Minivan Death March

Dear Mars,

I wrote letters to your sisters the whole time they were in-utero. They were mostly just panicked whining, so I'm not really sure you're missing anything. Anyway, it felt appropriate to finally drop you a line. What up?

Your mom thinks that you will need a place to live and a way to be carried between different destinations so we're trying to buy a house with more rooms and car with more seats. The house is out of our price range and there's virtually no hope that we'll be able to sell the one that we're in. And the car is a minivan. So, you know, thanks.

When you mom got a job after decades of schooling she got to page through hundreds of brochures and drive all kinds of fancy things before choosing exactly the car she wanted. Now that my chance to buy my first new car ever has come I was simply told that we were going to need something 'buslike' and that I could pick the color. It will be black, a vehicle dressed for the funeral of my youth that its purchase will represent. I can't tell you how many times I've said that I'd rather be hit by a minivan than drive one. And if we ever have another trip like the one to Colorado I might just lay down in front of this one.

Apparently your house will sell faster if prospective buyers don't step on cat shit and legos the second they come inside so we're hiding our real life in boxes and trying to make it look like an Ikea catalog in here. We also had a backyard installed. Your sisters we let play in dirt. For buyers we spring for sod.

And we're less than a month away from shooting on the movie, which is a whole other story that we'll get into when you get here. The important thing to remember will be that no matter how it turns out and no matter what people say or spray paint on our house, it will be the reason you have a room to sleep in.

And a minivan.

Yea.