Livingston, I Presume

In which I impart my advice to you, without your even asking

There's a new car in my garage. Well, it's actually old, but it's new to me. Being a creature of routine and habit, I told Chip when it became clear that we were not going to get the beloved van back that all I really wanted to get was a new beloved van. And that's what we got. To replace our 1998 Chrysler Town & Country minivan we got...another 1998 Chrysler Town & Country minivan.

Boring, aren't I?

The main differences between this van and the old one is that this one has all-wheel drive and is a different color. But driving it feels more or less exactly the same. No new controls to get used to, no quirky electronics to puzzle out. And that's how I like it.

We ended up buying the car from Taylor's AutoMax in Great Falls, and in a stunning display of beyond-the-call customer service, they delivered it to us in Livingston. (For those of you not familiar with Montana geography, the two places are about 200 miles and a treacherous mountain pass apart.) I bought it there in part because the salesperson I talked with the day I was calling around the state trying to figure out a decent valuation for the old car was entirely friendly and willing to help me, even though at that point I was nothing more than an unknown person on the phone asking for information that wasn't probably going to lead to a sale. (God knows the guy I talked to at Denny Menholt in Billings didn't feel the need to be nice. Needless to say he didn't get a call back when I knew we were going to have to buy something else.)

Thus ends the saga. Strangely, I'm looking at the clock right now and realizing that it was exactly two weeks--almost to the minute--since we hit the deer and kicked off this great learning experience.

What did I learn? And how can I help you, The Internet, with my newly acquired wisdom? Here's my list:

--Check your auto insurance. Do you think you have rental car coverage? Check again. Do you think you understand how your deductible reward works? You don't. Oh, and just as you can't fight City Hall, you probably can't fight your car insurance company. If they say it's totaled, you're just out of luck.

--If you do own a car and drive it with any regularity, do not let your AAA coverage lapse. It's like an invitation to fate. God laughs when your AAA membership expires--and then, being the white male Republican with a bad sense of humor that he is, sends disaster your way and necessitates hundreds of dollars of towing that you will now get to pay out of pocket. Because you wanted to save $82 on your AAA membership.

--Although the most important thing in an accident is that no one got hurt, about the 15th time someone tells you to thank your lucky stars that it wasn't worse you will still want to punch them. Even though you know it's true.

--Stress and pregnancy are not a great combination, unless you enjoy weeping and raging against the fates.

--Even though you punched the last guy who said it to you, it really is the case that a car is just a car. No matter how much you liked it. It can be replaced, while the contents can't.

--Oh, and don't leave your automatic garage door opener in the car that's being junked. It's not doing anybody any good there.

Safe driving, all.

Not playing to my strengths

The light is at the end of the tunnel for the whole car issue, which should make me a much more interesting blogger. I'm not going to write about it for fear of somehow jinxing the whole acceptable solution, but I promise to give a brief, interesting synopsis once things have arranged themselves.

We spent yesterday evening searching frantically for the titles to our cars, a real romp through the many boxes o'crap that collect when you have a pathological fear of filing. As of last night, I have handed the filing and record-keeping duties over to Chip, who should have had them all along. Before we got married, he had an immaculate and detailed system that included saving telephone bills from companies in other states from nine years before, and--as could be expected--I gave him some gentle ribbing for that. He would say I mocked him, but I don't think it was ever as harsh as that. In any case, I think I broke his organizational spirit, and so he left it to me. Big Mistake. Huge. While I am organized enough to make sure that bills get paid on time, doctor's appointments get made and kept, the cat stays current in shots, and other life management activities, I have never been any good at keeping papers sorted and easily accessible.

Hence the missing car titles. I'm assuming that most normal humans have a safe place where they keep such things, all the better to grab them quickly during an emergency. Not me. I'm tricky that way. If someone wants to come into my house and steal my identity (or my car title or my escrow papers or my birth certificate), they're going to have to work at it. I'm not going to make it easy for them by labeling some file with "important documents". That's just asking for trouble.

The only problem with my security system is that it is so secure that I can't even find the things I need. That can create issues. Last night was the perfect example. Instead of spending a relaxing evening watching television or even finishing laundry, we were instead roaming the house looking for boxes that might--maybe--contain an envelope with car titles inside and locking the cat in the closet by accident. As is the usual case in such frantic searches, we found the titles in the last box we checked. That's pretty much always the way it goes. If I could just look at a pile of boxes, declare one the last that I would check and then check that one first, maybe I could make it work for me.

But it's probably just easier to let Chip figure out an actual system.

Deer-ly departed

I know, I know. It's been so long since I've blogged that you probably thought I was in a ditch somewhere. Rest assured that was just the previous Friday. No ditches since then, although I am knocking on 10 different kinds of wood as I type that.

The aftermath of the car-deer murder-suicide pact (the deer was committing suicide and chose to use our car as its instrument, thus murdering the car) has been anything but fun but certainly illustrative of the joy that is our Modern Insurance Industry. You know, the one where you pay and pay and pay and the moment that you need them to pay, they find a way not to. That's not to say that the insurance company has offered us nothing, just that it feels that way when I think about having to buy a replacement car on what they're saying is fair. Or when I think about having to junk my beloved car at all.

I have always developed sentimental attachments to my cars. At this very moment I have a picture of the car I drove through most of college, a 1978 Peugeot sedan, on the bulletin board in my office. I loved that car, despite its tendency to refuse to go in reverse, allow its doors to be opened in the winter, and, near the end, go forward at all. (Really, it was surprisingly possible to drive a car without reverse for the better part of a year. Tricky, but possible.) The sentiments surrounding the current car are worse than the Peugeot because I inherited it from my grandfather. It's a double-whammy.

On top of the emotions are the newly rediscovered fear of driving that I have. My dislike of driving has been pushed under the surface for some time now, mainly because in Montana I just don't have a choice. I have to drive, and I often have to drive long distances. Most of the time, Chip does the driving and that helps, but he can't chauffeur me everywhere. I have to drive to Bozeman tomorrow for work (26 miles over a mountain pass, the same drive where we hit the deer) and I'm already queasy about it. And no, I don't think it's just morning sickness, since I'm safely out of the first trimester.

Overall, the whole thing is just another reminder of how quickly things can change. One minute your biggest worry is how to get through the 10-CD audio book of Harry Potter Three before it's due at the library in two days and the next you're trying to figure out how to get your family safely off a major Interstate without a car.

Luckily, we had the break of Thanksgiving to remind us of the actual important things in life. The car feels important right now, but I'm confident that someday we'll be able to look back and laugh. I think it's going to be a while, though.

Bad kitty mommy

Last fall, our cat had oral surgery. It was expensive and (I'm assuming) unpleasant for the cat, but we were placed in the situation of not wanting to be bad kitty parents. Plus we were told that with the cleaning and the removal of the problem tooth, we could be forestalling future dental problems. Imagine my chagrin when at the last checkup the doctor found another potentially problematic tooth. At the time I told him that it didn't seem to be causing her any problems and he agreed to let it go for a few months to see if it got worse.

I got the call the other day that it was time to go see the vet again and have the tooth checked out. So I dutifully made the appointment and grumbled to myself. After we hit the deer, I started thinking about it again. What was I going to do if the doctor decided that more oral surgery was needed? Was I going to go into debt again, as we did last year to pay for it?

Today, I called and canceled the appointment.

Frankly, if we still haven't gotten Chip the dental treatment that he needs, I can't justify it for the cat. I love the cat, and she is a dear part of our family. We paid (more than I want to admit) to bring her here from the Czech Republic. But I just can't see ranking her mouth as a higher priority than that of my life partner.

I am really glad that continual research is being done to improve the lives of our pets, but if I may say so without being thought a heartless bitch, it sometimes seems a little out of hand. In order to be a "good" American pet owner, I'm expected to shell out for name-brand food, yearly or even twice yearly vet trips (now called "well-pet visits"), regular tooth brushing, and possibly a Halloween costume. For a cat. When we were in the Czech Republic, it seemed like the attitude toward companion animals was a little more sensible. The Czechs love their pets--especially the dogs--but even the vets look at you askance if you start to veer into the realm of people treatment for your pets.

While we were in Prague, we had a cat who had a genetic disorder that caused him to be sick more or less every time he ate from the time he was about a year old. It took us many visits and diagnostics to figure out what was wrong, and the whole time we were demanding the treatments, I'm pretty sure the vets thought we were the craziest Americans ever. The day we did the ultrasound and the X-ray, they presented us the bill very apologetically and refused to charge us for the ultrasound on the grounds that it was just too expensive. Guess what would never happen here in a million years. We went in for IVs, had a pic-line put in, bought special liver food by the case, the whole nine yards. We could have gone for surgery, but the vet convinced us that his chances were slim in any case. There was no pressure for extraordinary measures, and when he started to really decline, they very gently told us that it was time to let him go.

I'm glad that we were able to do as much as we were--the fact that vet costs were about a tenth of what they are here made that easier--but I appreciated that the vets we had were always realistic and common-sense. I'm not saying in any way that U.S. vets lack common sense--I think they are just responding to what the market demands--but I do think that maybe we as pet lovers do.

When children are dying from lack of proper dental hygiene, is it even ethical for me to spend hundreds of dollars getting my cat's teeth cleaned? I don't know. I just know that for now, I'm resigning myself to being a bad kitty mommy.

Oh, deer...

We joined the ranks of Real Montanans last night, hitting a deer while we were hurtling down Interstate 90 at 75 miles per hour. Luckily, none of the humans involved were hurt. Can't say that was true of Ms. Doe. Also can't say that is true of our poor minivan. No diaper is going to repair it this time. The engine was still running, so we're hoping the damage is confined to the crumple zone, but it certainly is going to be a big repair.

When I feel like I can write about it without wanting to kill someone, I'll tell you a little bit about our insurance. While we do have comprehensive on that car, it is somewhat less comprehensive than one might imagine. Suffice it to say that if you feel yourself being sucked into buying insurance because that actor who played President Palmer on 24 just seems so trustworthy on the ads, resist the urge.

Resist it, I say.

The secret's out

I give to you...LOLConnery:

Wait a sec

If you were refreshing my site madly last night, you might have noticed that my post from a couple of days ago disappeared overnight. Never fear, it wasn't any crazy Jore fans hacking the site. I took it down myself while I waited to hear back from my friend Sher, who left a very thought-provoking comment about the circumstances surrounding her own birth.

It certainly made me think about my own privilege and about how the issue of abortion--as clearly as I have always seen it--is anything but clear. While I can't imagine anything changing my fundamental belief that women must have the right to decide what happens with their bodies, I also know that abortion represents a response to a situation that I have never faced and hope never to face in my lifetime. The only clear thing is that all children, regardless of how they enter the world, deserve love and care once they're here.

I would like to think that is something that everybody can agree on.

Priorities

So let me see if I have this straight. The Bush White House thinks that having the FBI track falafel sales is a good use of precious resources...but opposes having the FBI police overseas contractors who are currently operating outside of the bounds of the rule of law, on the grounds that FBI resources will be stretched too thin.

I think my head is going to explode.

Wait...no. It already did.

Every child a wanted child

Jay has written a very good and important--if highly disturbing--post at Left in the West. The good and important you should go read for yourself, but I can distill the disturbing quickly--the title of his post, "Would you entrust your vagina to this man?"

The man in question is Rick Jore, and I can tell you right now that I don't even like to think of Rick Jore being in the same state as my Lady Business. Especially now:

State Rep. Rick Jore of Ronan, a staunch abortion opponent, hopes to have Montana voters decide next year whether the state constitution should define “person” in such a way as to outlaw abortion.

Jore, the Legislature’s only Constitution Party member, is proposing a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to define person as “a human being at all stages of human development or life, including the state of fertilization.”

That's right, Jore is going all Colorado on our ass, trying to award all those great Constitutional rights we used to have to fertilized eggs. It's not surprising in the least, coming from him, but still it grates.

Just as grating is the comment thread there, in which someone actually pulls out the old "Aren't you glad your mother didn't believe in abortion?" saw. Much like Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies, this argument should immediately signal that the commenter making the statement has lost and must go away to another website and peddle his (I think it's almost always his with that question) stunning logic.

As I think I've said before on this site, my mother and I and our uteruses (and more often than not my father and brother with their honorary uteruses) were frequent fixtures at pro-choice causes. I have never for one moment doubted where my parents stood on the choice issue, and yet they managed to give life to two children. In 1973 and 1981, no less, so abortion would have been an option. How in the heck did that work?

It worked because women don't run around getting abortions on whims. And it worked because my brother and I were both wanted and planned. I sometimes wonder if the most vocal of the anti-choicers worry deep down in their heart of hearts that maybe they exist only because their mothers were "pro-life". It's not a worry keeping me up at night, that's for sure.

Return to sender

My hometown of Great Falls, Montana had its 15 minutes of fame the other night, and while I can't speak for every Fallsian, I know that I would prefer to send it back. Immediately.

Great Falls was the setting for Wednesday's episode of Criminal Minds, the former Mandy Patinkin vehicle turned, um, not. It was not a random choice. Great Falls is also the hometown of Andre Ellingson, the Criminal Minds special effects coordinator. He even had a short cameo in the episode, which was not actually filmed in Great Falls.

That much was obvious.

I acknowledge that Great Falls is not going to make anyone's list of top urban metropoli, but, well, damn. If this episode is to be believed, Great Falls--Montana's third largest city, which is akin to being valedictorian of summer school, but still--is little more than a collection of survivalist compounds linked by some desert-y hills and Aryan Nations bars. And the residents of Great Falls--it looked to be about 100 of them, all of whom inexplicably talk as if they had been flown in directly from The Missouri School of Conrad Burns Downhome Inflection--all love guns just as much as they hate the gub'mint.

I'm not going to deny that Montanans in general are not great lovers of Big Government. There is a reason that Ted Kaczynski was able to hide in Montana for 15 years, after all. But Great Falls is home to Malmstrom Air Force Base. That means a great deal of what keeps Great Falls alive comes directly from the federal government. There's not a lot of biting the hand that feeds going on, if you know what I mean.

Do the people who watch Criminal Minds give a shit about these finer details? Probably not. If they're anything like me, they probably forgot the episode--but for whatever gruesome details come back unpleasantly in nightmares--about 30 seconds after they saw it. And where it was set didn't even enter into it. Still, it would seem that a show set in one of your crew's hometown might merit an extra effort.

Clearly, it was in part an effort to introduce Joe Mantegna's character, who will be taking on the Mandy Patinkin-type role. Apparently, I was able to gather, Mantegna's character had been present at Ruby Ridge, which happened in Idaho, which is right next to Montana. It's practically the same place, really.

When you grow up in Montana, you become aware pretty fast what the coasts think of all the land between. I remember attending a journalism convention in Anaheim and having people ask me, in all seriousness, if I rode a horse to school. Most of the time I don't mind. It's unusual, and it sticks in people's heads. For the whole time I was living outside of Montana, I was still known as "that girl/woman from Montana" and it didn't bother me a bit.

What I do mind are portrayals that make the entire state's population, small though it is, out to be a bunch of ignorant, redneck dumbasses. We have our share of the IRD crowd, but so does everywhere else I've ever lived. And that includes the vaunted home of all things cultural and learned, New England. At least here, even the redneckiest among us will give you a smile and help you push your car out of a snowbank, should you require such a service. Which you will, at some point.

I chose to come back to Montana after almost a decade away. During that decade, I lived in Connecticut, Washington D.C., Massachusetts, and the Czech Republic--and we visited probably 25 countries as well. When it came time to settle down as a family and buy a house and make a life, we chose Montana. We didn't choose it for the sushi and the shopping. In large part, we chose it because of the people. They haven't disappointed us.

Unlike the producers and writers of Criminal Minds.