Once again, a man has been foiled by his refusal to get directions. Greg and I have toyed with the idea of getting a new car for a while because my car is 11 years old (But oh, how I love my car. Yes, she is boring and unglamorous, but I can always count on her.). We’ve had problems securing Eleanor’s car seat because my car doesn’t have the latch system that newer cars have, so Greg sent me out yesterday to start shopping.

We’d done some research and decided what I would test drive. I would start with the lower priced cars and then work my way up. I was sure that if I started with a luxury vehicle that everything after that would be disappointing.

I was going to test a Prius, and Greg told me the Toyota dealership was down a certain road, just before a restaurant we occasionally eat at. I drove down the road and passed the restaurant but never saw the dealership. I drove a little farther until I was sure I wasn’t going to see the dealership.

At this point, I was 10 miles from home. I don’t get out of the house much by myself anymore, so I wasn’t about to squander my freedom. I had to drive something. I knew there was a Lexus dealership a few blocks over. The Lexus was the last car on my list, the thing I was supposed to drive after everything else. But Greg had instructed me to “have fun” as I left the house. Hmm, a Lexus? That was fun.

I should mention here that Greg and I come from the some of the most frugal, practical families in the U.S. My Dad (who drives a 13-year-old car) thinks that power windows are a luxury item. What would he make of my test-drive vehicle, with its keyless entry and air-conditioned seats? This was an alien spacecraft by his standards.

These practical tendencies are pretty deeply ingrained in Greg and I. But every once in a while, we get this urge to rebel (Neither of us rebelled as teenagers, so we have to make up for that). And this car went against everything our families stand for. It was so smooth and supple and elegant. It felt like a womb on wheels.

When I got home, I asked Greg whether he had actually looked up the location of the Toyota dealership before I went out. No, he hadn’t. He had told me based on memory. I reminded him that I’m the one with the memory.

Greg finally found a fix for Eleanor’s car seat this morning, so the car search is off for now. And that’s a good thing, I suppose. If that car was at the bottom of the list, then I guess the Mercedes and Porsche were next.

Our friend Andy visited over the weekend, and we decided to give him a brief downtown tour yesterday before his flight. I tend to schedule everything and obsess about time, but I didn’t want to be the nagging wife, so I left the planning up to Greg. And there’s the problem. Greg doesn’t plan, and he rarely knows the time.

I had thought we would do a quick drive around the city and then stop at Whole Foods for lunch because Andy wanted to see the flagship store. Instead, we ended up visiting the Capitol, and by the time we got to Whole Foods, lunch needed to be quick. But Greg didn’t recognize this, apparently. The store has a fantastic salad bar and sells all sorts of ready-to-go sandwiches and sushi. I grabbed a California roll. Greg and Andy ordered burgers. Raw meat. That needed to be cooked. For a long time.

Eleanor and I grabbed a table and waited and waited. Greg and Andy finally arrived and we inhaled our food. We got back to the car, and Greg asked me which route we should take to the airport. Umm. We always drive to the airport from our home, so I have no idea how to get there from downtown.

“I thought you looked up the directions before we left,” I said. Greg had spent several minutes  on the computer right before we left home.

“I thought you looked them up,” he said.

I suggested that we stop at my office so we could look up the directions, but Greg said we didn’t have time. Andy’s flight would be taking off in 50 minutes. Andy, the only rational person in the car at this point, asked if we had a map. A-ha! We did. We found a route, and Greg barreled down the road.

And Andy really was the only rational person in the car because even Eleanor was ready to have a breakdown at that point. She was hungry and tired, so I grabbed a bottle and tried to feed her. But Greg is weaving between cars and gunning the engine to the point that I can hardly keep the bottle in her mouth.

Eleanor finally starts to drift off, and I look up to see that we are following a pickup that has a trailer filled with watermelons, about 100 of ‘em. I’m terrified. I can just envision what’s going to happen. Either the truck will hit a bump, sending one of the watermelons through our windshield, or the truck will slam on its brakes, and Greg will hit the back, causing the gate to release and the watermelons to tumble down. My baby is about to get killed by a watermelon.

I asked Greg to switch lanes. There are three lanes, but the other two are moving slowly, while the watermelon truck is cruising right along. So we’re behind it for, oh, I don’t know, about two hours. OK, maybe one minute, but it felt longer.  We get to the airport, and Andy is on time for his flight. Hooray! We chat briefly about the watermelon truck, and Andy assures me that we were safe because he’s had high-speed tactical driving training. Never mind that Greg was the driver.

I’d like to think that Greg learned something from all of this. But I don’t think he got the lesson I wanted him to get. I think the lesson he got was that high-speed driving is fun, fun, fun.

“I woke up at 8:30 this morning and had this idea of how the day would go, and now it’s one o’ clock, and all I’ve done is bathed two creatures, neither of which is myself,”

- Greg, still in his pajamas at 1 p.m.