Sometimes I forget that my 10 year old isn't my buddy

Traffic in this area is a fickle mistress. I leave work at 4pm on days that Henry has soccer practice so I can get home, get him in uniform, put some food down his neck and drive to the practice field. Most days we get there just in time. On Wednesday we were 30 minutes early.
On those days we chat. Sometimes I say too much. Henry is an only child who spends most of his time around adults and in many ways behaves like an adult. He's also pretty smart with a fairly sophisticated sense of humour. But these are all excuses. Most of these conversations in the car are pretty benign and he'll talk about something some kid does at camp, but once in a while he asks some pretty serious questions. This week he asked me about condoms.

"You just buy them at the store?"

"Yep. You can buy them loads of places. You can buy them online now, but that wasn't around when I was of condom buying age."

"OMG! GROSS! You bought condoms?"

"Yah. And I found it mortifying. You had to ask for them at the till. As a matter of fact this one time I was buying them at a Mac's Milk in Windsor and the guy behind the counter was a middle aged Chaldean and his English wasn't strong. There was a huge line behind me and I was trying to be discrete. So I said very quietly,`I'd like to buy some condoms` and the man behind the counter said, `You want to buy my gar-r-rbage?` (I said rolling the r's as best I could). `No!` I exclaimed and then more quietly added,`I want to buy condoms`. `WHAT? Garrrbage?` the man yelled. `No!`, I said, `Rubbers! Johnnies! Sheiks! A sheath for my ole fella!` `Ooohhhhhhh!!!` the man spat, `Cr-r-ream or no cr-ream?`"

Cassoulet

Cassoulet, originally uploaded by seattleforge.

I sauteed a little trinity, garlic with sea salt, smoked paprika and some smashed white peppercorns. Sauteed some chicken and linguisa, added some soaked white beans and par cooked brown rice. Topped that up with some stock and popped it in the oven for a couple hours.
Voila! It tasted much better than it looked.

With one year left on my lease I have to start my OCD car buying process.
I quite like my VW GTI but it is known to be QUITE problematic maintenance-wise after 3 years.  I don't think I'd like it so much then.  I also have guilt about not sticking with the family when Ford has soo many good offerings on at the moment.  But where am I at?  What is most important to me? Who am I if I have these cars?  These are the contenders:

2011 Ford Mustang
The V6 (the only engine I'm considering) has 305 HP, pretty great mileage, a very small backseat and my folks can't get in and out of it.  It's fantastic, but does seem sad for a fat, bald, middle-aged telecom manager to be driving around in. The insurance is also ridiculous.



The 2011 Ford Taurus
I think it is actually quite handsome.  I think it was a mistake to name this car the Taurus as it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Taurus of the past. It's much larger and QUITE luxurious. I was actually stunned at how nice the interior was, how good the drive was for a large car and how many great electronics it had.  The SYNC features were amazing in this car. I could actually see myself going out to sit in this car and listen to music it was so nice inside.  I'd have to spend an additional $40k to get this level of luxury in a Euro-car. The insurance would also be dead cheap compared to the Mustang. It also goes like stink for a big car.  My folks can get in and out of it quite comfortably. No one will ever sleep with me again if I buy it.  I think I'm okay with that.