R.I.P Sheila

* Updated to include final pics of Sheila *



She's dead. Dead and gone. Sheila... my faithful, trusty Sheila. I mourn her.

Sheila is the name I christened my first car. She was a silver 2000 Chevy Cavalier. (My ex jokingly called her the Cava-queer... any wonder why he's my ex eh?) I called her Sheila because the first summer I owned her, we spent a lot of time on the highway going to Wonderland and whenever this song came on (I love my 80s R&B) she would just eat up the ashphalt!

I bought her almost seven years ago. One month after I got my license. Two months after my last baby was born. She was the beginning of my sense of freedom, my love affair with the road. I'd been living on my own since I was 19 years old (having a kid at 15 will do that to you, but more on that later). So in fact Sheila was the first thing that made me feel like a "grown-up" Paying rent didn't do that because I'd been doing it since I was a kid. But owning a car. THAT felt very adult.

She's aged over the years of course, and gotten a little rundown (this was the first year she didn't pass the the provincial mandatory emissions test on the first try... AND I had to sink almost $1000 bucks to get her up to par!) but she was still my Sheila.

This afternoon she had a disagreement with a tree down the road from our house (mainly that she wanted to go a certain way and the tree felt it was there first). The tree won, natch. And Sheila is "most likely a write-off" as the considerate fellow from insurance company told me this evening.

*sigh*

Sheila you will be missed. And I will most likely be car-less for some time seeing as your book value wasn't really the secret to your charm, if you know what I mean.



PS: I was NOT at the wheel. (I think it's important that you know I am not a reckless driver, especially after the previous post. I may be a little lead-footed sometimes, and frequently in a rush to park and get to wherever it is I'm going, thus the frequent receipt of parking tickets.) But never reckless. And everyone is okay. No one was hurt, not even that rude tree.