Encore!

           My biggest news this week is we’ve got a new leased car.

          We like to lease cars because the warranty covers almost everything for the first three years.

          We like to lease cars because we get a new car every two or three years.

          We like to lease cars because we don’t drive many miles and can take the lowest and cheapest mileage package.

The lease on our Ford Explorer would’ve been up in February. With the UAW strike, Mike was afraid new cars would be hard to get and or the prices would increase. He didn’t want to take a chance and wait, so we’ve been car shopping.

I don’t want to car shop. As a matter of fact, I hate car shopping. “You narrow it down to two cars and I’ll look then,” I told Mike. On information-gathering expeditions, I’ll sit in the car, scroll through email or Facebook or read my book.

          On a shopping trip to Towanda, we stopped by the Ford dealership. Mike wanted to know if they would buy out our lease. “But I’m not ready to buy yet,” Mike told Devon.

          “You bet we will,” Devon said. “We’ll open the whole place up for you.”

          That meant we could get another Ford, a Buick, or a GMC.

          “I just met the nicest kid!” Mike exclaimed when he got back in the car. “He’s very knowledgeable, easy to talk to, clean-cut, well-dressed, very polite, well-mannered — and just a really nice kid!” He couldn’t say enough good things about Devon. “I shouldn’t call him a kid, he’s a young man.”

          I guess when you’re seventy-six everybody looks like a kid!

          Watching TV, Mike sees an ad for a lease deal on a Hyundai Tuscon.

“Let’s go look at one of those,” Mike said.

Early in the week, we started out on a trip to a car place in Wilkes-Barre that sells Hyundais.

Crossing our little bridge, we see someone took out the guide rail. 

Crossing the bridge into the big city.

Our first look at Motorworld.

“Wow!” Mike said as we drove around looking for the Hyundai dealership.

There’s something like thirteen dealers in this seventy-seven-acre complex.

Mike’s quest was in vain. Hyundai cannot buy out a lease on a Ford vehicle.

“They keep you trapped for as long as they can,” Carl, our sales rep, said.

Trapped? I’m thinking. Interesting choice of words.

Leaving, we see the geese flying.

Guess what this coffee cup-shaped building used to sell.

It looks like they kept part of the old building and are setting forms to pour new concrete.

Somebody has lots of plants!

Back at home, we have other projects taking up time.

“Like what?” you ask.

Like putting on another section of roof. Mike is not looking forward to this because it involves a valley. “I’m not a door man and I’m not a roofer,” he said.

He may not be a door man, but he put in all of our doors. We may have had to do some things twice and fudge it a little more than a door man would have but they are in and do what they’re supposed to do. The same thing will happen with the valley. Mike watched some You Tube videos and has a working knowledge of what to do. We’ll take it one step at a time.

Something else that happened early in the week is a baby Zebra Finch hatched out. He was so tiny and so cute!

Cleaning the cage the next morning I look in and it looks like his tiny little mouth is packed full of seeds!

“He’s going to choke to death!” I exclaimed.

“Just leave him alone,” Mike advised.

I’m thinking that maybe I should’ve removed their regular food and just left the nursing formula in the food dishes. It made it hard to work on the roof when I was worried about the baby.

“Just go and take the seeds out and come back to work,” Mike said, sinking into a chair to rest his back.

I did that.

Later, when I had a chance to Google it, I found out that Zebra Finches are very good parents and I can leave the regular food in there along with the nursing formula.

The next day another baby hatched out.

Daddy Meep was scratching at the wire on the bottom of the cage for more nesting material. As it so happens, Raini had been tearing up a stuffed animal, something she hadn’t done in a long time, and right there on the floor under the cage was soft fluffy stuffing. I picked it up and tucked it between the bars of the Meeps cage. The next time I looked, it was gone.

When I went to clean the cage the next day, I couldn’t see the second chick. I took the house out, got the little forceps I use in my stained-glass work, and poked around. This little guy was down amongst all the new white stuffing Meep had added to the nest. He was D-E-D dead.

Sigh.

I blame myself. If I hadn’t’ve given Meep the white stuffing, maybe the baby wouldn’t’ve gotten lost.

I was mad at myself. I carefully picked out the white stuffing from around the other baby and put the house back.

“What happened to the third egg?” you ask.

Oh, yeah. They had pushed the egg out of the nest and it was on the bottom of the cage. I saw a hole when I turned it over and I carefully picked it apart. As you can see, it never developed into a chick.

The very next day the other chick died.

Sigh.

Was it my fault?

I don’t know. But we’ll call this a learning experience and next time I won’t give them anything but grass to make their nest with.

Mike was still on the hunt for our next new car.

An ad came on TV about a Chevy Equinox. Mike looked online for the Chevy dealer in Wysox and checked out their inventory.

“I’m interested in the Equinox,” Mike told Keith, the salesman who answered his phone call.

“I don’t have one,” Keith said.

“You have one coming in,” Mike said. “I see it on the computer.”

Keith hadn’t known that that information was available to us. “Just a second. Let me look.” He looked. “Yep. I do have one coming in.”

“I’m interested in the leasing deal advertised on TV.”

“That deal is only good on a front-wheel drive model and we can’t get any of those.”

Mike, sitting in front of his computer during this conversation, was poking around and found a leftover 2022 Ford Encore. The dealer was offering a huge incentive to get it off his lot.

“Let’s go look at that one,” Mike suggested.

The next morning, we head out before the fog has burned off.

Crossing the Rainbow Bridge.

This lot has been mostly empty since the pet store burned down. Now I see it’s being used again.

And this is it. This is the Encore the dealership wants to move off the lot.

“It’s cute,” I said. Cute is code for little. “Let’s see if you can get in and out of it without folding yourself in half.”

The doors were locked. No surprise there. We went inside.

We only saw one salesman and he was with a customer, so we walked around looking at stuff.

“Check out the Hummer,” I said.

Mike laughed. “That’s not a Hummer. It’s a Bronco Raptor. How much is it?”

I checked the sticker. “$107,000! Holy cow! You could buy a house for that!”

A gentleman approached us. “Hi, folks! Is there something I can help you with?”

 “Is Devon here?” Mike asked.

“He is not. We just got back from Atlanta and he has today off.” He offered his hand. “I’m Brandon Groves.”

Groves? The name of the dealership is Sherwood Groves. Mike put two and two together. “Are you the owner?” he asked.

“I am! Is there something special you were looking at?”

“I’m interested in the Encore,” Mike told him.

“We are short-staffed today and all the salespeople are busy, but I’ll get Kaitlyn out here to help you until one of the sales staff is free. And don’t worry. Devon will still get credit for the sale if we make a deal.”

He gave us the keys and we went out to check out the car. Mike was able to get into and out of it well enough.

“Let’s look at some other cars,” Mike said.

We were looking at other models when this cutie-patootie approached us.

“Hi!” she cheerfully said. “I’m Kaitlyn. What can I help you with?”

“Can we test drive the Encore?” Mike asked.

“Absolutely! Let me get a plate and the keys.”

“I have the keys,” Mike said holding them up. “Brandon gave them to me.”

I let Mike and Kaitlyn take the car for a test drive.

“I think it’ll be fine,” Mike said.

Katilyn is the marketing coordinator and couldn’t talk money, but Brandon stepped in and ran the numbers for us. While waiting for him, we talked dogs with Kaitlyn and the time passed. Brandon showed us several options.

I know my Mike. He likes to get things done and if I didn’t step in, he would take one of the deals. Then later there would be questions and second thoughts. “Can we think about it overnight?” I asked.

“Sure thing!” Brandon said. “If you decide you want to do this, just give us a call and we’ll get the paperwork all done and ready for you. Then all you have to do is come in, sign, and pick it up.”

Nice! No sitting in the dealership for hours! I liked that!

We talked about it that day. There’s a big difference between an Explorer and an Encore and we’ll be giving up a lot.

“But we never use the sunroof,” I pointed out.

“And we’ll get better gas mileage,” Mike pointed out.

“There’s no GPS.”

“We can use our Garmin.”

“Yeah, but can you live with it?” I wanted to know.

“I think so,” Mike said. “If not, we’ll get something else in two years.”

The next morning Mike called the dealership and accepted a two-year lease deal. They took our info and got started on the paperwork.

Mike and I spent the morning cleaning out the Explorer. Cars are like houses. The longer you live in them, the more stuff you accumulate! I can’t believe all the stuff we took out of there!

Once the paperwork was ready, Devon called. “Just come on in and pick it up,” Devon said.

I got to meet Devon and Mike was right. Devon is a very personable young man.

I have to tell you, this dealership treated us like friends. They gave us several options and talked through the pros and cons of each. And best of all, they didn’t try to pressure us into making a decision right now. I highly recommend them and I also highly recommend Devon. If you just want to stop in and meet him, tell him Mike and I sent you! You’ll never meet a nicer young man. And if you decide to get a car from them, tell them it’s on our recommendation and they may even give us a little somethin’-somethin’. Who wouldn’t love that‽

Mike dug our old Garmin out of storage.

“We’ve got free map updates for life,” Mike said hooking it up to his computer.

I was skeptical. “I know how that ‘for life’ stuff works. There’s probably fine print that says ‘or until we stop supporting it.’ That’s what Curves did. We were supposed to get Curves Complete for the rest of our lives and we don’t.”

Our internet sucks here. You’ll be downloading or watching a movie and it drops out or goes really really slow. In this case, it said it would take seventeen hours to complete the updates. And just as an aside, we did try to upgrade our service and were told it wasn’t available in our area.

“Maybe we can use Steph’s,” I said. “She says she has no problem streaming. Maybe she has faster service than we do.”

Steph gave us permission. Having such good neighbors is a blessing.

It was still foggy when we went to her house.

Mike sat on the porch and hooked up the internet. It still said it would take two hours, which is better than seventeen, and as it runs it might not take that long anyway.

“We could leave it and come back,” I said. “I can’t wait that long. I’ve got things to do.” I’ve always got things to do.

“I’ll take you home and come back,” Mike said.

On the way out of the driveway, Mike stopped so I could get a picture of dew-covered webs and pinecones. 

>>>*<<<

Miss Rosie, you can skip this next part since I know you don’t have and don’t want a computer or the internet.

For the rest of you, which web search engine do you use?

For me, it’s Google. Don’cha hate when you Google something, then whatever you Googled comes up on all your other pages? It happens because they track you.

"I use Duck Duck Go,” Nick said during one of our CDI classes. This is him here with Mike.

“They’re almost twins!” you say.

I know, right! But the next time you see Mike, he’s gonna look a little different.

“How so?” I know you wanna know.

You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out! I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for you.

Our CDI classes start at six-thirty pm and tend to run until eight-thirty or so. It was the next day until I checked into Duck Duck Go. They say they won’t track you or follow you around the internet. (Aren’t those the same thing?) They give you a private search and won’t store your personal information. They also say they’ll block trackers from the websites you visit. And you know how sometimes you have to provide an email to buy something then end up on a mailing list and you get all kinds of spam? Some of us use an alternate email address for just such a purpose. I learned that little trick from my oldest and dearly loved big sister. I’ll go in and delete tons of emails from that account every month. Never look at them, just delete! Duck Duck Go will give you an email address then filter out the spam before it sends it on to you. I’ve not used that yet but I may.

I installed Duck Duck Go and it started blocking trackers right away. Just in the last seven days alone, they’ve blocked over seven thousand trackers.

“What don’t you like about it?” you ask.

What don’t I like about it? Now that you ask, I don’t like that every time I open a new web page, I have to adjust the size. It doesn’t remember that I like my print a little larger. It also doesn’t have spell check. No, that’s not true. It does tell me it’s spelled wrong; it just doesn’t tell me how to spell it right. It gives me the option to search and the correct spelling will usually be there. There have been times I’ve tried to print a recipe and it just won’t. I have to open Google and print it from there. Mike thinks it’s slower than Google but that may be our internet server more than Duck Duck Go. Or maybe it’s because Duck Duck Go doesn’t use cookies, which allow web pages to load faster.

It's different but I’m still using it.

>>>*<<<

How about a Raini story or two?

She lost her ball. I had a full day where I wasn’t pestered to play fetch. The first thing in the morning, as soon as my feet touch the floor, she’s dropping the ball in front of me to toss for her. Taking care of cats or cleaning the bird cage, she’ll follow me around and keep dropping it at my feet. I wasn’t all that sad to have a break. But I could see a difference in Raini. She was more sedate than normal, not as springy, almost sad even.

I took pity on her the second day and went looking for her ball. It wasn’t under the furniture and I didn’t see it out in the yard. I tried a couple of other balls. One of them bounced really high and knowing how she likes to jump, I thought she’d go for it. But she just wasn’t interested.

Then she brought me another toy to toss for her. It’s soft and has three wings on it and you’d think it would sail like a Frisbee but it doesn’t. It’s a toy that she has played fetch with before when she lost her ball, so I’m surprised she didn’t think of it sooner.

A couple of days later, we were out in the yard, and Raini comes running around the house with the ball in her mouth. It must’ve been in the side yard, which, I never looked there because we don’t play ball there. I’ve seen Raini take off and chase the cats with the ball in her mouth. Maybe that’s what she was doing when she dropped it in the side yard.

Oh my gosh! You have never seen a more excited, happy, tail-wagging, butt-wiggling dog in your life as Raini was at that moment when she dropped her ball at my feet. What could I do‽ I had to stop what I was doing and play ball with her.

Raini likes when I toss it over the chute and it lands in back of the house. I did that and when she came back and dropped it at my feet, there was red on it.

Her mouth is bleeding! I thought. I picked up the ball and smeared it with my finger. It wasn’t blood. It was pokeberry juice. The ball had landed in the poisonous-if-ingested pokeberries! I’m gonna kill my dog! Kill my dog and my birds all in the same week! I was horrified! I tried to wipe it off in the grass but because of the knobs, it didn’t work very well. I scanned the grass around me and spotted the wide-ribbed leaf of a plantain. I wiped off the pokeberry juice and kept playing. What else could I do?

I went back to tossing it on the roof or bouncing it off the side of the building. You can never tell where my pitches are gonna land. That’s why I don’t play near windows. I actually landed it in the rain barrel twice this week and that’s something I hardly ever do! It sinks to the bottom and I have to dump the thirty-gallon barrel on its side. Raini doesn’t mind wet feet as she dives in after it.

Another place it doesn’t land very often is the flower bed, but it is more commonly there than the rain barrel. Sometimes Raini brings me back flowers along with the ball. I took the little asters in and put them in water for my windowsill.

Do you see the candle? It was in a flower arrangement given to me by my best girl Joanie. I put the other Ashton Kutcher mints — I mean accoutrements away and put the electric candle on the windowsill. This thing cracks me up. It might not be on for days and days and DAYS, then I’ll look and it’ll be on. All by itself. When no one touched it. It’ll stay on a while then be off again.

Another thing about Blue Heelers is they need a job. If you don’t give them one, they’ll make up one of their own. I really thought playing catch with Raini several times a day was enough. I was wrong.

For the last couple of weeks, every time one of us would go out on the kitchen patio, Raini would take off running a hundred miles an hour around to the back where I keep the mowers. She snips and snarls and bites the wheels. She’ll even drag the mower out from under the awning.

“She’s gonna tear the wheels up,” Mike predicted.

“They’re hard rubber. How’s she gonna tear them up?”

The last time I put the mower back I noticed the wheels were looking kinda funky. Mike was right, I was wrong — again. She is tearing them up! I guess lawn mower wheels aren’t as tough as Heeler teeth. I’ve gotta break her of the habit somehow.

One habit I will never break is spending this time with you.

Y’all are in my heart.

Let’s call this one done!