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…

I’ve only put my mail on hold a few times since moving into this mail district. The first time it worked as I supposed it should. I told them when I’d pick up my held mail, and it was there waiting for me when I went to get it. The second time was a comfortable repeat of the first. But the third time, things didn’t work out quite so well.

I stood in line over my lunch break pondering the vaulted ceilings and intricate woodwork that adorn our tiny post office, listening to one woman expound on the post office’s ill-advised habit of having only one attendant on duty over the lunch hour, and watching another woman lift her twin boys up so that they could drop pieces of mail one by one into the mail slot. When it was finally my turn to request my held mail, the woman behind the desk disappeared for so long that we began to wonder if she’d decided to eat lunch back there. But no. It was just that my mail wasn’t there. She came back with the news that my mail carrier had “messed up again” (which I thought was an interesting choice of phrase) and would I prefer to go to the distribution center myself to pick up my mail? She gave me directions and I headed off to the low and somehow dead-looking building that is the regional distribution center. I had to be buzzed into the entry way, where a lone chair stood between the outer doors and the inner (and separately locked) doors. Lying on that displaced chair was my tiny bundle of held mail. I left feeling that I’d somehow forgotten to leave a suitcase full of money by that chair in exchange for my released mail.

The next time I returned from a short trip and braved the lunch line at the post office, my mail was missing in action yet again. This time upon calling the distribution center, the woman behind the desk suggested that there were so few pieces of mail held that they could just deliver it to my address later that day. Which they did.

So this morning, when I entered the post office to be greeted by a long line of people waiting to send packages and buy stamps, I was more than a little concerned that I’d be leaving empty handed. In fact, I was so convinced that my mail wouldn’t be there when I had told them it should be that I’d tried to work the system a little. I requested that my mail be ready for pick-up on Friday, and then I went to pick it up Saturday morning. So there was no way there wouldn’t be mail for me, right? Wrong. The man disappeared into the back room, and presently we all heard him call to somebody to see if there was held mail that had just come in. No, she answered. No held mail today. Great. So he returned and called the distribution center only to find that they’d decided I wanted my mail held for 5 extra days. I said no, I’d wanted it held until yesterday. “Well, it has April 25th written on it,” the man protested, “But we can deliver what’s there, if you like. And do you want us to cancel the remainder of the hold?”

Now I realize that I really had been expected to leave a suitcase full of money that first time.

I got my hair cut on Friday and actually changed up my style for the first time in a few years (no sense doing anything rash, you know). To be fair, it’s not much of a change. I didn’t go for the asymmetrical cut the stylist suggested. And I didn’t color my hair or anything. It’s still brown and just below shoulder length. But now I have bangs and layers.

I haven’t had bangs in years, and the ones I have now are those long ones that are supposed to swoop out to the sides of my face. You know, like you see on all the stars… Yeah. Well my hair has always had a mind of its own, so it’s playing with me right now, just to get me back for messing with it. My bangs alternate between looking awesome and falling in front of my eyes. And they do this minute-to-minute. One minute I’ll be thinking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner? It’s a great look!” The next minute I’ll be cursing them and running for bobbie pins. Now I’ve got bobbie pins in most of my pockets, I’ve vacuumed them up from the most unlikely spots in the apartment, and there are never any left when I go to look for one in the drawer where I keep all my hair stuff. (Whenever I don’t find them in my drawer, that’s exactly when I’m not wearing pants that have pockets.)

Well, this morning it’s rainy and wet. A true spring day. And I got into my car reveling in the fact that the humidity was doing good things for my curls rather than the nasty things it normally does. And my bangs were gorgeous.

Getting out of my car when I arrived at work, the wind kicked up and the rain came down, and now it looks like I was trying to go for Meg Ryan, but failed. Miserably. I would say that it looks like I only spent 2 minutes on my hair this morning, but I only did spend two minutes on my hair this morning… because that’s all I ever spend on my hair in the morning. And I didn’t want to look like a brunette Meg Ryan.