ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Yesterday was special for several reasons. First of all, it was the day I was supposed to go pick up my new car, which made it special regardless. Then I realized that morning that it was July 7, 2007 which has a lot of 7s in it and this just pleased me inordinately. I woke up and shaved my legs in honor of the occasion and put on my favorite pair of capris pants and my white polo shirt because it looks nice and preppy and my boyfriend came into the bathroom and said, “Happy E R D!”

To which I responded, “OMG, WTF is that?”

And he explained that ERD means Exciting Rabbit Day, which from here on out will always be celebrated July 7 in our household. When we went to go see the car at Baron Volkswagen, Aaron the excited salesman showed it to us and I loved it right away. I touched it and it was very shiny and felt sleek and cool under my hand. Aaron is an extremely good salesperson for someone who does not actually know that much about the cars he is selling. He doesn’t know every detail, but that does not matter because his enthusiasm and love for the brand carry him through. “I love the Rabbit,” he declared. “It has…many options that are good!” Then he opened up a lot of things and showed me a lot of buttons I could push and this made me happy. He showed me how to escape from the cargo area if someone shuts me inside.

My car had 36 miles on it when we picked it up, and 20 of that came from when Aaron picked it up from the other dealership in Gladstone. I was thrilled about this. The manual to my car is also very nice, and it comes in a fancy binder. I was also given a small road atlas of North America that shows helpful maps as well as every single Volkswagen dealership in the country. But I find it hard to believe I could love any other dealership as much as I love Baron right now.

We drove the car like 125 miles the first day because I couldn’t get enough of it. I had never been to my coworker friend’s house before, but I was driving way down south and I realized that she must live nearby and I remembered what street she lived on, so I went spying and tried to find her place. When I thought I was outside, I realized that every home in her neighborhood is 100% indistinguishable from the others and so I had no way to determine which one was hers. So I called her on the phone and she was at the gas station and came right over and admired my car and I was so proud of it. I was very happy because she said like three nice things about it and this made me feel better about how my parents kind of disapproved of me buying a new car.

There are like 62 nice things I could say about my new car, but I will only mention two of them right now. First, it has this 60/40 split rear seat with headrests, which my old car did not have, and this is good because now I have something to attach the dog’s car seat to. “For godsake, you have a car seat for your dog?” you are exclaiming now. Don’t freak out. It is a restraint thing and a booster seat because my dog is very small and too dumb not to climb around the car and do things that could make her die. The other cool thing is the floor of the cargo area is velcro-ey and has these blocks that stick to it so you can make your cargo things stay in one place. Basically that is totally awesome.

Happy ERD!