this won’t stay up long..or maybe it will

This will get privatized soon cuz it’s not what I want to leave behind.

Not that I plan on going anywhere, but you never know.

I have better things to tell you.

***

Great news came today!

It’s been suggested that I sell my 2009 Dodge Caliber, which I bought new in 09, and as of this morning,  has 49,000 miles on it, ALL mine, and to get out from under the monthly payments.

I am "underwater" on the car loan, as are most people who buy new cars; it’s worth a bit less than I owe on it, and selling it would not only leave me in debt for a car I no longer own, it would leave me "horseless" and walking.  The minimal unemployment they give me will not buy anything worth buying, and the whole point of buying a new car was to get a GOOD car, not some dead on it’s wheels piece of shit.

I’ve had a lot of those.

The monthly payments were…WERE … too high to manage and not starve, but the Credit Union and I have worked out a six-month reduction on my payments. I can afford $90 a month, and the CU will bring my account to "current" to avoid credit problems.  This is a HUGE savings for me!

I KNOW I can live without a car; I know it, because I wrecked my car and was gravely injured in 1998. The car died right there on that bridge, but I lived and recovered enough to drive again. I DID drive in the summers after 2000; my friend from Japan came to see me most summers since the wreck and we have rented cars and driven places and taken pictures.

You’ve seen a few of those pics here.

(10,214 of them in fact, and that’s why I pay Photobucket to "hold" them for me; the free accounts only hold about 500 pictures)

The last car we rented was in 2007; we rented a dark blue Dodge Caliber SXT and put 3,100 miles on it in a week, touring Oregon. I liked the car so much that in 2008, when I had the chance, I bought one for my very own, a 2008 Caliber SE+. I had a good job then; I was a school bus driver. I drove that Surf Blue Caliber for a year and 15,000 miles and then traded it on a Brilliant Black Pearl 2009 Caliber SXT Sport. It is THE car I’ve always wanted; loaded with most every option available and with a moon-roof, and the absolute best car stereo I have ever owned, a nine speaker 458 watt Boston Acoustics AM/FM/CD/DVD/satellite radio sound system.

I love my car, but it’s just a thing.  A thing that I love, yeah, but just a possession, and not strictly needed to live my life.

I would miss it very much and would be so fucking depressed to lose it that I want to avoid that catastrophe and have no wish to test my strength if I do lose it.

***

It is 2012.  I have had a Caliber to drive every summer since 2007 – three different Calibers over five years.  I am a very shallow Cat, because that fact makes, and keeps, me happy.

From 1998 to 2005, I did not own a vehicle of any kind, and so I KNOW I can live without a car.

Shit on that,  I WANT my beautiful, powerful little car, and I CAN keep it, for at least six more months, and this is fantastic news.

What do I want more, a girlfriend or my beloved Dodge Caliber?

No hesitation at all on that answer, and if you don’t know the answer, you haven’t been paying attention.

***

This will not stay up long; there are 3,961 entries of mine in this diary, and there are more important things that I want to tell you than to show you just how shallow I am.

Like how me and this woman have had a 31 year plus relationship.  I have been telling about our cross-country honeymoon drive in 1985.  We will be going to Japan after that summer, and I will tell you WHY we are linked for all time then.

Not just THIS life.  All time.

I’m not "lucky", luck’s got nothing to do with it, but I am a  very fortunate cat.

***

Onwards, with a short stop in the Now and then back to 1985.

ALWAYS onwards.

 

*****