It's only when you get above five hundred that you begin to find dove-tailed joins, etc. I was pleased (in a financially painful way *grin*) to see that Jeremy does understand and appreciate quality in furniture. Well, we didn't find one he really liked. Then he escaped to meet friends but Nancy and I went to a more upscale furniture store -- the first one was entry to mid-rage, this one was mid-range to high-end -- and did see a couple of well-built pieces he might like if we can drag him back some day. Okay, now I'm going to go for a run and enjoy this beautiful sunny day. |
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