Jackpot.

I picked up my new car last night. The sellers and I went to the DMV together to with our sickle’s (for the red tape), and after nearly keeling over from the amount of taxes I had to pay (there is no sales tax in Oregon, so what a surprise!) and dealing with a guy who didn’t want to accept my out-of-state check (Yes, I’ve lived here 2 years and still have Oregon checks. Sue me.), and filling stuff out and all that jazz, I have my new car. Well, it is new to me.

My old car—well, dears, my old car is very old. If my old car were a person, she’d be named something like Matilda and would be someone’s 80-year-old grandma who wears fuchsia polyester pants, smokes 3-packs of Parlaments a day, complains about her aching liver and spends far too many late nights drinking cheap gin through a straw in front of the slot machines at the casino. She’s not stylish, has a broken tape deck, coffee stickiness on the dash (no cupholders), and no cruise control. She wheezes and coughs and clunks and exudes a puff of smelliness every time I turn left. And like said granny-lady, she’s been there when I needed her—gotten me around in my underemployed days, made it through a snowdrift in rural Wisconsin, blasted through Chicago toll roads without (accidentally) paying, remained relatively rust-free, and recently survived being driven into an (almost) flash flood. Matilda, she’s a trooper when she isn’t groaning about her aching CV joints and asking for insanely heavy buckets of change to be dropped in her engine.

My new car, if she were a person, her name would be Ruby and she’d be dressed in stylish yet comfortable designer shoes she found at a consignment shop. She’d belong to MPR, vote, pluck her eyebrows and occasionally date a motorcycle. She would see Paris while she’s young, eat chocolate ice cream in her pajamas and escape to the boundary waters for the weekend. She’s pretty but not too frilly. Practical, safe, and zippy enough to be fun and free-wheelin’.

I feel like I just went from a college-age futon and milk-crate coffee table to Pottery Barn. Not Ethan Allen, but happy to have it.