one, two, one.

A couple Tuesdays ago, I was checking CraigsList for Honda Fits. I've been trying hard to be vigilant about this, because like all secondhand shopping, the key to finding a specific item you want is persistence. There are great deals out there in the market, but often the window to find them is narrow. Meanwhile, the window to find that same blue Fit with the salvage title is wide.

And there it was. A red Honda Fit, a thousand dollars under our price limit, clean title, with 63,000 miles on it. I emailed the seller immediately, though I noted with concern that the ad had been posted on Sunday. Curses on me for not checking the ads every single day.

I will skip the bulk of the story, which is boring, and just tell you that we now own two red Honda Fits. We look like red Fit enthusiasts, when we are merely Fit enthusiasts, not particular to any color.

We got a great deal. Having been looking for a vehicle like this for a while, I can tell you that I had mostly seen vehicles with upwards of 100k miles on it. I had our mechanic check out the car, and the word she used was "immaculate." And still cheaper than most anything else I'd seen. The only thing I've ever bought on CraigsList was an old freezer, but the seller seemed very straight-forward and honest. Not trying to get in a bidding war or cheat someone, just selling a car that they didn't need anymore. I was happy to pay the asking price, because as far as I was concerned, it was already a deal.

Emailed the seller one week, picked up the car and handed over the check a week later. I feel like a real live adult that can handle things, rather than one who ignores a problem for months at a time.

So yeah. Now we are those people. Red Honda Fit people.

* * * * *

I wrote this a day or so after our successful purchase of a second red Honda Fit, and then waited to post it until I could get a picture of our twin Fits sitting next to each other in the drive way. Well, one day it was rainy, and then another day I was lazy, and then another day Josh didn't get off work until after dark. I was not able to get the picture I wanted.

Last Thursday, I took these pictures of our newly acquired Fit.

Nobody was hurt. A sixteen-year-old girl on her way to Panera to meet a boy failed to stop in time and pushed her SUV into the back of our Fit, which pushed the front of the Fit into the SUV ahead of it. Check out those crumple zones!

Nine days. We had the car for nine days. I'm still waiting to hear from the insurance adjuster, but I'm pretty sure it is totaled. Since the other driver got the citation, we will wait for her insurance company to send us a check to replace our replacement car. Since we got such a good deal, I expect again to get more than we paid for it. It's like we're part of an upgrade scam and we didn't even know it.

I don't get it. Why can't we have two cars? Lots of people have two cars, or even three or four! The bright side is that if we had not bought the new Fit, the old Fit would have been totaled, and then we would have no cars. The universe says we at least can have one car. How nice for us.