Well. That's that. I bought a car.

Yesterday after work I drove up to the Toyotal dealership and said, "I want to buy a Prius."

The girl at the front desk looked startled, but called a salesman. I got Tyronn, whom I had actually spoken with earlier on the phone.

He said, "We have several. Let me get the keys and you can test drive-"

I cut him off. "I've already driven it. My husband has one. Now I want to buy one."

Tyronn remembered talking to me on the phone. I flustered him. He's fairly new to the job, and apparently he's never had someone just walk in the door and want to buy a car. I'd skipped over his whole sales routine and gone right on into paperwork.

Additionally, he'd never sold a Prius before, and never sold a car that wasn't already on the lot. (They had four or five on the lot, but they all had the $3000 navigation system that I don't want to pay for, and none of them were the color I wanted.) He kept leaving me at his desk while he went to confer with his manager or whoever.

I talked to Tyronn and two other guys whose names I don't remember and filled out lots of paperwork. And I discovered when I went to write the check for the down payment that I was out of checks, so we had to tack on an additional paperwork for a promisory note saying I'd bring it in today.

Arranged for temporary tags and title. Got assigned to a service team. (I'll get all routine service for the next three years for free. Whoo!) They tried to sell me a paint-protectant thingy-do, and I told them I'd think about it for a couple of days.

The guy in charge of money told me that the dealership has an arrangement with many local banks (including my own) and that he could take care of all the paperwork involved in getting the loan for me, and also see if he could beat my bank's rates. I'm all in favor of someone else doing the work, so I said sure. He found me a place with a half a point lower rate, and juggled numbers to show me what my payments would be depending on how long I let the loan run and how much I put down.

Tyronn called my insurance company and arranged to add the car to my insurance. The car they'd found at another dealership that was the right color and didn't have the navigation system didn't have any of the other options, either, he told me, so I'd have to wait for the CD player and cruise control to be installed.

How long? I asked. He hedged. He didn't know. A week? Ish?

That startled me. Matt had waited a little over three months for his car, after all.

In fact, by the time all the paperwork was done, my car was actually on the lot. Which startled me even more.

I'm going back during lunch today to turn in my down payment and make arrangements with the service department to install my CD player and cruise control. I don't know how long that will take - neither installation should take very long, but they work by appointment and I don't know how soon they'll be able to get to it.

But soon - much sooner than I'd thought - I'll have a new car.

(Schlurrrrrrrrrrrp! That was the sound of half my monthly discretionary fund disappearing for the next five years.)

--Liz