This week I feel like I skipped ahead about 3 years. As I've probably mentioned before, I've been excited to be 30 for a long time. Coincidentally, my CX-9 would have been paid off the same month as my 30th birthday, so I told Michael I wanted him to "surprise" me with a Chrysler Town & Country minivan pretty much exactly like this one:
Well, as of Thursday, that dream is officially obselete. Last weekend on our little trip we noticed a funny sound coming from my car, especially when turning. Luckily, we made it back safely from Cincinnati, but my first day off after New Year's Michael got up early to take it in to be checked out. Sadly, ole Sherminator (yes, I named my car after the goofy guy that sold it to me), died about a block from the dealership. Michael was able to restart it and get it (barely!) the rest of the way. Long story short, it would cost thousands to fix and even then, there was no guarantee that the transmission wouldn't go out a month later. Insert major monkey wrench in our plans!
Well, we had a decision to make, and considering we both needed a working car by Monday, we had just a few days to make it. The thought of giving up my CX-9 was really hard to me. It was the first car I bought myself, not too long after graduating pharmacy school. It was that one luxury car I would have in the next few decades of my life. To me, it was perfect and I loved driving it. But I also didn't want to put a lot of money into a car that would still possibly be unreliable. Insert meltdown here. To give us another option, the dealership figured up what the car would be worth as a trade-in, and after learning that it would be enough to cover our remaining car loan, we started thinking about looking into a new one and essentially starting over with car payments. *sigh*
just before driving my CX-9 off the lot
October 2010
Since we hoped to buy a minivan in a couple years anyway, we decided that we might as well look into them now. As if it were planned, there was a beautiful red 2012 T&C just waiting for us to test drive at the dealer's southside location. Honestly, it was exactly what we imagined buying... in a few years. We just kept looking at each other saying, "are we really going to buy a minivan today?" While I fully embrace the idea of toting around a few kids in a minivan years from now, I'm still getting used to the idea of owning one now. Yesterday we took it on our date to the movies and then to Broad Ripple just to prove how big of goobers we are. It's just another of those transitions in life where you can't imagine how your old and new lifestyles will fit together, yet somehow they just do. It wasn't at all the plan we had in mind, but this was a major making Mama moment!
wow, this is the car I'm getting in to after work?!
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