carmen and her last legs.

Work and school are slowly but surely taking over my life but I don't mind so much. School Tuesdays and Thursdays and work Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. But each day seems to get me closer to "hitting the highway". As some of you know, I fell in love this past Christmas. Her name is Carmen and she's a light blue 1994 Honda Accord. Sadly, our love is on it's last leg. She has already been totaled plus some in the few months of our relationship. My right front tire popped on a back road in HB and my axle just decided to fall off while I was on another back road. We put the spare on the first time and that got us to our destination. Slowly, but it got us there. And, when my axle fell off, Becca was with me and ended up calling her dad to come get us with his tow.

I found out a few days ago that the love I have for my car definately has a price. That price just happens to be as low as $300. She took me to a Volkswagen used car dealership the other day to *shock* check out other cars. As motor romance wanted it, I fell in love all over again.

His name is Ivan, for my Psychology professor, and he's a black 1996 Volkswagen Jetta. For $3,500 I can have a new motor lover. Without a doubt, this is a car that is in my spending range. It's always hard to let go of the "first car" but it's something that seems to be out of my hands. So this is my final goodbye to the latest love of my life. I will miss the sunroof on sunny days, the cruise control I have mastered to a science, the ashtray that is always difficult to find at night when driving home from work. I will miss my black pit of a trunk, the back seats I never even got to sit in, the wheel that I constantly had to counterturn to make a successful turn possible. I will miss the distinct smell, the baseball and Grateful Dead bumper stickers, the certain way I had to sit so my left leg could bend up and lean against the door and my right leg was only inches from bumping my knee on the wheel, and leaning back far enough to see the road but also manage to find comfort.

I will miss how there's a certain way to get her to start in the mornings, how prominently I can feel the speed change and gears shift, and how the seats felt to sit in with the seat reclined almost all the way and pushed back as far as it allows, legs propped up on the wheel, playing Vortex on my iPod and listening to music.