happiest car purchase EVER

Last night my Ex bought a car. She used her half of the tax refund to purchase a 1984 Volvo 240 DL. The car is one of those once-in-a-lifetime finds: was owned by a guy for 20+ years who took immaculate care of it, and the guy she got it from had it only about a year and took just as good care of it. There's not a spot of rust, the engine runs fine, the exhaust system *might* be 2 years old. The back seats look like they've never been sat upon (or anything else upon them, for that matter). There's snow tires on it now, with a set of four radials *on rims* in the trunk. The only downsides are there's 290K miles on it, and being a Volvo it requires not only a religious every-3k-mile oil change, but also flushing the transmission every 20k miles. But for under 2 grand, not that big a deal. The only maintenance issue the guy knew of was the A/C won't turn on, so there's something electrical amiss there. Not a worry during February in New England.

But for now I get to revel in not having to play taxi driver for everything anymore. I get a 2 hour block of my weekends back. I can tell that nagging, worried voice in the back of my head that constantly points out that I'm over an hour away from my kids' school to shut the hell up.

Friday I have the day off from work and we will get plates for it, as she didn't get a title and the impromptu Bill of Sale they wrote-up last night neglected to include the seller's address, so we have to correct that and try again at the DMV. She did get the insurance taken care of today (with another sigh of relief from me), so independent mobility for her is only a day away.