The cars that go BOOM

(Bonus points if you can recall the hilariously godawful ’80s song referenced in the title of this post)

Alright. Because I am Queen of the Entire Universe, I declare this week to be over right freaking now. OVER. That’s it. Bring in the cat, get your coats and hats, the chips and salsa are gone, let’s all go home.

If, for some reason, the week persists in surging ahead without me, I will likely be found hiding under my covers and drowning out the world by singing LA LA LA LA LA. It has not been the best week for me.

Oh, it started out pretty well. Then on Tuesday a very nice lady accidentally T-boned our new Prius as I was driving the Sprog to my parents’ house.

I have to say, I don’t advocate getting into a car wreck when you’re seven months pregnant, but if you must, I highly recommend that you try to do so while sitting in a Prius. Because that little car? Is built like a Sherman tank. It deserves every nice thing Consumer Reports said about it and more.

So I’m fine, the baby is fine, and the Sprog is fine. I feel really sorry for my mother, though. She was driving home from work and saw my car by the side of the road, surrounded by two police cruisers, an ambulance, and a fire truck. That unnerved her, just a little, until she was able to find out that the nice EMTs were only taking my blood pressure. Sorry, Mom.

Anyhow, since the wreck, I have talked to insurance agents, claims adjusters, doctors, and repair shops until my cell phone died. And between my OB’s office and the hospital, I spent four hours yesterday getting poked, prodded, monitored, shot up, felt up, and left in a hospital bed for an hour with my can hanging out of a hospital gown. The good news in all that is that the car is going to get fixed at the other driver’s expense, and my baby is doing fabulous. However, I am weary.

Oh, and the cherry on the sundae that has been this week (WARNING: this is so, so gross, so stop reading now if you have a weak stomach. Unless you already have kids, in which case this is just par for the course):

After I got out of the hospital and picked up the Sprog from my cousin’s house, we went home and waited for the damage estimates guy to come out and look at the car. When he arrived, I left the Sprog playing with his car garage not five feet from the wide-open front door, and went out front to talk to the insurance guy.

When I went back inside a few minutes later, I discovered that the Sprog was now pantsless. Typical. I called him over to help him get dressed again, and that’s when I noticed that his entire backside, from his knees to his waist, was covered in poop.

“What is all over you?” I gasped.

“Mommy! I pooped in the potty!” he beamed. “And! I flushed!”

“That’s…wonderful,” I said faintly. Then got up and went into the bathroom, dreading what I was going to find. And I’ll say one thing, it certainly was…creative. He had smeared poop on every flat surface in the bathroom, though all of it was preschooler butt-height or lower. And then for good measure, he threw my husband’s favorite drumming t-shirt in the toilet, along with a box of Kleenex that was already bloated up to pillow size in the water. I wish I were making this up.

I think if I could have, I would have flushed the shirt down the toilet and put up crime scene tape over the bathroom door. But instead, I got out the 409 and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, all the while delivering a fervent lecture to the Sprog on the virtues of wiping. And not with Daddy’s nice Drum Center t-shirt, please.

So. It’s not been the best week. But everything’s fine now, really. Nobody’s hurt, and the car will get fixed soon. And also, one must never underestimate the restorative powers of Cute Overload and I Can Has Cheezburger? (from which the lolcat pic above is taken). So I guess we’ll call this week a wash after all. Though should you choose to join me in boycotting Friday in favor of sweet, sweet denial, I’m sure your boss won’t mind a bit. Trust me.

Summer snowflakes

Last week, Bush vetoed a bill that would have lifted a ban on funding embryonic stem cell research. Which is I guess not terribly surprising, but what was surprising was this article I ran across in Scientific American. It said that a new study shows that 60% of the fertility patients surveyed would be willing to donate their “extra” embryos for use in stem cell research. Even more interesting to me was that only 22% of those polled would donate those same embryos to infertile couples for implantation, such as the Snowflakes program does.

So, how ’bout it? If you had a surplus of embryos on ice, and you knew they were never going to have a chance at being implanted, would you donate them for stem cell research?

And while we’re on the subject, if Bush et al. are so concerned about the lives of embryos, why aren’t they leaning harder on fertility clinics to stop so many “extras” from being produced? Many of them are frozen (though a lot of them perish in the freezing and thawing process), and many are simply rinsed down the drain. How is allowing that to happen to so many embryos any more respectful than donating them to stem cell research?

Granted, it’s not as simple as getting the government to provide oversight to the industry; it’s a big stretch for the FDA to even try. But surely there’s got to be some way to encourage fertility clinics to create and implant smaller batches of embryos, rather than allowing them to go for huge notch-in-the-belt pregnancy counts that are often dangerous for both parent and children. If politicians can’t figure out some way to do that, then I have to conclude that their hearts aren’t really in it.

And to answer my own earlier question: yes, I’d donate an embryo to stem cell research rather than allow it to go to waste. Of course, there should be a big fat qualifier on there stating that I’d never have the extras in the first place. Long before the Sprog was born, my husband and I discussed what we’d do if I should fail to catch pregnant, and both agreed that we’d go for adoption.

I’m aware that the foster care/adoption system has its own issues, and that many who pursue fertility treatments do so because it can be cheaper and easier than jumping through the hoops of the adoption process. I totally understand that. I also understand that not all fertility treatments mean an increased risk of having multiples. But a lot of them do, and I’d be very, very wary of getting involved in a largely unregulated industry with heavy financial incentives to make me the mother of multiples.

Discuss: What would you do with an “extra” embryo? What’s your take on this whole debate?

If a squash can make you smile…

Thanks for all your kind words, Gentle Readers. Amazing what some parental support, a lovely huge paycheck from your husband’s new job, and a Saturday of total and unexpected sloth can do, eh?

And fresh veggies! Yes, really. Veggies. Not ours, though, not yet. They’re growing nicely, having survived that freakish hail storm against all odds, but I’ve been buying from the Farmer’s Market til they’re ready.

Even so, I’ve managed to turn fresh vegetables into a source of trauma for my son. I had brought home a fresh tomato and a cucumber, remembering how my mother always liked to set out fresh slices to go with a summer dinner when I was a child. So to me, they’ve always been powerful symbols of the season—the act of slicing a tomato still warm from the garden, then sprinkling each wedge with a little salt before popping it into my mouth, is nigh unto an act of communion with summer for me. So I promise, my intentions were pure.

I loaded up a plate that afternoon with my fresh cucumber and tomato, a salt shaker, and a paring knife, then sat down next to the Sprog. He was also eating his snack, and briefly watching a cartoon as he did so. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes as I concentrated on slicing the tomato.

Finally, the Sprog looked over at me, saw what was on my plate, and his eyes widened to the size of golf balls. “Mommy,” he gasped. “You’re eating Bob the Tomato! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!”

And then I looked up at the TV and realized that the Sprog had been watching Veggie Tales. Oops.

And you give yourself away

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how some people can think that staying home with a child all day is a cakewalk. Especially when it’s an only child, because you had better believe that you are the only show in town for the kidlet.

And sometimes? It’s about enough to drive you batty when it’s you and the kid staring each other down all day, and the only sound in the house is Caillou reruns and the sound of your increasingly desperate breathing. Maybe some tumbleweeds blowing by, for effect. And no matter what productive thing you’re trying to do, be it dishes or dusting, soon there will surely come the tug on the shirt, the plaintive, “Mommy, come play with me!”

“But sweetie,” you will say, “we just spent half an hour hiding under a fort from the Slimy Green Bad Guys. Why don’t you go play with your pirate ship?”

And then comes the kicker: “But Mommy, I don’t want the pirate ship. I want you. Come and snuggle with me and read the dinosaur book, okay? Okay?”

So then you might as well put the dishes down and go read the dinosaur book (again), because you know in your heart you’ll be footing the bill for therapy in his teen years if you don’t.

And then you look up at the end of the day and realize you haven’t actually seen the top of your kitchen table for a week because you’ve spent so much time tending to the kid that you haven’t had time to clean. That, or what free time you had (a.k.a., kiddo’s nap), you ran screaming for a book and a cup of tea in a last-ditch dive for alone time.

But it never lasts for long. Because everything you did before you had kids? It takes two or three times as long after they come along, what with feeding, dressing, working hard to lose at board games, kissing boo-boos, keeping them safe, keeping them occupied, keeping them from destroying things, instructing, reminding, reminding again, reminding on threat of time-out, administering the time-out, and reading just one more story, please please please. And you just get…tired.

For the last week or so, I’ve been looking forward to my evening work shifts in a way that is frankly obscene. I love my son so much, but I’ve just felt worn out and used up, with no reserves left. I’m generally pretty cheerful with the Sprog, and I’m so ADD that his ever-shifting attention span is usually fine with me. But right now I just feel guilty, because he surely deserves the happy mommy he’s used to, not the ill-tempered nag I’ve been the past week.

I’m not sure if this slump is because I’m pregnant or because the Sprog is three; more likely, it’s some unholy combination of both. I’m just now lumbering into my third trimester, larger than life and twice as uncomfortable. And 3-year-olds have a certain affinity for asserting independence at the worst times. As Dooce said (as far as I can remember, since I’m not going back to look it up), “Three is so much worse than two that you might as well start drinking now.”

Not that a frosty Sam Adams doesn’t sound pretty swell right now, but it’s not going to happen for the next year and a half. What I’d really like is a day off—a good, long day of nothing but whatever. No juice spills, no Slimy Green Bad Guys, no light saber duels. Just reading a book (no pictures!), and maybe going to a movie with a friend. That’ll probably have to wait a few days until my husband is done with his board exams, which he is frantically cramming for in every spare minute he has. But until then? Don’t judge me, but I think the Sprog is going to be watching a lot of PBS Kids.

Discuss: What do you do when you feel overwhelmed as a parent?

The Ichthus effect

Have you all been following Rich Copley’s excellent coverage of the Ichthus festival? If not, go give it a look–it’s top notch all the way. But you know, all this coverage has gotten me to thinking about a few things. Promise you’ll read first and shoot second?

I’ve had a great time every year I’ve ever gone to Ichthus: Fun times with my youth group. Great music (remember the last time Jennifer Knapp played? So awesome). That sense of camaraderie from surviving the Act of God weather. Hawking CDs like a good band chick the year my husband’s band played on the Edge stage. And one year? Dale Baker, then the drummer for Sixpence None the Richer, made me a ginormous club sandwich from the catering tent because he found out I was hungry and broke. So never let it be said that I dislike Ichthus.

Except, I kind of do.

Could be I’m just getting curmudgeonly in my (not so) old age, but the last couple of times I went to Ichthus, I found myself with a bad taste in my mouth after the whole thing was all said and done.

There was nothing wrong with the festival itself; on the contrary, I always saw countless acts of random kindness, and the overall kind of loving goodwill that I had always hoped to see from Christians. Yes! I would think to myself. This is just what they were talking about in the early church! Give to your brother without keeping record, love your neighbor, all of that!

Oh, there was some highly un-Christian behavior here and there. I’ve smelled someone smoking a J more than once while walking to the porta-potty in the middle of the night, and I personally know several people who, as unmarried teens, had sex while at Ichthus. Debate among yourselves whether there’s anything inherently wrong with weed or premarital teen sex, but it’s undeniably a no-no in the church. But, eh, stuff happens. It would be stupidly naive to expect people to stop being human just because they’re at a Christian music festival, especially one often used by youth groups as a means to get unsaved teens to sit down and listen to Tony Campolo pitch for Jesus.

No, the reason for my disenchantment is pretty simple: it’s the weird holiday atmosphere of the whole thing. It always felt like the last day of school before summer, but instead of a tacit license to be rowdy while the teacher looks the other way, people at Ichthus act like they suddenly have a license to be Christian. All of a sudden, it’s okay —even encouraged— to trust people, to break out that church vocabulary, to pray in public. I saw friends pull a holy 180 during Ichthus weekend that would make your head spin.

And then came Monday. Some people kept that spirit alive always, but for a lot of people, it was just too hard or weird to be demonstrative about their faith in front of unbelievers. Look, I’m not saying that every Christian needs to be waving a giant YAY JESUS! flag every single day, because many people are naturally more private about their faith; it’s the lack of consistency that bothers me. And that lack was never more apparent than when I’d look out over the throng of thousands, all rocking out to Audio Adrenaline, and wonder just how many of those candles were going right back under a bushel the next day.

Book review: The Secret Life of Walter Kitty

The coolest little book came across my desk recently, and it’s just right for the preschool-kindergarten set to enjoy. It’s also just the right length for a good, absorbing bedtime story; brightly illustrated and interesting enough to keep the kids involved, but not so exciting that they’ll stay wired when they ought to be going to sleep.

It’s called The Secret Life of Walter Kitty, by Barbara Jean Hicks, a zany tale about a put-upon cat named Walter. The astute reader will have noticed that the title references the classic James Thurber short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, about the henpecked husband with the runaway imagination (See what they did there with the title? Right there? It is clever).

In the children’s book, though, poor Walter Kitty suffers the indignity of being chased away when he’s trying to “help” (read: destroying things and getting in the way), or alternately being babied too much by his beloved Mrs. Biddle (though sometimes he doesn’t mind). And though his vivid imagination helps him deal with his boring life, it’s also often the reason he gets in trouble in the first place.

No wonder the Sprog loves this book so much. Most preschoolers are in the same boat as poor Walter Kitty—constantly tempted to escape into an imaginary world where they’re the heroes, but sometimes at the expense of real-life concerns. It’s no coincidence that the Sprog got in trouble today for dumping all his dirty laundry on the floor just so he could put the plastic hamper over his head and pretend to be a robot.

So kids can identify with Walter Kitty, and what’s more, the construct of the story helps children understand the concept of characters thinking about possible events (rather than those events really happening); the Sprog was quite confused at first, and thought that all of Walter’s imaginings could be seen and heard by Mrs. Biddle, but after a few re-reads and some gentle explanation, he figured it out. By the same token, Walter’s skewed perception of events introduces to children to the idea of the unreliable narrator–an important tool in critical reading skills.

And anyway, how can you not love a book where a cat digging up flowers in the garden imagines himself dressed as Indiana Jones, proclaiming, “Eureka! The skull of the mad monkey king of Mombasa!” See? You just can’t hate it.

Anticipation

It just feels like I’ve been waiting forever, you know? And my emotions have just been running the gamut, just remembering the last time I went through this: All the agony of waiting, the delight when the precious bundle was finally cradled in my arms. The excitement, even though I know I’ll be so exhausted from lack of sleep. The sheer anticipation, getting bigger and bigger every day, growing inside me until I just want to scream and what the heck, I might as well, so EEEEEEEEE! Only 35 days left until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out!

Wait, what did you think I was talking about? ;)

Come on, ‘fess up–who else here is a Harry Potter fan? It’s okay, you’re among friends here, so just let it all out. Bonus points if you had to pre-order more than one copy so the family wouldn’t be reduced to brawling.

The worst home haircut in the history of the world, ever.

I’m posting this at 2 a.m. I know I should go to bed, but I’m afraid to close my eyes. See, my husband knows where I sleep at night. And he knows where I hid the hair clippers.

It all started out so innocently. My dad and my brother both clip their hair at home, and they look fine. So we thought, why couldn’t we do that for my husband? It’ll save tons of money, especially since all the barber ever does is buzz his head with a #2 guard. How hard could that be?

Oho. Famous last words. The husband went out and bought a nice Norelco hair clipper set on Monday, and we took it giddily off to the bathroom to give it a try. He showed me how it worked, then sat down on the toilet lid with a beach towel draped around his shoulders.

I waded bravely in.

At first it went fine: the clippers buzzed right along, making merry mincemeat of his excess hair. Then…it wasn’t fine. The clippers just weren’t cutting the hair, no matter how slowly I went.

I stared at the blasted thing for a few seconds and finally determined that it was clogged. No surprise, since my husband has extremely thick, curly hair (I’ve no doubt that he could give any Bichon Frise a run for its money, should he ever decide to grow out that prodigous mop).

So I attacked the clippers with the stiff little brush that came with them, digging the hair out of all the crevices with gusto. Then back to my increasingly nervous husband. Again, a few good passes over the head, and then (we thought) it was clogged again, and needed to be cleaned out.

This went on for a good five minutes: him sitting patiently, yet warily. Me gamely trying to weed-whack the thicket that is my husband’s hair, and doggedly cleaning out the clippers every 30 seconds or so. Finally, the clippers gnawed their way up the back of his head one more time, then stopped with an exhausted groan, rather like a glutton who has finally died of excess.

And then we realized that the clippers were not, in fact, clogging up. No, the reason they weren’t cutting any hair was that we forgot to charge the clippers before we started.

And there we were, left with my husband’s hair half-cut, and that half very poorly cut at that. There are no words that can adequately describe just how bad that haircut looked. You may approach it by imagining a man who is very nearly bald on top (though slightly more so on the front left side), with chewed up short hair in the back and one big stripe of neatly clipped hair that stops dead center at the crown of his head.

He looked like the very grumpy victim of a wasting disease.

He clapped a hat on his head and made a break for the barbershop down the street, where the kind hairstylist only laughed a little bit like crazy before she fixed his hair in two minutes flat.

Hopefully, things will go a little more smoothly next time, especially if we remember to actually charge up the clippers first. That is, if he ever allows me to get near him with said clippers again. The way things are looking right now, though, I sort of doubt it.

Behind the wheel of a Prius

Okay, so…we did it! On Friday, we bought a 2006 Prius, and I am so in love with it that I kind of want to lick the steering wheel. Just a little.

I first took it out for a test drive on Wednesday, and was utterly unnerved by how freaking quiet it was. When I got in the driver’s seat and started it up, the guy at the dealership had to tell me that yes, in fact, it really was on. Unless you’re accelerating (that’s when the gas is mostly used), it’s all but silent.

The key is really strange, too. No metal sticking out of it anywhere; it’s just a fat little rectangle, and there’s a place on the dashboard to plug it in. It looks like putting a cassette tape into a tape deck, only you don’t get to hear the Spin Doctors (more’s the pity).

And after you put the “key” in? Push the Power button on the dashboard. Seriously, it’s like turning on your toaster or something. And there’s a wee little joystick near the Power button for shifting gears, but if you want to park it, you push the Park button. Also, there’s a big touch-sensitive computer screen in the middle of the dashboard that displays a bunch of stuff, depending on which screen you rotate to: gas mileage, radio/CD player information, whatever. All very cool. It took a few days to get used to, but I’ve pretty much got it down by now.

My major problem driving it will be having to restrain myself from constantly checking the computer screen to see what kind of gas mileage I’m making. It constantly fluctuates, so it’s sort of addictive—very feedback-oriented. We’ve been getting about 45 miles per gallon, but we’re still learning how to drive it to milk the most mileage out of it. Luckily, I’ve just found that Prius Chat has a forum full of great tips on fuel economy, so I’ll be reading up on that. Still: 45 mpg is a lot more than we were getting with our last car, so I’m not stressing.

Now, in all fairness, there are less-than-fabulous things about the Prius: tall people will probably not feel very comfortable in the back seat, because the head clearance is fairly low. And the visibility out the hatchback window is not great, either, but I’ve not had any problems seeing anything so far. It helps that it’s a fairly narrow car, so if I’m ever in doubt about the back view, I can see everything out the side view mirrors. Biggest drawback of all, though: we’re canceling our cable TV to make sure we have adequate wiggle-room in the budget after the humongous car payment gets taken out. *sigh* Oh well, Battlestar Galactica doesn’t start back up until January, and who knows, we might decide we can afford it again by then.

Anyhow, despite those small issues, we’re very happy with the Prius. And what’s more, the Sprog is utterly in love with it. On Friday night, he kept pestering my husband to call me at work so that he (the Sprog) could talk to me. This was very sweet until the husband figured out why the Sprog wanted to talk to me so bad:

SPROG: Hi, Mommy!

ME: Hi, sweetie! What’s up?

SPROG: Come home, Mommy! Come home right now!

ME: Aw, do you miss Mommy?

SPROG: Yes, Mommy. Come home now. And bring my new car home.

I think we’re going to have to have a talk with him soon.

Apparently, I have very nice eyebrows

A few nights ago, while tucking the Sprog into bed, this exchange:

ME: Okay, we’re all done with bedtime stories; now it’s time to say our prayers.

SPROG: I don’t want to!

ME: You don’t have to, but I think it’s very important.

SPROG: Why?

ME: Well, we should thank God for all the nice things he’s given us. Like he gave you a loving family, and a healthy body, and a brain to think with, and a heart to love with…

SPROG: Yeah! Yeah! AND GOD GAVE YOU YOUR EYEBROWS TOO, RIGHT???

ME: . . .

SPROG: Right?

ME: Well, yes, he did.

SPROG: *satisfied nod* Okay, Mommy. Let’s pray.

(For the record, we taught him the wussed out version of the old “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer—the one that goes “The angels watch me through the night/until I wake at morning light.” My parents taught me the Jonathan Edwards Freakout version that goes “If I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take.” They could not have known, but I lay awake countless nights wondering how many different ways I could die in my sleep. Vampires, maybe? And this is way too long for a parenthetical phrase, so I’ll end it, oh, here—>)

SUB-ZERO WINS!

I’m sitting here white-knuckled at my desk, hoping against hope that my vegetable garden is okay after that godawful hail storm. A little tiny part of me feels like Laura Ingalls Wilder wailing, “Oh Almanzo, won’t the wheat ever have a good year!” See, I’ve been raising those little suckers from seed since February, so I’ve become quite protective of them. I will be Very Displeased if they are killed.

My husband says the veggies look a little beat-down, but otherwise okay. I’m paranoid, though, so of course I don’t believe him. I’m convinced that I’m going to get home tonight and this is what I’ll see:

Well, okay. Maybe not exactly that. Even though it would be kind of cool to see my tomatoes fighting the elements Mortal Kombat-style. Hope springs eternal, right?

In other news, my MS Paint skills are actually worse than Perez Hilton’s. I did not know that this was possible.

Are you all okay? Are your plants okay? And just for future reference, any tips on how to protect a garden if there’s hail?

It’s pretty easy being green

Only a few years ago, we had $200 in our monthly budget for car repairs and gas. And I might add, that was with my husband commuting an hour each way to work every single day. Thanks to the stratospheric rise in gas prices, we’re now at $400 a month. Just for gas, and that’s after we cut out extraneous driving. And you know what? Forget that.

As it happens, one of our cars is on death’s doorstep, and we don’t have enough saved up to buy a replacement clunker. So it looks like we’re going to have a car payment, and even though the freshly graduated husband is now making good money, I am not prepared to deal with a payment on top of the killer gas prices.

So you know what? We’re getting a Prius. Oh yeah, baby. I feel all tingly inside just thinking about all that sweet, sweet hybrid electric technology. The way I figure it, we could have a small car payment and continue to rack up enormous gas bills, or we could have a big car payment with a warranty (I estimate $400, depending on down payment and suchlike), and pay very little in gas bills. So maybe $100 more per month than we’re paying now, with maintenence factored in. I can live with that.

Plus, I think it’s important for we, the American consumers, to show automotive companies that it’s a great idea to keep researching alternative fuels technology. Call me cynical, but I don’t think gas prices will ever go back down much further than they are now. Because we’re griping about it, sure, but we’re still paying it, and gas will keep right on selling for whatever price the market will bear.

And of course, it’s also important to encourage people to take public transit or ride a bicycle whenever possible, but a Schwinn doesn’t get fresh frozen produce from California to your neighborhood Kroger’s in the middle of February. Personal use is one thing, but we have to figure out a way to wean ourselves from gas on a larger scale. Besides, it’s good for the war on terror, according to former CIA chief James Woolsey.

Now, I know there have been quiet rumblings about the Prius being too good to be true, so like a good girl, I did my homework. Here are a couple of gripes, and what I’ve found in answer to them:

Gas mileage: Toyota says the Prius gets 51 mpg on the highway and 60 mpg in the city, for an average of 55.5 mpg, but many have complained that the mileage is nowhere near that good. Consumer Affairs took a 2006 model (the year we want, incidentally) and drove it like it was stolen; they got 45 mpg. Consumer Reports tested a 2004 Prius and got 44 mpg. But how you drive it is very important in determining gas mileage–one of the guys in the Herald-Leader sports department just got a Prius, and he says he’s getting 51 mpg. So, granted, the mileage will probably never be as good as what the sticker says, but 45 mpg is still looking pretty tasty.

Traction issues: The Prius is designed to cut off power to the wheels if they lose traction. This safety feature can’t be switched off, which has reportedly peeved a few people who have had their Prius stall at inconvenient times. This is frankly my biggest concern, but according to the thread on Prius Chat, the suggested solutions are to: 1) accelerate carefully, 2) get the right kind of tires, and 3) put a little extra weight in the trunk (not a dead body, preferably— sandbags will do fine).

Lifetime cost: A report published by CNW Marketing Research Inc. says that the Prius is actually more expensive and worse for the environment than, say, a Hummer. In short, this is baloney, and you can read all about why it’s baloney here.

Battery expense and disposal: Some worry that the batteries used in hybrids are prohibitively expensive and/or problematic to dispose of. As far as the cost of the batteries, I’m not worried—they’re designed to last for at least 150,000 miles, and are covered under the 10 year warranty in any case. As for the environmental impact, hybrids use nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, which are much less toxic than the lead batteries used by most cars, and fairly easily recycled. I suppose people must be mistaking the NiMH batteries for the nickel cadmium batteries, and those are pretty nasty. But hybrids don’t use NiCD batteries, and might start using the even more benign lithium ion batteries pretty soon.

So anyway, I didn’t mean to write a novel about it, but hopefully that helps explain why we’re so excited about buying a Prius (we hope to have it by the end of June). Of course, I left the the stickiest question of all for last: just what is the plural of Prius? Is it “Priuses”? My husband the Latin nerd says it’s “Prii” but that just messes with my head.

Any other Prius owners here? Give us a shout!