New Car!

Chin Ho was a venerable car. He was a 2009, but I'd had him since May of 2008. And yesterday he sailed off into the sunset.

For quite some time now I've been on the hunt for a compact SUV. I wanted something that is hybrid (for range, since our other car Horus is an electric). I also wanted something with enough room that would allow us to pack out easily in an emergency without worrying how to stack the cats in their carriers and their emergency supplies. And I had a fantasy of a car that I could put my bike in and drive somewhere to ride without dealing with a bike rack or taking off the wheel. For two years I've had a bicycle but no way to get it down our very steep hill.

Yesterday we bought a RAV4 in the color that I really really wanted, with the contrasting trim. I *had* really wanted a BMW X3, but they stopped making hybrids for a while (coming back in 2025), and the grill on the 2024 is so...birth control. Like I would have to decorate it somehow to live with it.

I had some initial resistance to the RAV4, while studying all possible options for a new car. And a casual comment from my sister about the RAV4 stuck in my craw. But I swear that when I started seeing the Cavalry Blue with black trim I was all "Hubba hubba!! Mama likes!!" Had to have it. And it is a nice ride and has lumbar support (happy back, happy life) and Apple Car Play. The dealer hooked up Car Play and all of a sudden I was terrified that my audiobook of "Leslie Motherf*cking Jones" would start to play because the woman has caused a worldwide shortage of the word mutherf*cker with this book. Good lord. The chapter that uses this condiment least like a main course is her chapter recounting her very awful hemorrhoid surgery which, no less interesting than the other chapters, is not as sweary. Thankfully, my Audible app chose to start playing "Our Secret Society", a book which contains zero MFs and is a wonky and much less interesting book centering on the National Urban League and one of its luminaries, Molly Moon.

And here we are. While we were mid-purchase I just kept thinking of the color, and how I'd want to wear certain colors while driving the car. Pink would look amazing. And I do have the matching nail polish. And in the day, when I was driving Maceo (a turquoise metal flake '68 Oldsmobile) I would buy super fancy cigarettes (Nat Sherman's Fantasia) and save the turquoise ones for smoking in the car, because they matched my dashboard. As I recall, they tasted horrible, like American Spirits (the health cigarette!).

Anyhoo, I'm going to go now. Need to paint my nails before entering my new vehicle and figuring out a) how to use all of its amenities and b) how to drive it.

The car color is Cavalry Blue. The nail polish color is called Irresistible.