When we bought the minivan, we had a 3 year old and a newborn. We had no idea what 3 children could do to a car. Stickers, pens, food, melted crayons, etc. are just part of the program when you have as many kids as we do.
I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that every surface of the interior of our car is covered by some sort of ancient spill. Like a history of our family painted into the fabric of our seats.
Maybe it's the fact that my drivers side window doesn't roll down. At all. The motor burned out over a year and a half ago and it's expensive. Try pulling up to a drive through and having to open your door to pay or get the food. It's so fun. Pulling forward so that the door opens enough to reach out and grab it, and backing it up when you pull too far forward and you are straining to reach the cashiers outstretched arms and bewildered face. It's not embarrassing at all.
About 6 months ago, Kayleigh broke the handle off of the rear sliding door on the outside. Once again, pretty expensive to fix and there are other things we should spend our money on I guess (we are actually just very lazy, but it sounds better to make it sound like we can't afford it). Now, when I pull up to car pool lane every.single. morning. the teacher who tries to open the back door to let the girls out reaches to open the door and then immediately looks mystified at the door. Then, after Taylor opens the door, (heaven forbid it's hard to open that morning for her) watching the adult try to shut our non automatic sliding door from the inside makes me shrink down in my seat. Taylor compensates for us by shooing away the adult, sighing and saying "I got it" and slamming the door by grabbing the window (as long as it hasn't locked into position, then I have to reach back across the car and grab the handle to shut it). I would roll down my window and talk to them... but you know how that goes...
I've had a few.. let's call them "incidents" in this car. Someone backed into the side of my car in a parking lot, I hit a small tree leaving a youth retreat, and a mailbox jumped out of nowhere as I was parking on an occaision. Body work is for losers.
I want a new car. A car that doesn't smell like french fries, crayons, and hopelessness when I open the door. I don't care about having a car payment, or being in debt again. My heart wants this. My head is screaming at me that this car can go for probably at LEAST another 70,000 miles without us even needing to THINK about replacing it.(darn you Mazda for making such reliable cars). I'm sick of it.
I want a car that I can drive around just for the fun of it. I don't care if it doesn't have third row seating and the girls all have to sit together. Let them bicker. I will just roll down my window and drown out their little arguments with the breeze...
I want a new car, this car.
