motorin'

Thursday night when Pete got home, we decided to go out for dinner. And we were thinking about meeting up with some friends later on for a haunted hayride*.

We're driving along some main roads (four lanes on each side of the divided highway) and Pete pulls in to do the Michigan Left thing. We go to merge and BAM.

Fuck.

The car we hit goes up onto the sidewalk. Thank god there wasn't a pole there. Thank god no other cars were coming. Thank god everyone is okay.
That's all we were able to say to each other as we pull into a parking lot to call the police and look at the damage. The damage was pretty extensive.
The poor guy in the other car, though. It's new (within the last year) and he's been hit three times. He was laughing about his car being "Christine". Yeah, I think you might be right.

After the police leave, we chug the car home (luckily we were only about 3 miles away) and sit down for The Talk. The "if Jenni had a car this would be easier" conversation. We've had it a few times in the last four months, and although Pete's agreed with my point of view, he's been holding back.
When my car bit it, financially it made sense to leave us at one car. We were also moving and I'm just under a mile & a half from work - walking isn't an issue.
But if I'd have had a car, we wouldn't be without one now while ours gets fixed (luckily Pete's Dad is giving him a ride to work this week). And we both know it's going to start snowing within the next month (I know, shut up, right? But this is Michigan and we've almost always had snow on Halloween) and while I can deal with walking in the cold, no thanks to walking in the white out conditions we're guaranteed to see in December or January.
Pete can and does pick me up from work most days, but I'm also looking for a different job** and that will be so much easier if we're not playing musical drivers with our one vehicle.

And totally selfishly - this is the first time in sixteen years that I've been without a car. Although I'd like to look at it differently (and I've tried), it feels like I've lost some of my freedom.

So, after getting the bills from this all set, we're going to see what our options are.

I have to admit, I'm really excited about it! I'm sorry we had to go through so much to get here, but ... yay. Yay car.

* sadly, we didn't get to do this at all. Maybe next weekend?
** a whole other ball o' stress there