Farewell, Trusty Friend

I’m going to admit something. I really liked my old car. It was a dream car to me, a British racing green Jaguar XF. Yes, I owned a British luxury car for 6 years. But guess what? It cost much less than most Texans’ giant pickup trucks. And it went zoom.

I had been made fun of and told I was bragging when I got a nice small SUV to replace my beloved Mini Cooper because it couldn’t handle our early ranch setup. So I never mentioned the Jaguar on social media, though it was in a couple of photos.

Geez. I earned the money to buy a car. Why can’t I be proud and happy about it? Because I cared so much about what people thought about me. I hereby declare that to be a waste of time. Believe me, I help others, too.

I never had Ani issues with the green menace, either. It got attacked by another car and a giant slab of wet drywall that flew off a truck, so it spent some time in the fancy car body shop. I also went through lots of tires, thanks to the lack of maintenance in Milam County. Tires contributed to having to say goodbye to the car.

The other thing about the XF is it was perfectly sized for me. I was very comfortable in it. It responded to my every whim. Other family members had trouble with it being low and not tall. So I only got to enjoy it alone or with Anita, who is also small.

I’ll skip the details and just say the car began acting really weird a couple weeks ago. It revved and had trouble shifting. Last week I finally was able to take it to the closest dealership in Round Rock (in my old neighborhood). When we dropped it off we looked at the one new car available for sale, since we were going to trade another vehicle. Just looking, though.

Friday I got a call from the shop about what was wrong. I’m short, the car had broken. A bunch of air related things had fallen apart. And the potholes had put the car so far out of alignment that the inside left tires were falling apart. We couldn’t see it. And one of those tires was only a few months old!

All the repairs, along with a big scheduled maintenance totaled a ridiculous amount of money. So, we’re trading my dear car in along with the other vehicle. That works out better.

Next week or week after next I’ll have a car that Lee can get in and out of more easily and still goes Zoom. It may not be British racing green, but it does have red seats.

It’s white, which is not my favorite, but the black trim makes it look sharper. And Lee likes this one. Yay?

And now for some schadenfreude. On our way back from taking my stuff out of my old car, so they can sell it off, we ate at a reasonable restaurant, where I had Mac and cheese with shrimp. This place had a good healthy menu.

The part where you can rejoice in my pain is that when I got up to get a to-go box I tripped on a killer beam under the table and managed to fall on the concrete floor and hit both knees, both elbows, and my wrist. Talented! So see, I’m an awkward Jaguar driver. At last the floor was clean.

Anyway, that was my entitled elitist ranch lady day.

PS Yes I own arnica. People always shout that at me.