Last week, while walking in a wooded area, I was bitten by a spider. At least, I asume it was a spider, but I never actually saw the offending critter. The first thing I knew, there was a little bump on my right wrist and all the muscles and tendons in that area were sore to the touch, or if I used them. Soon that hand was slightly swollen. And about 15 minutes later my left hand was swollen right along with the right one, and both hands were slightly sweaty.

Just when I was about to get worried (about half an hour after the initial bite), everything went away except for a lingering soreness on my right wrist. By the next day I couldn’t even see the bite any more.

But what image has filled my mind as I look back on the incident? Was it the mottled pallor of my hands, the sheen of the sweat, the bite itself? No. It is the spider that I never saw. I can just imagine him pumping me as full of his paralytic poison as he could, almost hyperventilating with excitement on the size of his catch. I can imagine him leaving, spent and exhausted from his efforts, and running back to his friends to spin tales of “the one that got away.” Can’t you just hear him… “I kid you NOT! It was THIIIIS BIG!!!!!”

I did end up buying the Honda Civic. I’m still in shock, but it’s a lovely, lovely, lovely car, and I love it. Everything works so much better than it did in my old car, and I got more than 40mpg on the highway this past weekend!

Oh, and if you ever want to buy a car, here’s how you do it:

1. Decide on a car while visiting out-of-state relatives (this is the hard part…. well, except for the paying-for-it part)
2. Call your home-state dealer and say you want x car, should you buy it now or wait till you get home? The decision will depend on the deal you get. (Get their offer in writing via email.)
3. Call the out-of-state dealer and say you want x car, should you buy it now or wait till you get home? And by the way, home-dealer-guy gave you x price.
4. When the out-of-state dealer ducks home-state dealer’s price, you buy the car without ever having had to negotiate with anyone face-to-face.

I’m up very late (for me). I’ve already gone to bed once, but it didn’t take. Why, you ask? Because I’m having come to terms with the thought that I’ll be spending more money than I’ve ever spent on anything in my entirely, and I’m also kind of re-adjust my image of myself. I’ve known myself to be a calm, staid, rational kind of a person. I have expensive taste, but I rarely act on it except when buying something that really depends on quality. I’ve also always thought of myself as someone who’s good at being content with things that do the job even if they aren’t the newest, glitziest, trendiest thing out there. “Even” nothing… I often downright pride myself on not succombing to the newest greatest thing because, remember, I’m calm, staid, and rational.

Well, tonight I’m up past my bedtime trying to fit myself into a new self-image because I’ve just decided (after a few days of research,* test-driving, and calling on the opinion of people I trust) to buy a car that’s significantly more expensive than I’d planned. In my head, I was looking for a good, reliable, used car for which I could pay in full and in cash. This was my plan. This fit with my needs and my wallet.

It was a good plan, but you know what they say about the best laid plans… I’ve now made up my mind that, barring some new revelation, I’ll be buying a new Honda Civic. So now I have to figure out this whole car loan thing (Bankrate.com is a great place to find loans, by the way). In the mean time, I hope I can make myself fall asleep soon. Getting loan stuff squared away, figuring out insurance, and deciding whether to buy now or next week will all go a lot better if I’m operating on a full night’s sleep. Rationally I know this… but I guess that doesn’t mean much, does it?

*Cars.com, KBB.com, and Wikipedia all make the research process much easier than I’d feared it might be.

Last Thursday I learned that my car is officially a “total loss” and was worth a whopping $2083.36 (after you take off my $500 deductible). $2083.36… It sounds so exact, so calculated, so utterly and incontrovertibly true. There’s no way they could have rounded to the nearest dollar, even though that would have saved them 87.8% the worth of a stamp. No, they couldn’t have rounded because that wouldn’t have been the true worth of my car. 36 cents less, and they might be accused of not paying me my due. 64 cents more, and they’d be absolutely giving money away, and that would be bad business practice no matter how you add it up.

Staring at the notepad where I jotted down that definitive number as agent Jon walked me through the next steps, I couldn’t help thinking that I’d hoped the poor car had been worth more. Just two years ago, when I bought the car, Kelly Blue Book had thought it was worth about three times that, and my cursory searches the night before had led me to hope that it might be worth half again or twice that. But the insurance company knew better, right down to the cent.

Sometimes stupid things happen, and sometimes I do stupid things. On Monday I did a stupid thing. I was leaving my parents’ house to drive the 6 hours back to my place, but before I’d gone half a mile I wrecked my car. I don’t remember the crash itself (being hit in the head by an air bag does a number on the memory), but I know that I looked over to comfort my cat (who hates car rides with a passion), and the next thing I knew I was hearing a warning siren of some sort and trying to figure out why my windshield was shattered and air bags deflating. Then I realized the warning siren was the ringing in my ears from having been hit in the head by my air bag.

As it turns out, the street curves just enough at that point that driving straight (while looked at a cat) landed me in the ditch just at the point where a concrete driveway spans the ditch. Even at the 15 miles per hour that I was going at the time, I hit the driveway with enough force to sheer off the metal that held my right front wheel to the rest of the car. I still can’t explain it very well. I keep saying it’s too bad I didn’t do this in London so it could have been taped by a few surveillance cameras.

Luckily, my cat is fine and I all have are a couple of bruises, a scraped knuckle, and the after-effects of a little concussion (stupid air bags). The same cannot be said of my car. I doubt I’ll ever be able to drive it again.

So now I’ve driven home (a day and a half later than I’d planned) in a car I’m borrowing from my parents. What amazing parents. Oh, and did I mention that all this happened on their wedding anniversary? Happy anniversary Mom and Dad…