Nebulous Mooch

With gas prices steadily rising, everyone is trying to find a way to cut down on fuel consumption. My husband thinks he has found the ideal way to cut down on his fuel consumption. He coasts.

“I’ve already noticed a difference,” he said as we crept down a residential street with the car in neutral. “I haven’t even touched the gas once.” He had a look of glee on his face.

I nervously checked the mirror to make sure no one was behind us. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me.

“Don’t worry. There’s no one behind us,” he said before putting the car in gear and stepping on the gas. This is my husbands answer to a hybrid car. I guess he’ll be doing this until we can afford to buy one.

He figures that when he’s driving downhill, approaching a stop, or exiting the interstate, he can coast. He can also coast when he’s built up enough speed to go for a while without stepping on the gas. That sounded okay to me until he drove on the shoulder of the on ramp to I-275. “I have to make the turns wide so I get the most out of it,” he said. I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I just gripped the door handle and hoped we didn’t end up in the grass.

I don’t think saving gas is worth endangering your life or aggravating other drivers. I coast when approaching a stop, but that’s all the coasting I do.

While walking in the park we saw an alligator. It swim under the boardwalk we were on. We have seen this alligator before. It is rumored that it has a nest near one of the trees a few feet from the boardwalk. The last time we were at the park it was lying by the tree. We thought it was dead because it had a Pepsi can and branches on its back. It even looked dusty. After discusses at length how long we thought it was dead and whether a park ranger will take it away, the alligator suddenly shook its head.

This time my husband took its picture. I wouldn’t do it because I was too afraid to lean over the railing to get a good shot. This is the picture. I have a question for all of you. How many alligators are in this picture? My husbands says there is only one in the center of the picture beneath the branches. I say there is a second one in the left corner. He disputes this saying that there was only one alligator.

My mother likes to look at houses. I don’t remember this being the case when I was younger, but since moving to Florida, I’ve noticed. Wherever there’s an open house she’s there. She always notices for sale signs on front lawns and scans the classifieds for good deals. When my parents were actually looking for a condo this was a very good thing. My mother found them an excellent deal in a very nice place.

When my sister was looking for a house, my mother was out looking with her every weekend. Sometimes when my sister was busy she’d go out looking for her on her own. I’d call her cell phone and she’d say, “I’m just out looking at houses for your sister.” She loved to say that.

She took real estate classes when we lived in New Jersey, but for some reason never got her license. I don’t understand why. Real estate seems to be more her field than social work (she’s a social worker).

My mother especially loves open houses. It doesn’t matter what type of home it is. She’ll look in any price range–million-dollar homes to one hundred-thousand-dollar homes. She’ll walk in confidently, look around and ask questions.

Last month I went out with my mother while my father and husband rehearsed for a gig. On the way back home my mother saw a sign for an open house at a new condo complex. She made the right into the complex’s parking lot so suddenly that I thought I was in an episode of Duke’s Of Hazard. “Do you mind if I stop in at this open house?” she asked as the car skidded into a parking space.

There were two model units to look at in the complex. Of course she looked at both. She asked the realtor questions and picked up fliers. She acted like she was sincerely interested in buying a place.

When my husband called to find out why we hadn’t gotten back yet, I told him that we were at an open house. He just laughed.

We spend Wednesday mornings at the laundromat. Our apartment complex charges too much to wash and dry so we choose to wash and dry elsewhere. Up until a few months ago we went to a 24 hour coin laundry down the street from the lovely Chateaux Versailles Apartments and right next door to a tanning salon. It always contained interesting characters.

The constant yelling of The Price is Right played in the background as women laid claim to limited folding table space. There were always people in the laundromat who wanted to claim a wheeling basket as there own. They’d sit in the plastic blue chairs with one hand on their chosen basket snarling at anyone who seemed to be looking at it.

It was sometimes fun to try to guess the relationship of the people who came in together. Once a man and woman came in to wash a heap of clothes. The woman was young and pregnant. The man was in his early sixties. Since they looked alike my husband and I assumed they were father and daughter until they started doing some un-father-and-daughter like things.

There was a couple that came in pretty regularly that always used Dawn dish soap in the washing machine. I’d watch the water, thick with foam, slosh around through their machine’s glass door and think, “At least they won’t have any grease stains.” I always wondered whether they were able to get all of the soap out of their clothes. There was a young couple that would use so much bleach that the laundromat would smell like a swimming pool.

For about a month, a man and woman (I don’t know their relationship because they hardly spoke to each other – probably just co-workers) used to back a pickup truck loaded with sheets up to the back door. They would pack every machine in the place with their sheets and take up every folding table and look at you as if they were daring you to complain. “Great! The eastern European sheet company is here again,” my husband would sigh as we walked in the door. No matter what time we tried to get to there they’d get there just before us.

Fortunately, we’ve found a new laundromat. It is clean. The machines are new and it has plenty of folding space. Usually, when we get there in the mornings, it’s empty. I miss the characters from the other place but the peace of mind I get washing at the new place is far more valuable to me.

My husband and I have decided to drive into the confusing world of mortgages and credit again. Recently, we heard about a very good deal on a condo. We looked at it and, of course, my husband fell in love with it right away. Before I knew it we were making an offer on it. Never mind the fact that we didn’t have a pre-approval for a reasonable mortgage. I tried to bring this up, but my husband and parents didn’t seem to understand my concern.

Things started falling into place, like it was meant to happen. The place needed a new stove. Someone from church was giving away a perfectly good stove. We picked up the stove and made arrangements to store it in my sister’s garage. Then we thought we had found a good mortgage. Things were going smoothly.

Then there was a sudden kink in chain. My husband has no credit score, so we couldn’t get the mortgage. No score? How is this possible? We wondered the same thing. After several days navigating the automatic phone mazes of all three credit bureaus, my husband was able to talk to some real people and get some vague answers.

He has no credit score because he has had no activity (debt) for more than six months. This is a real conundrum. The financing people say, “Sorry, we can’t loan to you because you have no credit score.” The credit bureau says, “Sorry, you aren’t borrowing any money right now, so we can’t give you a score.” The world we live in is crazy. Last year, when we paid off his car early, we thought we were doing a good thing.

I like to listen to the news while I’m driving. I’m a big fan of NPR current affairs shows, or at least I’ve always thought I was a big fan. These days I think I might just be a fan of background chatter, I don’t think it really matters what the chatter is. Whenever I’m asked what was on the news today, I can’t answer the question.

I know someone who never listens to the radio when she drives. She says she likes the quiet. The car is one of the rare places where she gets quiet. I’ve tried this and it doesn’t really work out for me. It’s not quiet. There’s just a lot of road noise. I’d rather drown that out.

My husband blew out a speaker in his car last week. He doesn’t like road noise either so he wears earplugs while he drives. Then he turns up his stereo so that he can hear it clearly with the earplugs. This is how he blew the speaker–true genius in action. I’ve told him that it’s a dangerous practice, but he disagrees. He also plays the harmonica along with the music while driving with earplugs. He says that playing the harmonica while driving helps him to stay awake and alert. He makes me a nervous wreck. At least he doesn’t put the seat all the way back, keep his eyes half closed and try to sleep while driving…anymore.