Anniversaries, Refrigerators and Dents, Oh my!

Yesterday was our 9th anniversary! Time flies and when I look back, I can't believe how much stuff has filled the last nine years. We started off with a bang, moving 2000 miles across the country to arrive the week before September 11th, 2001. Did I mention neither of us had jobs? Everything worked out, obviously. The Lord has always provided for us, even when we didn't see a way. One or both of us have been in school for all but about a year of our 11 years together. We've lived in two different apartments, bought two houses, rented one (never again!), sold one, had three kids, and the list goes on...oh, and just for kicks, how many cars have we owned? Come on, guess! There was Jeff's early 70's Chevy truck, my 1989 gold Mercury Linx station wagon*, my Buick SkyHAWK (not Lark....never seen another like it), Jeff's '91 Chevy Cavalier (we were livin' it up, paid around $1000 for that one!), the white Pontiac (sweet moonroof!), the Plymouth Laser, AKA the Laser Beam or the rolling death trap, the Chrysler Sebring, the Ford Truck, the green Grand Prix, our Impala, and the Explorer. Did I get 'em all? Anyway, in some ways it feels like a fast nine years, but in other ways it seems like its been 19. I am grateful we are on this end of the 9 years and we can look forward to new (not involving rental properties or Plymouth Lasers) things!!! So, I did mention a fridge. We got a new fridge to replace the Harvest Gold one that came with the house. Our new fridge is mostly gorgeous, except for a small dent in the side, and nice and spacious. I found that if you call and nicely explain that the fridge you just paid muchos dineros for has a small dent in the side of it, they will bend over backward and offer to replace your fridge or send you a $100 gift card for your troubles. Now I am wishing I had taken the new fridge, since it has begun making a bad noise. I guess I will be calling again today. Lovely. Anyway, the new fridge is nice, I think, and I am looking forward to having all the kinks worked out. Somehow this post has turned into a rambling trail of stories cobbled together with no rhyme or reason. Don't know where I am going, or when I will be back....weeeeeeee!!! Since it's all downhill from here, I present to you the story of my first car, the *Linx*. Picture a lovely little gold station wagon, except without the lovely part. It was my first car, and my dad was pitching in to help me buy it. If I remember correctly, I was paying for most of it. But, since Dad was pitching in, he decided that he would be the one to pick. Now there were other, more respectable cars in my price range that I could have had, but no! No! Dad's reasoning? This one wouldn't get stolen. Well, I can vouch for that. I used to leave the keys in plain sight with the doors unlocked and no one ever took me up on it. I stopped short of taping a $50 bill to the steering wheel, but only because I was a poor college student. This car was lovingly dubbed 'baby poo' and the 'poop wagon.' But don't think that the fun stopped there! The car had, shall we say, uh, character (read: issues). This car had some sort of wiring problem which caused little annoyances, like say...honking the horn while shifting gears. You know, things that any college girl would just shrug off as 'nothing.' I'll tell you what, nothing makes you want to crawl under your dashboard more than when you have to downshift at a light next to a police officer and all your car does is Hoooooooonk, Hoooooooooonk, Hoooooooonk! Yeah. It was great. There was also a few instances, one in particular, where my friend shouted 'hey, look at those cute guys!' (We were in the mall parking lot.) Of course, I had to shift and what do you know? My car honked. The problem with this problem is that you never knew when it was going to happen. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. Another quaint little 'tick' this car had was that it also honked randomly when using the blinker. So, imagine shifting gears with your turn signals on. Good times. And if that wasn't enough, we determined through the use of a guinea pig (AKA Cousin Steven) that there was some sort of short (surprise!) where if you honked the horn (the traditional way) while hanging on to the window, you'd get zapped! The only plus to this car was that it could endure some off-roading, mostly at the wild and crazy hand of my friend Meg F.. Needless to say, I was glad when this car went to the big junkyard in the sky. Rest In Peace, Poop Wagon, Rest In Peace.