It's Turned To Junk.

While driving a mere 3 miles or so the other night our car overheated.

Oh dear.

While this car has taken us on many adventures over the past four years- San Francisco, Banff Canada, Mount Rushmore, many trips to family- it has also been the source of extreme stress.

Seriously, this car has required a lot of attention. Lots of big jobs. Lots of frustration.

I drove for half a summer in it without air conditioning. True story: in a sweltering hot July I was stuck job hunting in our non-air conditioned apartment. My main sources of relief were: 1. Standing in front of our window fan, bare belly exposed, making Darth Vader like sounds, and 2. Getting into the hottest car in the universe, risking burning myself on the steering wheel and seat, and driving a couple of miles to get a shaved ice. The trick was making it home before the ice melted. That way I could do both methods of relief at once.

This car has broken down in small towns with no auto parts stores even remotely nearby.

It eats oil like nobody's business.

I've locked my keys in it 3-maybe-4 times.

Ok, that doesn't count as a major problem but still...

Through all of this though, we've put our faith in it. Taking care of every problem as it arises. At each new discovery Dashing Boy and I look at each other and say, "Well, perhaps if we fix this we will have gotten over this string of repairs and it will be in glorious condition and we will be loving it," or, "If we take care of this it will be much easier to sell it when we want to."

Why just two months ago we had one of these conversations.

So we fixed the car. again.

Is this car just a lemon? Did the previous owners lie to us about how great it was? Why didn't we research its year before we purchased it?

Dashing Boy's mother- Mrs. Muppet- has a phrase that she uses all the time when something has become worthless. She uses this phrase in a few variations so let me just give you a sample:

Say for example, you accidentally spill bleach all over a black dress. Mrs Muppet might respond:

"Oh no, you're going to have to junk it."

or perhaps,

"It's junk. It's just complete junk."

or likely,

"It's turned to junk."

Well, despite the car overheating, and despite the mechanic informing us that the engine will need to be replaced soon, and despite all the arghhh! this car has caused, Dashing Boy and I were hopeful when we took it to the used car buyers on Saturday.

But there was only one phrase that could be uttered when the car guy told us they would buy our car for a whopping $500.

"It's turned to junk."