Car shopping

We've been looking around for new cars, since the insurance company decided that my darling baby-blue 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid (aka Sally-Anne) was a total loss. Boo. As Michael points out, ever ready to see the silver lining, now we can get something that will be a bit newer, a bit safer, and have a few more of the options that we want.

We've test-driven a few cars to this point: a Toyota Corolla, a newer model Honda Civic Hybrid, a Nissan Sentra, and a MINI. (Cue Sesame Street music: "One of these things is not like the other..."). Obviously, we're going to end up with something small, sensible, and Japanese that gets good gas mileage. But even after having narrowed it down that far, it's complicated. Do we want a sunroof? If so, how much extra are we willing to pay for it? How many miles per year would be reasonable on a used car? Does it have an auxiliary audio jack so that I can hook up my iPod? Or a telescoping steering wheel to accommodate my short legs? How about curtain airbags? Can we get top-end options without the leather seats? And...er...what the heck else should we be asking about?

The thing is, neither of us have ever shopped for a car before. Michael's previous cars were all hand-me downs, and Sally-Anne was a gift. It's one of those life milestones that I thought we could put off for a while, but one f'ed up highway entrance later, here we are. We've done a ton of research, but none of it really seems to help all that much. For instance, just this afternoon, we took out a new Civic Hybrid for a test drive. This car was a top contender before we drove it, and afterwards, it still was. I have no idea what exactly is going to break the symmetry, but our goal is to find something before the end of the year when we can presumably get some better financing deals. I'll keep y'all posted.

In the meantime, I'll just note that this has been rather stressful, but in a strange way. I desperately miss my old car and everything else seems to suffer in comparison, plus the whole process only serves to remind me about the accident and the fact that I've stupidly cost us the price of our deductible and a lot of headache. But that was expected, and I'm getting over it. No, the strange part is that the stress comes in fits and starts. Suddenly, I'll think it's the best idea to spend an hour obsessively checking websites for statistics and prices and options, and then, just as suddenly, I'll ignore the whole thing and just presume that it's pretty much settled. And then something will set me off again and I'll haunt cars.com until Michael reminds me that we're almost certainly getting a Corolla anyway, so I'll back off, but then he'll ignore his own advice and start dithering about which dealership to go to. As I said, strange. But hey, that's par for the course for us.