Feeling a Bit More Settled

I know just about every Honda for sale in Billings and the surrounding area, and John even found a few for us to look at on Craig's List -- one of which was very sporty, very reasonably priced despite its low miles, and very fun to drive.  A combination of practicality and fun won out, however, and I am so glad to have made a decision and a purchase.  (I think John is glad, too,  because I've settled down emotionally quite a bit since finishing the deal yesterday.)  Here it is -- my new-to-me Honda CR-V:

For the first time ever, I own a car with more than two doors, so I can give a ride to more than two people without anyone having to crawl into the back.  :)  Maybe even more important is that I'll be able to get out of the driveway when we have a decent snowstorm, and it has "real time" 4WD that it slips into when necessary.    There's also a lot of room -- for a dog, bags of feed, school work, recycling, whatever.  So in the end, it all worked out well, and I'm even getting a free hat out of the deal, which is a story that I'll have to pass along sometime when I take you for a drive through the countryside.

My Car Has Died

First and foremost, I have to express completely and entirely that I am 100% okay.  But on Friday morning I left home as usual and while going 70 mph collided with a deer one mile from our house.  I never even saw him coming and had no time to react.  In hindsight, I think this was for the best: I hadn't tensed up, and I never even tried to swerve, let alone slam on the brakes.  The car handled it admirably, though it took the hit in the end, too.

I must admit that the loss of a car that I loved and the stress of trying to get life back to normal is a bit hard on me, though.  John is being very patient . . .  He tolerates all of my questions about what to consider when looking for a new(er) car and about how to handle the insurance company, and he reassures me that I could have done nothing different.  Even more trying for him, I'm sure, is my attachment to an inanimate object.  I have explained that I spent over an hour each day with that car -- that I'd driven it for 8 years -- that it has always been reliable and there for me.  I'm not sure that he understands how I can attach human elements to something so mechanical, but he does listen to me as I try to explain.  He even went with me to clean it out, which was actually pretty emotional.

He was still home Friday morning when it happened, so even though my call was very alarming for him, he was there immediately afterwards.  Someone had already stopped to help me (and we even knew him!), but John made sure the deer was dead and gave me a ride to school.

I've been obsessing about finding a car.  In the meantime, I'm driving a rental (that's why we have insurance, right?), but things won't feel much better until I've been able to move on.  I know that it's a part of living out here -- this is the third deer I've hit in five years -- but I'm not prepared to get used to it by any means.  And I do my best always to remember the advice John gave me not long after we met:  a deer won't kill you, but if you swerve to miss it, your car can kill you.

I'll keep you all posted as I go through the search, but it's another test for my patience.  A good used Honda is hard to find.