Stuff I've Bought

What a week this has been. Last weekend seems like it was months ago. On the positive side of things our oldest son lost his first baby tooth. Then a couple days later he lost another. We got him a really great used bunk bed off of craigslist last weekend. He had outgrown his race car bed and wasn't sleeping through the night because it was uncomfortable. That was fast. I can't believe that he is growing up so quickly.

Somewhat out of the blue we ended up getting a great deal on a beautiful 2001 Volvo C70 which will be my new commuter vehicle. I usually drive the 10 miles from home to the ballpark and then get on my bicycle and bike the last 9.5 miles into work. It even has a trailer hitch so I can take my hitch mounted bike rack off my gas guzzling truck and put it on my Volvo. The convertible mechanism is so cool it almost gives me a woody, but not quite. I feel like such a rich businessman driving this thing around. Funny how a car can do that as I'm not really rich nor am I much of a businessman.

It's odd how we go into consumer mode at times. (That's "we" for my wife and I, not the collective "we") I think in general we have less of those tendencies than most Americans in our age and income brackets, but on the other hand we're no slouches in that department and I do feel very self-conscious when we have these little spurts of spending. I imagine the Durham Quakers will disown us sooner or later for having too much "stuff". Then again I can't ever imagine wanting something like a big screen plasma HD TV, so maybe there is hope for me yet. When my kids grow up maybe L and I will go and spend 6 months at Pendle Hill to do penance and get deprogrammed from our stuff acquiring, non-simple ways. Maybe not.

I feel like a Quaker with Tourette syndrome most days. I don't know if they can fix that at Pendle Hill.

On the not-so-positive side, my doctor is sending me for a brain MRI to see if I have a brain tumor or tumors. It's too weird to even think about. I guess it would explain a lot, but I'd prefer to find other explanations. I fluctuate between being really calm and ok about it to being totally freaked out and on the verge of tears. I hate not knowing and having something like this hanging over my head. Hopefully there will be no tumor(s) and life will just continue on with our regularly scheduled programming. It feels weird to even mention it to anyone, but I was never that good at keeping things to myself especially after years of AA. What can you do? To top the week off, something happened at work that is a total bummer. It's something I've worried about for a while so it doesn't come as a huge surprise, but it sad and will require a big adjustment.

I'm not sure how I got into this position of being a husband, a father and an employer. They all take a lot of mindfulness and energy and I can be so damned clueless at times. My wife is beyond amazing so that doesn't really take that much energy. It actually feels like the most natural thing in the world most of the time, but the other stuff can be hard, amazingly hard. 15 years ago I woke up sleeping with the homeless people in lower Manhattan, and now here I am, "Mr. Gotta lot to Loose". Hmm (scratches head).

Life is so bizarre. It coasts along for a while and then there are periods of upheaval. I believe I have a lot to be grateful for, even in the times of upheaval. It would probably serve me well not to loose track of that.



ps: I'm a totally pretentious turd for putting this picture here.

Here's the second entry in the "Stuff I've bought" category. I ordered this a week or so ago but since it just came I'm going to include it. Here we have 12 pieces of rubber and two wiper arms for my MG Midget. The shortbread is a little treat that this vendor throws in. So 12 pieces of rubber which more than likely were made in China, and will probably not last very long since Chinese rubber is crap, plus two wiper arms which were made in Taiwan, plus shipping comes to $57.

Now it would be one thing if these parts were up to the same quality of the original parts and I could put them on the car and expect to get a good 20 - 30 years worth of service out of them. But these are not the same quality and will last no where near as long. Oh the joys of globalization and putting corporate profits above all else. I should start keeping tabs on how long the parts last. I just put in a new signal / high beam low beam switch on the steering column just a couple of months ago and the other night the high beam switch stopped working. At this rate I will probably be better off in the long run financially by buying a new Porsche Boxster than to pay to continually replace substandard parts on a 37 year old MG.

I buy a lot of "stuff", probably way too much stuff. So why does it always feel like I want to buy more stuff? I have a lot of different interests but I still don't think that accounts for the bulk of it.

I came across someone's flickr page where they were making sketches of everything that they've purchased. That got me thinking that trying to keep track of my purchases on this blog might be a good way to get an overview over time of what I'm buying and where the money is going.

For the first entry in this new category we have my brand spanking new Ibanez classical guitar. Last weekend I was super depressed and in the dumps for a variety of reasons. Since I didn't seem to have much control over the things that were bumming me out and since I don't have cigarettes or drugs or alcohol to fall back on I resorted to some retail therapy to pull myself out of my hole. I know it's not the best way to deal with things but then again it worked and I am no saint.

The guitar was $299 at my local Guitar Center and it sounds great. I've been learning Leonard Cohen songs since I got it last weekend. It's got the Leonard Cohen sound in spades. The friendly sales person threw in a $39.95 retail gig bag for $15 (how do they do that?) bringing the grand total to just over $335.



I think that this was one of the better recent purchases. We'll see how that holds up over time. I still have twenty some-odd days to return it if I change my mind.

Pros:	Cons:
Relatively inexpensive	Made in China
Sounds pretty good	Bought from WalMart of guitar stores instead of local mom & pop
Got me out of my funk	Didn't really need to spend money on another guitar