So after processing a drive to Iowa that culminated in three $70 fill-ups of the Ford Explorer, we're ditching it.  Even though we're a little upside down in our loan.

We're downsizing -- drastically.  Like to a compact for our family car downsizing.  Like to something that gets more than 30 mpg highway downsizing.

Goodbye, swimming noodle at all times in the trunk.

Goodbye, leather seats and moon roof.

Goodbye, third row for when Ma and Pa are in town.

Goodbye, intense guilt about my carbon footprint.

Hello, freedom from the vise that settles around my temples every time I pull into a gas station, which is at least once a week.

Hello, four more years of car payments.

Hello, managing our variable monthly costs in the best way we know how to do.

Last Friday, I attended a green fair at my work and checked out the Honda Fit, among other cars.  I spent the weekend trying to convince my beloved to give up the huge tanker we drive now in favor of something definitely less comfortable and tricked out. Something with FEWER bells and whistles.

He is a man.  This was hard for him.

I enlisted my brother-in-law. Over noodles at lunch on Sunday before we drove home, my brother-in-law looked severely at my husband.  "G," he said.  "You need to embrace the economic realities of our time."

Beloved had been beaten at his own game.

Last night, we test-drove a Fit and looked at a Corolla.  Both are probably half the size of the Explorer and get literally twice the miles per gallon.  Beloved took one look at the 14-inch wheels on the Fit and visibly shrunk a few inches, but he manned up and hid his disappointment. 

We didn't buy anything yet, but we are definitely shopping.  The Explorer's days are numbered.  We'll keep the old one, as it is paid off, and you really can't argue with that.  I can't wait to ditch the one I'm driving, as its huge wheels and vast expanse of space no longer seem prudent for the family of three that doesn't plan to grow any more and the four-year-old who no longer needs a Pack-n-Play, a stroller, to carry her own food and diapers, a carseat the size of a sofa or 6,000 bottles when we travel.

It's time to start getting our lives under control.  This is step one. (cut a hole in the box)
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Need some light summer fiction? Read my review of Emily Giffin's new book at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.