WE BOUGHT A CAR

No, really.

Those of you who know that Lone Star Pa drives (or used to drive since it doesn't seem to be going much of anywhere these days) a 1994 Camry and that I drive a 1999 Corolla may find this hard to believe. Not as hard to believe as we find it, though! Gosh, it was scary! We just are not the sort of people who buy cars. Or furniture. OR CARS!!!!!!

You may, however, recall that both cars have given us some trouble over the past couple of years. And that the old Camry was making our life one big exciting game of Can-We-Go-To-Work-And-Then-Pick-Up-The-Children-Today-Or-Not. The excitement just got to be too much for us. Too much. Lone Star Pa was depending too much on the teacher he carpools with for rides and my dad was getting too many calls to come rescue us (although I think he kind of liked it - he and Lone Star Pa had some good bonding time there taking the car apart and stuff) and I am running out of time to wrap up some stuff for this school year that can't be done if I have to rush to pick up the kids every day after school. And the Camry hasn't started in days. So. It was time.

We had to wrangle hard with a beloved fantasy. You see, the dealer actually had a used Prius, priced very reasonably for what it was. We wanted it so bad. I can't even tell you. It teased us. We were wretched with it. We really wanted it. We could have afforded it, too. With no real trouble. We really could have done it. But.

But.

I drive a 1999 Corolla that has been having some problems, too. We hope to get another year (maybe two!) out of it now that we have a more reliable car and will never need to take the Corolla out of town again, but a day will obviously come, in the not-too-distant future, when we will be making two car payments. And the payments we'd be making on a Prius would make that pretty hard. So. Bye-bye fantasy. Sweet fantasy, good-bye.

We got a 2007 Camry with just under 40,000 miles. We got a great deal on it but a great deal was still more than we wanted to spend. I am shocked (shocked!) at how much more expensive the same model of car gets every year. I wish they would make ones without all the little bells and whistles like they used to make the low-end models. Ah, well.

We bought a car!!!!