The Decision is the Hard Part

I was faced with a tough decision to make recently.

Many of you may remember Bob the Jeep. Well, Bob has not been feeling well lately, and I have been wrestling for almost a year with the decision of what to do with him. Basically, as my dad used to say, his giddy-up has gone and went.

I realize that cars don't last forever, especially those than have seen the troubles Bob has seen. But the truth of the matter is that it is really nice to have a car where I don't have to worry if there are nose prints all over the windows and dog hair in the seats. And aside from the whole not running right part, Bob is in really good shape for an old Jeep. His interior is in great shape (nose prints aside), and there isn't much rust on the outside.

The problem is that I worry about driving Bob for any distance and I worry about how many more times he's gonna start. I worry he's gonna strand me if I take him out and I worry about just letting him sit in the garage all winter. I worry about him passing his emissions test, whether he's fixable and I worry about how much it's going to cost, although I have a pretty good idea. I worry about ... well ... you get the picture. I worry about Bob a lot.

All this worrying is exhausting.

So I tried to imagine life without Bob.

I bought one of those barriers to put up in my good truck to keep the dogs back behind the rear seats. It works great, when it's not falling down on top of them (note to self: adjust it regularly), and I can deal with the bit of rattling that it does. However, Ellie can't see out of the back windows because she's too little and I worry that she will scratch the windowsill trying to see where we are going. Plus neither of the dogs can put their heads out of the window way back there and let their tongues wag in the breeze. There are paw prints and nose prints and dog hair ... not good for a work truck.

So I thought about getting another car than runs well but is not real expensive. However, the problem is that I don't know what I'm getting into with another used car, especially for the dollar limit I'm willing to spend. With Bob I know what I've replaced and what I haven't (which isn't much). He's got good tires, brakes, radiator, starter, water pump, power steering pump, universal belt, etc., etc.

One of the guys at work is a gear-head and has a lot of gear-head buddies. I asked him for a reference of a place where I could get an honest quote about fixing Bob. He referred me to this engine shop and, for less money than it would cost me to buy a different car, I made the decision to get Bob fixed.

Oh, sweet relief!! The decision has been made! After I made that decision I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders, and I haven't looked back since.

It's not the results of the decision that were gonna kill me, but making the decision itself.

Life is full of decisions. Some hard (do I leave my husband or stay?), some easy (chocolate or vanilla?). You have to ask yourself one simple question: how much time are you willing to spend standing at that fork in the road?

What I've found is once you've made the decision and you know it's the right one--and trust me you'll know--then you can get on with your life. There's a sense of peace that follows those tough decisions because you can now get down to work effectively doing whatever it is you've decided to do.

There are still a lot of "what ifs" out there and there are no guarantees that the decisions we've made are not going to cause us to have to make more decisions in the future. But for now, I can enjoy the fact that there is one less thing out there I have to worry about.

Welcome back to the world of the living, Bob. Here's to another 175,000 miles.