Relative Stability, and Car Buying

I've been doing well for the last week or so.  Not perfect, but well.  I did fight off a depression at least one day this week.  Not that depression can always be fought off, but this one did stay away.  I told my husband about how I was beginning to feel, and while I was taking a walk, he drew me two large notes.. One of them said “I love you!  My beautiful wife!!!” and it had a big heart on it.  He taped it to my monitor and now (since I had to use my monitor) it is taped to my light pole right near me.  I think that really is helpful!  Every time I look at it, it makes me smile.  The other one he taped to the bathroom mirror.  He asked me, “Have you been to the bathroom since you got back from walking?”  and I said, “No, is something wrong...?” and then I went in there and found the note!!  It was a great surprise!

Now, if I was going to be really depressed, love notes alone probably couldn't keep me from being depressed, but they sure do help!

We bought a new car.  A much needed new(er) car.  When your car doesn't go into reverse right away and doesn't always shift up to a higher gear on the highway, it just isn't such a good thing.  Buying a new car was an experience that had me in nervous tears sometimes, and also had me quite happy other times.  In the end, it made me quite happy.

Having a newer car means that we can go on road trips, which is something I've been wanting to do for  months!!  I love taking pictures and haven't been doing it much lately.  I'm not sure if not doing it was making me depressed or if I didn't do it because I was depressed, but I will have to try to do things I like to do... who knows, maybe it will keep the depression away longer!

Why did the car buying process have me in tears at one point? Well, I don't know, except that it seems that any stressful situation can have me crying when my mood is off.  I never bought a car before.  I never even went on to a car lot before.  My parents bought me my last car.  So this was a first.  My husband, who is much older than me and has much more life expereience, says that life gets easier with experience.  What great news!

What did I learn about car buying? Be sure to check out the VIN numbers!  Before we had a service to check them out (we later signed up to autocheck.com) we checked out some really bad cars.  Some car salespeople really will lie to you about the cars!  Checking out the VIN number told us that the cars had been in accidents and/or not passed the state emissions testing.

We also checked out the MSN car reliability and safety ratings, and the consumer reports ratings. My parents seemed to always buy cars that need repair, but I want to buy a car that doesn't need much repair.  So it's too early to tell if looking at reliability ratings is going to insure that we got a car that won't need fixing, but it sure seems like a good idea.  My husband says that he's had cars that he didn't have to do work on, so it's not true that all cars need repair work.  You can get a car that just runs, and runs... and runs...

Also, you just can never know until you look at a car in real life, and test drive it!  We looked at cars that seemed like great deals online, but there were problems. One dealership didn't have the car, but just used it as a way to get us to come to the lot to look at another car (bait and switch).  You can advertise a car you don't have at a really low price, but if you don't have it, it doesn't mean anything.  Another car had a broken off door handle.  Really low miles, though. Also when we found the car we bought, in addition to everything checking out right with the VIN number and such, we just had a really good feeling about the car.  They say to pay attention to your gut instinct.

I also learned that car buying isn't something to really stress out about.  When I took action about it, I felt better.  I started participating in the process (rather than just letting my husband do all of the research and work), and not only did it help make me feel better, we actually ended up finding a car because I decided to do a search!  A car that we had looked at before, but had just been reduced by $1000!

But all of this success came about because my mood stayed relatively stable, and I felt confident about making a big life decision like buying a car!  When I felt depressed, anxious, sad, nervous, it was hard to make a decision... And that's OK.  I won't always feel well, but when I do feel well and have successes, I think those times help me feel better and more successful in the future.

This picture is of a robin I saw one morning this week.  It was the first thing I saw when I looked outside in the morning. What a nice surprise!