Some Days It's Just Not Worth Gnawing Through the Leather Straps

That's a quote I remember from somewhere. I shouldn't have left the house today.

Because as I arrived at a park to meet our playgroup, I parked my NEW CAR beside this stone retaining wall--a little too close. The bottom right part of MY BRAND NEW CAR is scraped.

This is not the first time this has happened. Oh, no, not even close to being the first time. There was the time in college when I hit one brick mailbox head-on--then a few months later, backed into a different one. The time at Target, a couple of years ago, that I pulled forward into an empty parking space, forgetting about the concrete base of the light pole sticking out in my path. And there have been various encounters with the posts near gas pumps.

My husband even said as we signed the papers, "Maybe now that you're in a smaller car, you won't scrape any posts."

Well, it wasn't a POST. Sigh.

You'd think I could wait until the INK was DRY on the lease papers. Our down payment hasn't even gone through yet.

As one of my friends said (and she said it sympathetically, not in a just-get-over-it way), "That's when you have to remind yourself that earthly things will pass away."

It's just a car. We are going to see if touch-up paint will take care of it.

But still. I would give up 10 I.Q. points to guarantee that I would never do this again.