The Man I Married

The Man I Married:
bought us a 1986 Volvo last year (after I totalled our "new car"...), to save us money.

Well, the headliner recently started disintegrating. There were little orange crumbs of "ceiling" all over the car and all over our heads. Constantly. Like alien-orange-crumbly-dandruff in our hair and on our shoulders...all the time.

Sooooo... The Man I Married decided he would fix this problem and rip out the headliner himself:



Rather than bother with locating the ever-elusive pair of goggles (to avoid getting the orange dandruff in his eyes), The Man I Married decided that Saran Wrap works just as well:

The Man I Married spent an entire afternoon scraping and chiseling the orangey-crumbly-dandruff-stuff from the surface of the headliner:

The Man I Married then proceeded to open a can of "Prairie" (tan) colored interior house paint and paint the headliner to match the "Prairie" (tan) colored leather interior of our 1986 Volvo - to save us money. His wife (that would be ME) was not pleased upon hearing this "paint the inside of our 1986 Volvo" idea...but you know what? It looks pretty darn good! And after a few days, the paint smell kind of faded a little, too. And really, who looks up when they get into a car, anyways? (Not me. I have developed a fear of orange dandruff falling into my eyes.)

3 days after Project Headliner was complete (saving us $120), The Man I Married discovered that our 1986 Volvo would need a new wiring harness. And it would cost $800 to get a new one installed.

So... The Man I Married ordered his own darn wiring harness, spent 8 hours perched inside the engine of our 1986 Volvo, and installed the wiring harness himself:

Saving us $400.

It was a success! The car runs great! The Man I Married is a genius!

Now, keep in mind that this whole time, during Project Headliner and Project Wiring Harness, I was thinking that this would be the car that I would be driving me and Charlie around town in every day, with it's painted ceiling and ripped leather seats and cracked dashboard and general 1986-ish feel. And I was okay with that. Really. I was. I was actually starting to think it would be kind of cool to drive around this cool "vintage" car that my dear husband had spent so many hours fixing up just for little ole' me.

BUT THEN...The Man I Married tells me that HE is going to drive the 1986 Volvo to work every day. And he wants ME to drive our brand new (to us) 2002 Ford Focus with pretty leather interior, remote keyless entry, cruise control, power everything, and a nice headliner that does not leave orange deposits in my hair OR smell like fresh paint. And that, to me, is even cooler than driving our 1986 Volvo. Really, it is.

Gee, I love that man. :) Isn't he great?

Wow, that is possibly the most I've written that is NOT about Charlie. So, gotta get my Charlie fix in now.

Here he is with some of his favorite things in the whole world right now, rocks, or "gocks". Every time we go outside, he has to get "two gocks" and take them along wherever we are going. And then take them into the house with us when we get back. Now we are finding these "gocks" EVERYWHERE. In the couch cushions, in the crayon bucket, in the toy bins, in his crib, in the drink holder on his high chair tray, inside the trunk of a toy car, under the dining room table, in our shoes, etc, etc, etc...

Charlie on a "gock"collecting adventure: