I am grateful for my car.

This past year I bought my first new car. It's a 2009 Honda Fit: gets great gas milage, easy to park in DC's tiny parking spaces and manages to cram everyone and everything I need into one place I can call my own. I know it sometimes feels neglected when I take public transportation, but even the Metro can't take me places my little blue car can.

That's why I made sure it got re-registered, renewed parking stickers and an oil change today. I take care of my own.

Oh how I loved thee, let me count the miles...165,000.
How I poured every spare cent I had into thee...for leaking break lines, a new alternator, a new battery, new tires, a new timing belt, suspension rehab, headlights, inspections, plates.
But your trade-in value was $500 in good condition and you weren’t even fair.
The exhaust was exhausted and the break lines were leaking…again.
You deserve to retire to that great junkyard in the sky.
Though you are gone, you can never be replaced.
You will always be my first car.
Mine own, my 1993 Ford Escort.



I didn't realize how upsetting it would be to have to get rid of my car. After all, it was my college car. I have a lot of great memories of that car, like seeing a wolf in the Big Horn Mountains, being the only car that stayed on the road during a blizzard in Utah, taking a road-trip to Chicago with my roommates, and much more. But this time it really was beyond repair.

So I am the new owner of a 2009 Honda Fit. It is cost-efficient, fuel-efficient and kind of cute. While this isn't my car (I still have no idea what happened to my camera), it is the same model and color. Thanks to the people at Brown's Honda in Arlington--you guys were great, even if I did feel like I was signing away my soul, my first-born child and my grandmother's kidney all for a car that lost half it's value as soon as I drove it off the lot.

It is only Wednesday and already I am planning for the weekend, but there is so much to do! I'm thinking I might get maybe five of these things done:

Clean the bathroom
Find a recycling center for my empty moving boxes
Read one of the four books I'm supposed to review
Get a local library card
Visit the Library of Congress to do some research
Write another chapter in my WIP
Revise my manuscript
Visit a local indie bookstore
Do my Christmas shopping
Try out a club
Watch a movie
Go shopping for an office plant
Hang my floating shelf
Join a writers’ group
Post my travel pictures
Hook up the TV/VCR/DVD
Put something on my bedroom walls
Laundry

Oh yes, I also need to get a new car. My car barely limped over the finish line on this move, so I will be buying a new one right after the New Year. Anyone have any suggestions for me?