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  • Switching Allegiance: This is Probably the Most Ridiculous Blog Post I Have Ever Written

    2009 Tesla Roadster

    Take most people, they’re crazy about cars.  They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer.  I don’t even like old cars.  I mean they don’t even interest me.  I’d rather have a goddam horse.  A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.

    ~J.D. Salinger,
    Catcher in the Rye

    OK. So way back in September of ’08, I expressed my undying love of the sexy sexy Tesla Roadster (above), an all-electric vehicle selling for the bargain price of $109,000.

    Actually, in my own defense, I got a little huffy at first about how making such an astronomically priced vehicle just reinforces the notion that being “green” is only for the rich and frivolous. But… people like to have nice cars, right? Fast as blazes? We need eco-friendly status symbols too, I guess.

    Only now, I’ve seen pics of the newest model of the Roadster, and I am way less impressed with the sexy sexy.

    Tesla Roadster 2011

    Yuck, right? It looks like any other middle-aged crisis. I’m not spending my hard-earned pretend money on that thing.

    In a way, I’m relieved– I’m free to spend that imaginary $109K in other places now.

    First I checked out the “normal folk” Tesla vehicle, the Model S:

    I don’t hate it. I’m not crazy about the $49,900 price tag (after federal credits), but we’re looking at 300 miles to the charge AND it seats five adults and 2 children (where?) AND Tesla claims it can fit “a surfboard, a 50-inch flat-panel TV and a mountain bike all at once.” That is impressive. 5.6 seconds to 60mph sounds good, but I don’t actually have any clue how that stands in relation to any other car than the Roadster (3.7 seconds). (I looked it up. My husband’s car- a sporty 2000 Subaru Impreza- had a 0 to 60 of 4.7 seconds when it was new. So, about sports car range. A brand new Corvette, 3.7 seconds. The Roadster looking pretty killer on this spec.)

    However, the Model S’s future is shrouded in mystery: not yet in production (slated to begin in 2012 but no factory has been secured, I don’t think), and Tesla’s finances look unsteady. I don’t know. I just don’t feel confident about this car right now.

    Meanwhile, the Boxwood plant (formerly GM) a few minutes away from us has been purchased by Fisker, another electric car company. The Fisker Karma went on tour a while ago and my brother obligingly went into Wilmington to take a few pictures for me and give his professional opinion (he’s a car person).

    Fisker Karma

    There’s the official, media-ready photo, and it’s looking pretty sexy sexy itself.

    Here’s the in-person, no-makeup-on, my-brother-is-not-a-professional-photographer photo, and it STILL looks tasty.

    fisker karma in Wilmington DE

    The interior looks to me like it was designed to appeal to a snobby older man with aspirations to be of British (or possibly Italian?) descent, and of course that’s probably the case. Why are only minivans and sensible cars marketed and outfitted with the discerning mom in mind?

    My brother, the professional car person, said that it was a good-looking luxury vehicle and looked right at home with all the Jaguars. At $88,000 dollars, I guess that’s the way I’m supposed to be looking at this: an eco-alternative to the Jaguar (also a car of lust-inducing proportions). Ah, yes. On the Fisker website it does indeed state that the Karma will “offer a responsible alternative to those in the market for traditional full size, fully equipped luxury cars.” Gotcha.

    Fisker is also planning an “electric for the masses” sedan called the Nina (yuck) to go into production in 2012. They DO have a production plant in place, and it will be employing people in my area who have lost their jobs due to all the automotive downsizing that’s been happening around here. Hopefully, many of my brother’s friends and co-workers who have been displaced.

    The Nina is another mystery car, all I know about it is a sticker price of $47K. After federal tax credits, if they’re still being handed out in 2012, we’re talking $40K, right? And then gas savings over the life of the car. Not horrific.

    So, in the spirit of “buying local” I’m going to spend my imaginary $109K that I didn’t spend on the Roadster on the Karma, and use the surplus monies to change the interior to something that doesn’t scream “I’d rather be golfing.”

    And I’ll keep an eye on the Nina as a possibility for spending my real money on, when Jake turns 16 and inherits my minivan and I get to indulge my inner car whore. The greenest option, I believe, is to keep on driving what you’ve got until you can afford an ecologically sound replacement. Trust me, Jake will drive that minivan until he goes to college, and then Maverick will get it, and Mav is so tight with his money that he will drive it until it falls apart at the seams. And me? I started driving at age 25. I’ve always driven a mom-mobile. I look forward to owning something that I can feel a little guilty about.

    I know that there’s a Chevy Volt in the works, too– from what I understand that car is being sold less on its sexy sexiness and more on its practical money-savingness and eco-friendliness. Which is sexy in its own way, but will be covered in its own blog post. Because I’ve decided that I find it entertaining to talk about cars, a subject I know absolutely nothing about.

    In other news, Jeff wants to buy a late 70s model Corvette and my protestations are feeble at best. I sort of want one too.

    I can’t help it. I like a sexy sexy car. I like long lean lines. We’re allowed to spend our funny money however we want. Thankfully, I’ve got this eco-thing happening to keep me in check. Ha. That, and a lack of real-life money.

    What’s your dream car… what’s your “not out of the realm of possibility” car?

  • Cassidy is 6. In Other News, I Am Old.

    Birthday girl

    Being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
    ~Princess Diana

    A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
    ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Yes, I know, I gots some ‘splainin’ to do. I went AWOL but I have reasons.

    Last Thursday, my daughter, my youngest, turned 6 years old (but we still call her “the baby.” “Oops, can you carry the baby to her bed? She fell asleep reading on the couch.” Seriously, when does this stop? Will she cease to be the baby only when she has children of her own?).

    This was The Big Day that we had been counting down for the past 132 days. I think, I hope, that it was all she’d hoped for.

    Upon awakening, she got to open the presents from relatives not present. She donned her birthday tiara, which she had specifically requested. (Ugh. It is SO HARD to fight the princess instinct.) We attempted to eat at the Cereal Bowl for breakfast (closed until August? Cereal Bowl, how could you?) and bought a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake with Birthday Cake flavored ice cream and Red Velvet cake. Oh, the food coloring, I’m shuddering as I type it, but birthdays happen only once a year and it was The Big Day.

    The candles were green, blue, red, orange, yellow; and the box claimed that each would burn with a fire the same shade as the candle wax. I can’t even imagine what sort of chemicals would be involved with such an event, but I’m happy (sort of, regular candles would have been much cheaper) to report that all the flames looked the same to me.

    After dinner and cake more presents were opened, and then we set about the task of tiring out the children as quickly as possible.

    Because, you see, at 4am we were waking them back up and throwing them into the car. To make a 7am flight. To Orlando.

    Jeff and I had arranged for a total surprise family trip- our first ever- to Disney World.

    So many things went awry in that final week, and it was absolute torture keeping the secret and making late night phone calls to the resort and to Expedia so they wouldn’t hear. It was insanely stressful, and I barely had a moment to reflect on the day of my little one’s birth.

    An easy pregnancy, an easy labor, an almost instant recovery. A high-energy, easy-going toddler, who was almost always happy and perfectly capable of entertaining herself with seemingly nothing– rocks and dirt, blades of grass, a pencil and paper. A preschooler perpetually frustrated about always being the littlest. The most physical, cheerful, vocal of all my children, whose teacher called her, to my great chagrin, “our little cheerleader.”

    And now, a charming balance between rough and tumble tomboy and fashion-forward princess. A singer, a dancer, a reader, a thinker, a tiny thing with so much laughter inside.

    And yet I see this photo I took a week ago and I barely know her. What happened, in that space between five years old and six? She looks so much older to me. No longer the baby, but a little girl. And, god help me, not so little anymore.

    PostScript:

    Lordy, I forgot to mention we had a little pre-birthday gathering the weekend before at the beach house:

    Thank you everyone who made turning 6 a week long, magical event!

  • Visions of Sugar Plums

    sugar plums and blackberries in colander

    While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads…

    Ever had a preconceived notion totally blown out of the water? Like, a word that you’ve only seen written, never heard spoken– and then you hear someone use it and you realize you’ve been pronouncing it wrong all these years. Panic sets in as you wonder if you’ve ever mispronounced it in conversation with that really pretentious grammar and spelling snob you know.

    Or, just some idea that you formed as a kid and never had challenged for any reason. When it comes up in conversation you breezily add your two cents, and then are stunned to find that you completely made this factoid up. (My most recent one: for some reason I always thought holy water was bottled somewhere sacred and shipped, if you please, to my church; or that maybe the priests blessed a new batch every day. Turns out it’s just regular tap water that passes under a crucifix.)

    Not too long ago I updated one of my in-laws with all the interesting details of my best friend’s life– she’s had a baby and whatnot. I don’t see this in-law very often and so I always give her the latest deets. This last time, she listened politely to all the goings-on, and then informed me that SHE HAS NEVER MET THE FRIEND IN QUESTION. I’ve been telling her- for YEARS!- all about a person she doesn’t even know.

    Anyway, today at the farmer’s market they had sugar plums. And I blurted out without thinking, “I thought sugar plums were candy!”

    Am I alone here?

    I thought they were literally candied plums. Like dried apricots, but with a sugar coating.

    Turns out, I was partially right. I found this recipe for sugar plums on a site called use real butter (LOVE that name, and the photography is total food porn). They are a concoction of orange peel, dates, toasted almonds, and dried apricots, chopped and mixed with nutmeg, cinnamon, and honey, and then rolled into balls and dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

    YES, I KNOW. It sounds heavenly and the author says it smells heavenly when you’re making it, and I can’t wait for fall when the weather turns cooler so I can have that spicy decadence wafting through the house along with some pumpkin pie and mulled cider, and I am making myself hungry.

    Ahem. Pulling myself together.

    Other sources indicate that the sugar plums mentioned in “Twas the Night Before Christmas” were sugar coated coriander. This does not sound delicious to me, but I’m not 100% on what coriander really is.

    Sugar plums are also plums: little guys, maybe the size of a large globe grape, and holy toledo are they sweet and delicious. I bet they’re even better cold, but I can’t say for sure, since we ate through them ALL in the space of about four minutes. You know how when you bite into a perfectly ripened plum, the flesh at the outside is all red and juicy and runs down your chin? Well, these are COMPLETELY FORMED of that lovely red flesh, and they are small enough to be popped into your mouth and sucked on like hard candy (you have to spit out the stone).

    This fruit’s sugar at harvest ranges from 18% to 25%, and it has been said “the rays of the sun have been captured and stored beneath the flesh of this singular fruit to only be set free when tasted.”

    You better believe it, sweetheart. I’m just glad we didn’t make it to the market earlier, as we would have returned to buy their whole supply and that would definitely have done bad things to our budget.

    We also bought blackberries, as you can see in the photo, and they were GIANT blackberries and therefore of no use to anyone in terms of giving perspective to the size of sugar plums.

    The blackberries were also incredibly sweet and gone within minutes, but since I know what a blackberry is I don’t have anything interesting to add here. No, wait: you could read this post I wrote for Eco Child’s Play last year about how they dropped the word blackberry from the Oxford English dictionary but added the word BlackBerry. (Sadly, when ECP changed blog networks and transferred the articles, they were unable to transfer the author’s names with each post, but I swear I wrote it. You can see my name in the comments and everything. Sigh. That was months of article writing for nothing.)

    Bringing it all back home:

    Did you know what a sugar plum was? Ever make an embarrassing verbal gaffe? What’s a coriander like? Are there any other lesser known fruits that I need to try?

    Local Peeps: sugar plums are available for the picking at Linvilla Orchards! I’d expect them to be at their peak for another week or two, tops. Their PYO hours are from 9am-6pm, but always call ahead first.