It feels so good to finally finish the car project. When there's an overall feeling that life is out of your control, aided by a lawn that has grown to epic proportions while your garage looks like a car bomb went off, you're low on sleep and have a baby who just learned that crying beats sleeping 9 out of 10 times in a recent baby survey, just getting to check one thing off feels like maybe it really will get back to normal someday.

This on top of the fact that I've always loved my car, and every time I spend a significant amount of time working on her I feel like we've bonded more. The new transmission feels noticeably better than the old one, even before it started grinding its teeth, though I remember changing the transmission oil made almost as much of an improvement when I did that last time. Either way she's doing great, and it makes me happy. I've added a cable to connect my new ipod to the stereo too, which is great. The list of car repairs itself is not finished, I have also purchased the full set of rear suspension bushings which need replacing which will necessitate an alignment, I intend on replacing the differential fluid and changing my oil this next week as well, and inspection is due this month, but the car is running, which for almost a week wasn't the case.

I'm feeling exhausted at work, not sure if I can make it another 5 hours, but I still get a little emotional boost looking out the window at my baby. The 2200 pound one.