Shopping for a used car.

If I were a superhero, one of my secret vulnerabilities would be cars. Specifically, car care professionals and salespeople. The very idea of taking the car in freezes me up. Why? I’m not sure, but what it feels like is that one of the few times I feel like a girl (in a bad way) is when I walk into an automotive repair shop. I feel like the guys are looking at me…”If you were a guy, you could do this yourself.” “If you were a guy, you never would have let it get this bad.” “If you were a guy, I wouldn’t have to talk to you like you were an idiot.”

So the car’s dying. Transmission’s going out, brakes are bad, and I don’t like the damn thing. It’s a sports car, two doors, and I can’t count the number of times the overly-helpful cool weighted doors have crushed the legs of my passengers trying to get out of the suck-your-butt-into-the-road seats. I’m a geek. It’s a sports car. Eh.

Thursday Lee and I drive down to Pueblo to look at Kias–the ads are all over the radio, they’re cheap, they have a wagon. Sounds good, right? No. Every single one they had was a 5-speed, which Lee can’t drive. And more expensive than the ads (natch). We test-drive a hatchback and go home.

Today we cleaned out the Beretta, did the laundry, took a nap (for de bebe), whipped out a blue book, and went car shopping. First place we stopped at, we found something that looks perfect (or as perfect as we can afford, same diff). It almost offends my sensibilities, but I think we’re going to get it. The negatives are high mileage and a problem with one of the doors that they’re going to fix before we take it. I feel…guilty. This was almost too easy. The salesman was almost too pleasant, in a “just leave them the hell alone” kind of way.

We’ll see. We should know for sure how things are on Monday.