smells like vanity

my car has always had this particular scent. not a new-car smell -- when i got it, it wasn't new. it's more of a formerly-driven-by-a-smoker-but-i've-been-detailed-with-sweet-soap smell. it's hung in there through years of hauling fast food and sweaty bodies and babies and groceries. it's more prevalent when the car's been sitting out in the heat - like getting all hot and bothered brings it out or something. yeah, the heat brings it out, but it's always there. i don't know where it comes from, how it gets replenished, how it fights off other odors and consistently rises to the top. all i know is, it's how my car smells.

until the end of last week.

a couple months ago, out by the mall, this girl nicked my car pretty good. she wanted to come into the lane i was in, and being as our cars are each comprised of a car's worth of molecules, both her car and mine couldn't occupy the same spot on the space-time continuum. go figure. so, she scraped up my right rear quarter panel, and long story short, i had it repaired last week. at the same time, i had the peeling clear coat on the roof repaired.

first thing i noticed when i got in is my car now smells like a mani-pedi salon. it reeks of paint and associated chemicals and the sorts of places where these products abound. i've had repairs done before, and the mani-pedi odor generally dissipates quickly. i believe the difference this time is that i elected to have the roof repaired, which means more of the car was exposed for a longer period of time. longer exposure means longer dissipation time.

it's soon, only been a few days, so i still have hope that my car's unique smell will win out.

i do have hope. i do.

i do.

but... oh, i hate to admit it! the roof repair wasn't about function. nope. it was about my vanity. i didn't like how she was starting to look, so i had her "fixed" - i took her in to get her grey dyed away because i couldn't stand to watch her aging. and now my vanity may have cost her a bit of her uniqueness! i hope hope hope i didn't destroy it altogether. reaching for everything, i may have lost one of the most special things of all.

that's it, see. you can't have it all. you have choose and you have to be careful and wise. choosing one thing could preclude another altogether or alter it in some altogether unexpected way. you can't just make some spot decision. you have to think it through.

and, vanity is rarely a satisfactory criteria.