Cars. Also, I sat in the spaceship known as a Tesla.

Mack and I got wild and actually drove downtown to the convention center to go to the LA Auto Show. We are explorers.

As soon as we walked in, I thought, "Leiah would love this." All I want in a car is for it to go, have Satellite radio since all I listen to is Howard Stern, not need gas, and not cost more than $200 a month. But the things cars can have is just incredible. For instance, take a look at this half Porshe/half Lego car.

By far the most popular car was the Tesla Model X, the SUV with the falcon wing doors. The ceiling is basically glass so you can see out the roof. The computer in the dash is bigger than most of the televisions I watched as a kid. I couldn't close the back doors to see how bad the blind spot is because there were dozens of people sticking their heads in while waiting for their turn in the driver's seat, but that probably doesn't matter because this damn car drives itself. I only know about this car because Mack has car reviews on his YouTube feed and they are on a lot in our house. Plus he was dabbling with the idea of getting one and my eyes almost fell out of my head at the $900/month car payment. Do you know how much vacations $900/month is???

Anyway, that car is a technological achievement, and sitting in it made me feel like I was in the future. Almost cool enough to make me rationalize the price tag but not quite.

We meandered through the other rooms and sat in the most luxurious Volvo ever made, which comes equipped with a crystal handle and a mini bar in the back. It, however, does not drive itself. We also sampled the new Miata hardtop convertible, which is still my most favorite car we ever had even if its wheel did fall off and leave us stranded in Topanga Canyon.

The car show also had some custom car creations, and these were the coolest to look at. Here is the Pink Panther car, which has one seat for the driver and then a shagalicious limo like part in the back. I mean, I guess it's for shagging because there's really not enough head room to sit up. Who cares, because look at how cool it is!

Another highlight was the Speed Racer car. At least that's what I think it is. It looked cool and was like half a million dollars. How wrong am I? Likely very wrong.

We also got to check out some electric bikes and scooters that were pretty fancy. And we got to be a marketing victim of Ford, which had this thing that said, "Be prepared to be blown away by Ford" and then it popped a bunch of air in your face and took a horrendous photo of you that it suggested you share with your social media contacts. Um, no. 

Dulywed: Decade Edition

Mack,

I found out that the gift associated with ten years of marriage is tin. I wonder if some old timey wife was asked by some other old timey wife what the gift for ten years was when they started this whole thing and the first old timey wife blurted out TIN! because it was the closest sounding thing to ten. Because that's all the sense that you can muster after a decade of marriage. Loose word associations shouted emphatically.

This year has been a bit of a bitch. Trump was elected, which totally undermined my "Listen, there's gonna be a woman president in the White House, which means things are gonna change in this house" proclamation a few months ago. We merged our finances and got a joint checking account and started doing a budget, which means now you know how much I spend on crafts and I know how much you spend on video games. But perhaps this year is our most significant because this is the year that we got marital property.

We bought a house, which feels so adult I still don't know how it happened. There was some crying and sleep disturbances on my end and a lot of extra shifts on your end, but somehow we turned "unexpected FOR SALE sign in the front yard" into "a SOLD sign." I packed everything, you called all the utilities, we adopted electronic signatures, and now, thanks to our student loans and this new mortgage, we are a million dollars in debt. Ahhhh, the American Dream.

This year has shown us physically what a decade of marriage can do, too. Our most intimate touches come during an application of Tiger Balm to my neck or during a rub of your right butt cheek to get that knot that wakes you up in the middle of the night out of your ass. You are dosing yourself with round-the-clock ibuprofen and Tums, which is a far stretch from the Diet Mountain Dew and cigarettes that you were dosing yourself with when I first met you. At night, while we watch the political segments and sailing shows you cue up on YouTube, I stand against the wall rolling a tennis ball into my neck while you roll your ass on a foam cylinder on the living room floor. It's all very romantic.

But not quite as romantic as the day we both showed up with CVS bags full of hair regrowth products  bought on independent shopping trips. When we do things like that, when we are so peculiarly in sync, that's when marriage is freaky romantic.

Our friend Erik predicted this year would be our last while we were all on vacation in Washington together. You were doing that cagey animal thing that you do on vacations with other people and just being le miserable and I was ignoring it, and therefore you. When we did speak, we were a bickering old married couple. When he told us our future, I told him it most certainly would not be our last year because I am too stubborn for that. Now we vacillate between "Too bad this is our last year, huh?" when we're having fun and "Thank god we only have one more year of this left, huh?" when we're making it suck.

If this is our last year, if you die of ass pain or my head falls off my chronically kinked neck, I want you to know that being married to you is the most amazing thing I have done in my life. I have learned so much about what I value and what I need and what I expect, of myself and others. I have learned that, despite what you say, I am an amazing wife and our relationship is the most powerful thing either of us has been a part of. I have been on adventures I thought were available only to more exceptional people. I still laugh until I cry from a look you'll throw my way or a silly thing you'll say, and I still crawl into your embrace when I need a break from the world around us. Like after that dream I had that a couple of nights ago where we were in a mass shooting at a doctor's office. You are my sanctuary. I bet you're made of tin.

Happy anniversary, Pop. I love you.

Me. Looking like I'm going to find ET.

My job once again made me look totally ridiculous and incompetent. It made me put on this disaster suit.

This disaster suit is what we wear when something explodes and people are contaminated with dangerous chemicals and we have to interact with them/yell at them to take a shower before we can help them. It takes roughly 30 minutes to put on and you have to disrobe without touching the outside and everything is impossible so we're all going to die. Just ask the 9/11 First Responders.

After this suit donning training we had a disaster drill. And it was a disaster. Let's just say we'd do better rolling with it than following the plan that's been laid out. Apparently we had a central command hunkered down in some office, but no one knew about central command so we were just figuring things out among ourselves. Trust us. We are the people in the space suits who look like we know what we're doing.