Yesterday we had a domestic crisis - or crises (I think that that's the plural).

There were several underlying causes, but the most discussable and urgent issues involved one of my tires being ODF* and Ethel needing an emergency root canal.

(*ODF - my first day in Bravo Company in Schweinfurt, West Germany, we formed up out front. Sergeant Johnson was the platoon sergeant - he was a big black man from Georgia. He gave us our instructions for the day and then said "...and these tasks will be completed by COB or you will be ODF." I looked around, and nobody was asking; I knew what COB was (Close of Business) but I was clueless as to the meaning of ODF. Finally, I asked - "Uh, Sarge - what's ODF?" He looked at me real mean and said "Out Dere Flappin'")

My biggest real problem - and the proximate cause of the day's woes (except for the tire and the tooth) had to do with my terrible remorse over buying that (*&^%$#@ house in Anthem, and my recent awareness that the financial impact of that decision will never, ever go away (barring a miracle. I've had miracles - but never in the real estate market).

I've mentioned here before that pretty much every decision of any magnitude that I've made since I started this blog ( running Pikes Peak, allowing Kim to adopt the World's Dumbest Cocker Spaniel, leaving Fidelity and Park City, selling my ski house, buying the house in Anthem, bringing the World's Dumbest Cocker Spaniel to Arizona, buying the boat, trading my truck for the BMW, allowing the World's Stupidest Cocker Spaniel to continue consuming oxygen, etc) has been wrong. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

This has resulted in reduced capacity for making decisions - like Pavlov's Dogs in reverse, I have learned that, whenever I make a decision above the level of habit (which means, any real decision, since the habits aren't conscious decisions) it turns out WRONG. And wrong decisions HURT. So now, when I get near the "make a decision" button, the reflex arches in my spinal cord won't let me push it.

So it's with a kind of comforting cowardice that I simply back away from any decision at all. I can start to make a decision quite casually, and then suddenly freak out, and back away slowly - like you might do if you found TNT in your underwear drawer;  having started to do something very commonplace, you suddenly sensed great danger, and recoil in terror.

It happened to me yesterday, again, after having lived through days of terror at realizing that  (due to my having bought the house in Anthem) I'm going to have to change my retirement planning strategy (from now until I'm 65, whenever Kmart has their canned cat food on sale, I'm stocking up).

I became aware that I needed to get new front tires for the Beamer when I heard that "fwap fwap fwap" sound (oh, and Ethel saying "Look - your can see your tread flapping on your left front tire" helped too). I had "decided" (there's that word again) that when I replaced my tires, I would get new rims, as well - my rims are painted alloy, and they are difficult to clean (it actually takes me longer to clean my rims than it does for me to wash the rest of the car).

So I got the tires, and then I checked out the rims....got a price...wow, that was more than I was expecting (but found out that the price that I had first been quoted, a year ago, was for more alloy rims that wouldn't solve my cleaning problem...okay).

I picked out some rims. I even decided on the ones that were slightly more expensive - there. Did that. Let's move on.

...so, as I was walking over to pick up Ethel at the dentist's office (remember the emergency root canal?) I stopped by another tire store, just to make sure that I'd made the right decision (this is called "second guessing"). I found out that the first store had given me a much better price on the tires than the second store (a "discount" place) was going to give me, and that the comparable rims the second store had were about fifteen bucks more expensive apiece. Okay, there - made the right decision.

Right?

WRONG.

By bedtime, I was telling Ethel that we needed to cancel the rim order (they won't be in until Friday) because the rims that I have work just fine. Ethel made a comment about "Gee, just like the sink I had worked fine, right?" - well, if I've ever heard a warning sound in my life, that was it. Then I knew that, if I bought those rims, I'd never hear the end of it.

And then I heard something much, much more dangerous - "Oh, honey - get the rims! I WANT you to have the rims!" This indicated that, should I be so stupid as to buy the rims, that they would be used as the excuse for all kinds of silliness - I'd be buying new leather serving spoon covers and terra cotta toilet seats, and any attempt to impose rationality would be met with "...but you got those stupid RIMS for your stupid CAR!"

Well, so what. I started typing this entry with the intention of calling the store and telling them to cancel the rim order, but it occurred to me - why? Let's face facts; the silly dingus is going to buy the leather spoon covers and terra cotta toilet seats anyway. If I buy the rims, then at least some reasonable about of currency will be diverted to something that does, indeed, make sense - I'll be increasing the amount of chrome steel in a leather-and-terra-cotta world, and that's a good thing - right?

Right?

WRONG!