Fancy Schmancy

My parents are over-the-top gift givers. They love to make a big splash.
When I turned 15, I was given a card and a note that driving school was paid for and I could start in just a few months.
When my 16th birthday arrived, I was given Stew.
Stew was a blue two-door Mercury Tracer that had been a family car many years before but had long since broken down. The driver's door had been roped shut after an unfortunate incident in a parking lot (ahem, my Dad not paying attention and running into the open door with his truck and bending it backward) and a huge dent on the back passenger side from another parking lot incident (this time a woman that insisted she was there first).
For my sweet 16, the driver door had been replaced by a red door (to match the blue paint on the rest of the car?) and the engine had been given a tune up. It was the perfect car for me. "Stew" came from a combo of letters from my big time crush's name and I loved that little car.
I was the first girl to have a license (let alone a car) in my very small class, so I was automatically the car pool queen and relished it.
By the time I turned 18, my parents were even more ready to make a splash. They booked a hotel for 3 of my friends and me to stay the night, they paid for dinner and a movie with a few more friends...
and they had a beautiful black Jeep Wrangler waiting in the parking lot of the hotel for me, all decked out in balloons.
It was so fun and generous, but as I gushed and climbed all around the Jeep, I kept thinking: "Where's Stew?"
Stew, it turned out, had selflessly given himself over for Jack the Jeep. (No crush used in the name this time, just a silly Jack in the Box run with the right group of people)
I loved Jack the Jeep but I really missed Stew. I loved his red door, the way I would sometimes have to crawl in a window in the summer when the door got stuck. I loved the way I fit in that car, the shifter (I love manual cars so much more than automatics!), the way I felt with all the windows rolled down and my CD player blasting. I loved that (in a very bizare move) I had stuck gummy worms on the sides of my rearview mirrow and that they kept drooping lower and lower. I loved that the check engine light never came on and that I never seemed to run out of gas (although that could have been because gas was less than a $1 (!!) and my Dad filled it up every Sunday) and that police never noticed me. I loved my "junk" car.
The Jeep was fun. So much fun. I was that annoying girl with her friends that rode around in our bathing suits (a tan while driving was a real time saver!). I didn't love that the check engine light was always on, that it could barely make it up big hills, that gas was more expensive and that it was an automatic. I didn't love that it was a pain to get the top on and off as the weather changed. I hated that when my boyfriend tapped on the back window one cold winter, a hole broke through the plastic, or that theives cut open my window to steal my CD player (you could unzip it from the outside, was it necessary to cut it?!?!). I didn't love that I got pulled over -often- and that I got some snide remarks from a guy at school about how spoiled I was. I didn't like the fancy schancy-ness of it all.
Now as an adult, I dream about the fancy, but do I really want it? While Denise was here, we toured some beautiful open houses. I drooled over the granite countertops and generous master bathrooms. I gasped at the spacious kitchens, double ovens (one home had double dishwashers!) and giant islands. I loved those homes and could easily picture my happy little family filling them up. But would I really love it in the end? The perfectly manicured lawns, the shiny large houses? Would I miss this home? The paint smudges I left when I tried to paint a wall by myself late one very hot summer night? The new floors my husband and his friend just laid down? The swingset my dad and husband made last summer? The little touches we've made here and there to make it home? I think I would soon grow tired of having to clean such a big space, tired of having to have everything just so to keep up with the expectation a house like that would incur.
Fancy Schmancy. It's not for me.
I finally came to this realization on Thursday. My Keurig broke. Again. After the last trade-in, Mr. and I decided that would be the last. If that one broke, we would trade in for a regular 'ol coffee maker. So when Thursday morning I was almost jipped out of my coffee, I cleaned the Keurig out, loaded it up and took it right on back. Now sitting on our counter is a regular 12-cup brewer. Coffee pot and all. Real coffee beans and all. And as much as I thought I loved my Keurig, I was so excited about coffee the "good 'ol way" that I hardly slept Thursday night. Friday morning, the coffee was waiting for me (I love programming those things to brew before you wake) and coffee hasn't tasted so good in a long time.
Fancy Schmancy just isn't my thing.
How about you? Are you into fancy?