Couldn't be prouder

So I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m one of those weirdos that gets attached to my cars. Like they’re human beings. I’m quite particular about picking them out and when I find “the one,” it becomes my buddy. I talk to it and baby it and try to be as nice as I can because my new friend has a very important job! It’s in charge of transporting my kiddos all around so it has to be dependable and safe and comfortable. Kinda like a trusty steed!

So when I had to sacrifice my old girl back in April of last year, I was scared my new girl may not be able to keep up. Ya see, when we decided she would be the newest member of the family and picked her up, I failed to give her the talk. I guess I was afraid she wouldn’t wanna come back with us if she knew what was coming. I know she had one owner before us that treated her a lot different, one grown man that just drove her around town. I don’t know if she had any idea her life would change so drastically.

From the moment we picked her up, she hasn’t had much time to rest. She was instantly thrown into softball season which is basically just a whirlwind of driving from one end of an 18-county region and back during the hottest months of the year. And she did so good! Never lacked in keeping us all nice and cool, and never complained once about the extra weight thrown in the back with giant softball bags and coolers. She even handled the ice cream cones and icy drinks dripping here and there and just kept on rolling!

I didn’t want to scare her off quite yet, so early on I made darn sure the inside and outside was always cleaned up and even rolled the windows down on the not so hot days so she could take a break from blasting the air conditioning. I really needed her to get through the upcoming, crazy busy school year so I didn’t want her to freak out and bail out early, ya know. I just kept spoiling her and making her think the softball season was the worst of it.

Which probably helped when we loaded her up and made her haul us to Colorado on vacation. She drove like a champ in and out of the mountains and didn’t fuss a bit. We even shoved five people and a week’s worth of belongings in her and she acted as if she’d done that 100 times. Nothing but a thing.

But then the school year hit and it’s been nothing but running. Thousands of in town trips back and forth to the school, work and the store and a whole lot of really long road trips all over the State, including a few neighboring states. She’s been running all hours of the night and day, in rain storms and snow storms. She’s seen gorgeous sunrises and even prettier sunsets. She’s carried only one of us and sometimes all five, and even extra friends at times. She’s kept going when her gas tank was sipping fumes, kept her tires on the road when it was slick and kept her cool when it was melting.

I honestly don’t think she’s had time to relax long enough to realize what she got into by letting us take her from that car lot. I should have warned her. Should have told her she would have feet on her dash, muddy shoes on her floors and leftover food on her seats. She might have appreciated a heads up that she would never look quite the same as she did in her heyday. But she’s done so good and hung in there during some of the worst of it!

Poor girl! Last weekend someone asked me if I still liked “my new ride and I quickly responded “YES!” Right after we had just made her get up early, drive us all 7 hours that day to go watch two ball games, then get home late, reeking of smelly fast food dinner and messy with wrappers and snowy shoes. She looks like a hot mess these days and has probably packed on 15,000 more miles than she would have ever expected in that short of amount of time we’ve owned her but I’m so happy we chose her and I couldn’t be prouder to own her! Keep it up, new girl!!