Eric is a Good Negotiator

We're looking at getting a new car for the baby. We currently drive a 1998 Nissan Altima that my parents gave to us for free. Free! My mother had fit of overconcern last week in which she demanded that we buy a new car because a 1998 Nissan Altima is apparently a death trap for babies and/or pregnant women. Who knew?

While not looking forward to having car payments again, I was happy to agree to her demands. I would feel safer with my new baby in a new car. Also, the Altima is stinky, despite many professional cleanings and steam cleaning of all surfaces. We decided we may as well get a bigger car, something with more heft. We went the way of my parents and settled on a Toyota RAV4. It has a ton of cargo room and an optional V6 engine! Plus it's very very roomy inside. And it's not weirdly ugly like the new Honda CRV.

We are just in time to get the very last of the 2007 models before the 2008 models come out. This may be a good bargaining situation. Our friend Luke's mom is apparently an animal at bargaining for cars. We got Luke to ask for her advice, and she said to decide on exactly what you want, decide exactly what you want to pay for it, and then just keep asking. Eric took this advice very literally.

As reference, the little Mazda Protege5 we used to lease cost nearly $400/month.

A 2007 RAV4 Limited model with a V6 engine (according to the website) costs $525.74/month to lease, with $5000 down.

Eric got on the phone with a salesperson who had this car on his lot.

Eric: I want to pay $300.
Salesman: ...I'm sorry, what?
Eric: I want to pay $300 a month for this car.
Salesman: Are you serious?
Eric: Yes. I am serious.
Salesman: (punches in some numbers on his calculator) But you'd have to put down $14,000 in order to pay $300 a month!
Eric: Yes, I don't want to do that either. I just want to pay $300 a month.
Salesman: Umm...
Eric: I stand firm at $300.
Salesman: (punches in some numbers on his calculator) Okay, no way. You're asking me for like a $10,000 discount. We only make a $3059 profit on this car. Call me back when you've thought about it.
Eric: Okay.

Eric thought about it overnight and decided he still wanted to pay $300 a month for the car. He just called the salesman back, and is once again trying once to get our car for $300 a month. His one concession is that we don't need the V6 engine.

We'll see how that goes.

Pregnancy Update: Second Trimester Fun!

Everyone says that the second trimester of a pregnancy is the "honeymoon period". I have no effing idea what they're talking about. It's better than the first trimester for sure, but it's NOTHING like my honeymoon. For starters, I could sleep comfortably on my stomach during my honeymoon, and I could have sex in full parallel positions without feeling weird in my belly. But in any case, here are some fun pregnancy updates!

1) I Pee Funny
You know how when you hold your pee for a long time, and by the time you get to a toilet, it feels painfully good to release it? And then there's usually so much pee built up, that if you want to stretch your urethra a bit, you can push out and increase the force of your pee stream, and that feels good too? And then you might alternate the force of your pee to keep it from spraying in a weird direction and getting on your under-bum? Okay.

Lately, every time I go pee, it feels like I've been holding it for ages, even if I only got the urge to go 5 seconds ago. And every time I sit down and start peeing, it feels painfully good. Nothing wrong with this, no one is going to complain about consistent orgasmic urinating experiences. But the weird part is, when I now push down a bit to increase the force of the pee stream, the pee NO LONGER COMES OUT ANY FASTER! In fact, it consistently comes out in a non-satisfying near-trickle. This results in pee on my under-bum, and sometimes pee on my under-thigh. And if I push out on the pee, I can feel the force of the push against my own organs, but the pee stays the same near-trickle. It makes me feel impotent.

2) I Brush My Teeth Funny
I do this thing when I brush my teeth where I'll end every session with a vigorous tongue-brushing. Often, when I brush too far back on my tongue, I'll gag. This is not a big deal for me, and I'm used to it. It sounds gross, because I make a huge gagging sound, but all in all it hurts no one.

One of the biggest trademarks of the second trimester is supposed to be acid reflux. The baby is pushing up on my stomach or something, and so it makes it easier for the acid and stuff to spill back up into my esophagus. I've never had issues with acid reflux before, and I was having a pretty easy time of it until last Sunday when I made lasagna for dinner. I ate a lot of lasagna at around 6:30pm, and then at around midnight I was brushing my teeth for bed. At the end of my toothbrushing session, I brushed my tongue. Vigorously. I gagged.

And barfed lasagna right on my toothbrush, into the sink.

I wouldn't have even realized right away that I had barfed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes in the mirror. I've never watched myself barf before. It was gross. And then it tasted like lasagna barf in my mouth, and there was barf all over my toothbrush, and in the sink all mixed in with the toothpaste foam. It was really nasty.

3) I Burp Funny
On Monday I went up to Markham to have dinner with my Mamee and my brother. We went to a Chinese place where I ordered Malaysian Beef Curry with rice. It was delicious. It was a really large helping, and I ate it all and I felt wonderful.

And then as we were driving away from the restaurant, I started burping a little. Just normal post-dinner burps, they weren't huge belches, just small discreet little burpies as air bubbles made their way back up my food tube. Unfortunately, due to the acid reflux described above, these little burps resulted in little mouthfuls of Malaysian Curry Beef Barf being squirted up into my mouth each time. And then I had to swallow it, because it's not like it was a large mouthful, and plus we were in the car. I wish I could say that it just tasted like the Malaysian Curry Beef that I had just ingested mere minutes earlier, but it tasted like curry beef barf, with extra garlic. I don't know where the extra garlic came from. It was really gross.

I will now end with a pregnant haiku:
I eat barf for you
Please don't grow to be a jerk
I will kick your ass