I know I've said it before, but I'm going to probably say it a lot more times, that damn anxiety just sneaks up a person sometimes. It is disappointing, embarrassing and more than a little bit overwhelming when it does. When that anxiety overwhelms you, it is incredibly frustrating and a person tends to lash out at those within the immediate vicinity. Unfortunately for my wonderful husband, it is usually him.
I have a sneaking suspicion that car shopping isn't a whole lot of fun for anyone unless they have a trust fund or win the lottery. For those of us on a budget, car shopping sucks. For bunches of us, we put it off until the last minute. For a couple of years now we had joked that we would drive our "Little Red" until the wheels fell off. And then the wheel literally fell off. But guess what - we just put it back on and kept driving her. But every car owner reaches that point in their car's life where they realize that the hundreds of dollars they are putting into maintaining your car (or just keeping it on the road) could be put towards the payment of a much more reliable car. So with Little Red being on the chopping block, Tim had the great idea that maybe we should downsize from 3 vehicles down to 2. Instead of having Little Red as the runner car, and the Traverse as the family vehicle and Big Blue as the trailer puller, we went looking for a truck and a car. Sounds like fun right. Wrong.
We headed off early in the morning to give us the day to make the best decision. Almost immediately upon pulling into the first dealership (and this was after talking with friends and getting advice on how to car shop), I felt my anxiety go through the roof. Did I do any of the calming things I've learned? Of course not. Instead, bursting into tears and snapping at Tim seemed like a good idea. Poor Tim who was only asking what I thought, what I wanted or what I was looking for got told that "I didn't !(#$*&%^ know what I was looking for as I wasn't looking for a car and just wanted to keep driving what I was familiar with and what was comfortable with. Have I mentioned how hard change is for those with anxiety? But I knew we HAD to do something so he gave me a minute to get my composure, choke back tears and we headed into the dealership.
A million horror stories and worst case scenarios are always playing on a loop in my mind. Car shopping brought some brand new ones to light. What if they find something wrong with the car and won't trade it in? What if there is something hidden wrong with the Traverse we don't even know about? I know we can afford a payment now, but what if we lose our jobs and can't make a payment? What if we get scammed? What if we buy a new car and I hit a deer with it the first time I drive it? What if I have to live in my car like the Great Depression? (Yes - I know not all of these scenarios are logical.)
Luckily the salesman that they put us with at Lewiston Auto Sales a kind, older gentleman who knew Tim's family well. He and Tim chatted and I felt myself calming down. Lyle put us into a car that he thought fit what we were looking for and I pretty much didn't need to sit in anything else. But we did the right thing and looked at several other at the first stop. Then we started looking at trucks. We loved the first truck he showed us but again - did the right thing. Everyone had told us not to impulse buy so we thanked him for his time and told him we would get back to him soon after thinking it over.
Off we went down the road to look at some other dealerships. We spent the entire rest of the day car shopping. Like literally toured the countryside looking at lot after lot and talking to salesman after salesman. Remember how much I love talking to strangers. Yeah, that was fun. Some just gave me an icky vibe, some didn't have anything in our budget, some didn't seem to really want to sell us a car (much less a truck). My anxiety was just about epic again when Tim and I finally decided, "let's just buy the truck and car at the first place we went to."
Tim called the dealership and as soon as I heard Tim's side of the conversation I knew we were in trouble. Yep, the car was still there but the truck was sold. Ugh. Do we buy just the car? The answer to that was easy for me -yep, the car deal was still on. I was NOT starting over with that process. We would just have to wait and see on a truck. Big Blue was back in the lineup. Later that night however Tim got a call back from the dealer - he had JUST gotten a new trade in on the lot that he would get cleaned up so we could come look at it. Meanwhile Tim decided to take his slightly neurotic wife out of the truck shopping game and enlisted Sophie's help instead.
He and Sophie started hitting the lots, new ones this time, and found a truck they liked in Spring Valley. They brought me in for the test drive. It was fine. It would have worked. It was pretty. It wasn't the one. Tim left to go milk and Sophie and I decided to drive back to Lewiston (the first dealership) and see what this other truck they had gotten in looked like.
You have to picture Sophie and I heading to a car lot. Me with anxiety, Sophie not being a fan of drawing attention to herself and here we are, driving around the lot looking for a "2012 black one ton, Chevy Silverado". We drove around a couple of times and finally gave up. I looked at her and said "we are going in". We kindly asked to see the "black one ton Chevy Silverado that Lyle set aside for us to look at". We got a lot of blank stares. From several salesmen. Awkward. Finally one said, "we got in a BROWN one ton..." Yeah - that one, we will look at that one.
As we walked up to it - I loved it. Sophie loved it. We opened the door and I loved it, except - it hadn't been through a detailing yet and it was dirty. After hearing Tim remark about how the truck we had test drove that afternoon was "dirty" thanks to a couple of smudges on the ceiling, I knew that if I wanted that brown truck I was going to have to be proactive. I told the salesman that I loved this truck BUT that my husband would like it a lot better if it were clean. Since they were closing in half an hour and we would be back when they opened in the morning, he didn't think that was possible. I told him that he might want to take the time to run the vacuum around it at least. He kind of didn't think that was going to happen. I shrugged - "okay then". But guess what...
We arrived to pick up the car in the morning and look at the truck. The freshly vacuumed truck. I guess they found time, weird? I was super thankful because Tim agreed with me that after a few minor touchups (apparently you don't say "fix" in the car dealership world), this brown truck was just what we were looking for. It would take another week but Hank the Tank is in our driveway. The very next day we had someone come to drive Big Blue and off she went to her new home. We are officially down to two vehicles! Well, 3 with Sophie's car. And 4 when Libby is home. Make that 5 when Carter is here... Oh goodness.
Comments