Yup, I Did It.

It really was a bit traumatic to say goodbye to my faithful old Subaru. It was also time. It had reached that stage of hard decisions about fixing expensive things vs. admitting that it wasn't suiting my needs anymore. Everyone I consulted for guidance about this decision told me to get the damn Rav4 already, woman! Except the guy who fixed the Subaru's issues. He really wanted me to keep it. ;-)

Bye, faithful Baby. You were a really good little car. I'm hoping you will become some teenager's first car, and you will be sturdy and safe, after your various issues are fixed.

Welcome, new Baby, who will get a name of his/her own once I identify its personality. It's flashy and much techier than Baby was, so I'm trying to think of something literary and technology based. I bought this Baby, like the two vehicles before her, at Carmax. I did shop used cars at dealerships, and didn't find any with the combination of age and mileage I was looking for, in either a Subaru or a Toyota. (And how the hell do people put 68K miles on a 2014 car??? What the hell did they do for a living???) New Baby is a 2015 with 16k miles, and some flashy features. I have a backup camera, Bluetooth, and a touch screen for audio I have no freaking idea how to operate. I need to replace the preset radio stations and had to look online to figure out how to do it. It's not in the manual because this is the "Entune premium audio" package, minus navigation. New Baby and I definitely have a learning curve. Old Baby had a radio and a CD player, and I'm not even sure that still worked.

I do love the way Carmax presents your vehicle:

I drove it home feeling distinctly weird, not just about having a car payment again, but about driving something that is so smooth and quiet. The Subaru was neither. It's home now, and I've already put my Publix reusable grocery bags and Delaney's booster seat inside. (The gray and pink booster seat looks great with the two tone gray upholstery, btw.)

But it wasn't really official until I added the finishing touch:

I'm freaking exhausted. Between the hurricane and two busy weekends that followed, I feel like I've had no down time forEVER. I'm really looking forward to next weekend at Disney, where I will park this lovely new(ish) car and spend days immersed in vacation mode. But many good things have been accomplished, and life is good, and I'm only mildly panicky about taking on a car payment again. It will be fine. Really.