2465 Blind Spot

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Men don’t “shop”. They “go get it”.

-------------------------

The fabric on the sun visors in The Man's car tattered. Partly it was that the fabric was a knit backed by foam, and the sun deteriorated the foam (Mitsubishi didn't think that one through very well), exacerbated by The Man's flipping the visors up and down multiple times a day all summer when he puts the convertible top up or down.

I told him I could recover them, but he rejected that idea. He spent a few weeks trying to find replacement visors. They don't exist as parts; you can get anything and everything else, including replacement parts for visor mirror lights, but not the visors themselves. And there seem to be no Eclipses in junkyards. None with visors, anyway. Trying to help, determined to come through for him, I paid $5 for an online national junkyard search, with no hits.

Several weeks ago he gave up and gave me the visors to reupholster.

I shopped for fabric. I did find exactly the same fabric as was originally used, but after thinking about it, I didn't buy it, because on the same rack in the fabric store was some really good (fake) leather. It was so good, so perfectly textured, you couldn't tell it wasn't real leather. The seats and dashboard in the car are black leather, and it would match perfectly. Better than the foam-backed knit stuff, which would probably deteriorate again in a few years. So I bought the leather.

And then it sat here for two weeks. I kept putting off doing it.

Today I realized why I kept putting it off.

Even though it would match the interior, even though it would last longer, even though it would look better, The Man wouldn't accept it. And that's why I hadn't mentioned to him that I wanted to use leather. I guess I thought maybe they'd look so good I could just spring them on him, and he'd have to like them.

Uh uh.

I do know better. Logic be damned. He can be awfully rigid sometimes, especially where that car is concerned. He loves her, calls her Widow, because she's a black Spyder. If it isn't exactly the same, he won't be happy. "Better" just isn't "the same".

So today I caved. I went back to the fabric store and bought the foam-backed knit.
.