Okay, I didn’t get around to uploading a podcast. But I will! However, there’s a new column up about rocking your strap-on.

If you just want sexy stuff, click over and read the column. But lest some ya’ll think I never have to deal with the inconveniences of the real world, let me tell you about my unsexy day yesterday. My car is sick, and my cat was sick.

My car is very sick and I’m cranky about it, because it shouldn’t be. It’s not very old – faithful readers of the blog will recall my buying the Saab 9-5 in 2004, and it was only two years old then. I was amused to be buying a Swedish car. I joked that I’d had a Swedish husband, and that hadn’t worked out too well for me. But it was a good deal for what seemed like a good car, and I really liked the way it looked and the way it drove.

Well, my second Swedish romance has also gone sour. In my crankier moments with the Saab, I have called it “The Swedish Revenge”, or more specifically, “(My ex-husband’s name) Revenge.” The Saab has proved to be a fussy car, and I do not like fussy cars. When I got a quote for the latest projected repair, I said, “That’s it – this thing is outa here, I’m getting a new car.”

I have been in obsessive research mode for the last week or so, trying to decide what kind of car I should get. Frankly, I do not enjoy the process of shopping for a car. It’s stressful. It is better this time around, because now that I have a mortgage, everyone and their brother wants to loan me more money. Very odd, to a girl who spent many years functioning in an all-cash, off-the-grid system of personal economy.

So I’m checking Kelly Blue Book and I’m filling out loan applications online and I’m readings car reviews on Edmunds.com and Consumer Reports, and in the middle of all this, I look up and see my cat doing something that bodes ill: she's piddling on the floor in a corner of my office.

I said a rude word and jumped up. Of course she ran away, but I watched her for a little while and determined that yeah, she's acting like a cat with a UTI. So, I get on the phone and cancel my plans for the rest of the day, while I simultaneously stuff my unwilling pet into her cat carrier, because we are going to the vet right now, before she gets any sicker. Unlike my car, my cat actually is quite old – she’s nineteen. So I do not dally in these matters.

We get into the Saab, and I cannot tell who’s making the most noise – my cat, who strongly disapproves of this whole plan and is saying so, loudly, or my car, which is screeching as badly as the cat. It is not a pleasant ride.

So, two hours at the vet’s office, and my cat is on her way to being fixed. At significantly less cost than the Saab repair shop wants, I might add. She’s a much older model, but at least in this case, American-made seems to trump imported.