The Midlife Crisis Car, Part Deux

NOTE: My mother informed me I was talking about a bumper, not a fender, so post has been edited accordingly!

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd the saga continues.

As you know, we put some money down to reserve Jim's Midlife Crisis car on Sunday. On Monday, he advised me that the rest of the down payment would have to come out of our family checking account instead of out of one of his bonus stock accounts as he originally planned. He didn't realize until Monday that his bonus stock doesn't vest until February 2009. On Tuesday, he advised me of his plan to take the money out of one of our 401K accounts. This plan was quickly nixed when he realized we would have to pay it back with interest, just like a real loan. After much investigation, he was able to cobble together the down payment from an old investment account that we thought was closed and our childcare expense account. His one job for the day was to put in requests from both of those accounts to get the money transferred, because it will take a few days. For reasons known only to him, he wasn't able to get that done today.

As some of you already know, I have a borderline psychotic paranoia about running out of money in our family account. We've come up short a few times in the past when we had large, unexpected expenses and I hate how out of control that feels. As a result, I need to have a certain amount of buffer in the account to feel safe. Paying for the down payment tomorrow is going to take us perilously close to dropping below that buffer, so I am freaking out. Thank goodness Jim gets paid this week -- I'll be able to relax until he replaces the money sometime next week -- assuming he can get himself organized enough to get the money transferred.

I learned some interesting things about him during this nightmare of car purchasing.

1. His estimate of how much money we carry in our family account borders on the delusional.

2. He appears to be blissfully unaware that they deduct things like taxes, health insurance, 401K, childcare spending, and educational fund money out of his paycheck each money. Accordingly, his estimate of how much gets deposited into our account once a month also bordered on the delusional.

3. He is terrified of driving on Route 1.

4. He can't remember the passwords to any of our investment accounts, all of which he chose, and he is terribly upset that I don't remember them, despite the fact that I didn't even know there were passwords to these accounts (guess what information I'm going to be gathering together this week?)

5. He grossly underestimates how much he spends each week on things like gas, lunch and entertainment. Grossly.

I also had an amusing telephone conversation with my car insurance company today. They called to "make sure you know James is adding a third car to your policy." I'm the policy holder, so they have to confirm it with me. I found it amusing because I wonder how often the policy holder says "New car? What new car???" I was tempted to say that myself, but I refrained. It did remind me of the second phase of the Midlife Crisis Car purchase, however. We've got to get Jedi towed away to some charity ASAP so we can stop paying insurance on three cars. This means I have to track down the title. I devoutly hope the title is in the safe deposit box.

Finally, the last and most aggravating incident in the whole saga occurred last night. My friends and I are planning to drive up to a yarn show in New Hampshire this weekend. Since Lily has a dentist appointment that morning, Jim will have to take the CR-V to drive the kids into Boston. That leaves me with the Mini for our trip. I let him know last night that I would be driving the Mini. We had the following conversation:

Me: I'll be taking the girls to NH in the Mini on Saturday.

Jim: Why?

Me: (explains about the whole dentist thing, see last paragraph)

Jim: I don't know...I don't want you to do something that hurts the car.

Me: (barely refraining from throttling him) Seriously?

You see, I have a perfectly unblemished driving history. No tickets, no accidents. my driving record is as pure as the driven snow. Jim's? Not so much. In fact, we are currently paying points on our insurance due to a little fender bender Jim had in the Jetta last year. I won't even mention the many dents and dings he's put in the Jetta, some of which occurred when he accidentally backed into the CR-V because he forgot it was parked behind him in the driveway. More than once. Or how about the time he stove in the side of the Chevette because he was "backing up but the car was moving sideways"? Or, infamously, how about this:

The Case of the Mysterious Bumper Damage

Way back in 1989-90, we lived in California, where Jim drove a vintage Volkswagen Bug. He was working and living about 45 minutes away from where I worked and lived. He would drive up to my apartment on Thursday mornings (his day off) and stay until Friday morning. Since I worked on Thursdays, he would hang out at my apartment until I got home. One day, when I got back from work, he met me at the door, very upset.

"Someone ran into the Volkswagen today while I was downtown and dented the bumper!" He took me outside and we looked at the chrome bumper. It had two vertical dents in it about 3 feet apart. "What would make dents like that?" I asked. "I don't know," he said. "Someone must have backed into me in the parking lot."

The next week, he was even more agitated when I got home. "Look!" he said, "This is unbelievable! Someone hit me AGAIN while I was downtown." Sure enough, there was another set of vertical dents in the bumper, also about 3 feet apart. "How could that happen twice in a row?" I said.

That Saturday, I drove out to his place after work (our usual routine). We decided to rent some movies, so we got into the VW to drive into town. Jim started the engine and then gunned backwards out of his driveway. As he backed into the road at the end of the driveway, I heard a bang and the car shook. "What was that?" I asked.

Jim put the car into drive and said offhandedly "Oh, there's a bump in the road there." As he started to drive forward, I noticed two metal posts sunk into the ground, both about 4 feet tall. They were spaced about 3 feet apart. "I think you hit those posts!" I said.

Jim stopped the car. "What posts?" I pointed. He pulled the car back into his driveway and we got out to inspect the bumper. There, glinting in the sunlight, was another set of vertical dents, about three feet apart.

"I think that explains the damage to your bumper." I said. "Didn't you know you were backing into those fence posts?"

He had no idea. And he's worried about me "hurting" his new car.

Seriously?