oh shit, did I just buy a car?

I'm not sure what normal people do over a long weekend, but Alex and I fill it up with all sorts of pajama lounging, usually some furniture gets moved around and occasionally some impulse buying takes place on that magical 3rd day. I've never had buyers remorse about these impulse purchases... until this weekend. We weren't messing around; we bought a car.
It's not that we don't need a new car, we actually do need a second car starting this summer. It's just that we went out to look at what was out there. Maybe do a test drive. I never had the intention of sitting down and signing legal documents. Especially because not even 24 hours prior to purchasing this vehicle I assured Alex that there was no way we were even looking at the Matrix... it was too bubbly looking and the t-tiny window in the big butt of the car wasn't something I was interested in. I knew I wanted something hatch back-y or kind of like a wagon, it needed to have a sunroof and be higher off the ground than the Saturn, oh, it also should be under 18,000. Alex again presented the Matrix, and each time I turned my nose up in disgust, how dare he ask again.
Monday morning rolled around and Alex and I were having some eggs and bacon. As I was chewing on that last tasty morsel of crispness I looked out the window and saw a car, it looked pretty interesting, it was a Matrix. And when I say interesting I mean within my price range including the sunroof. I asked Alex if it's a Matrix, even though I knew exactly what is was. I had now officially decided that it's not so bad. Alex confirmed the greatness of this car. I don't know if it was the bacon talking, but within the hour we were at a Toyota dealership.
The first dealership wasn't so great, no one was particularly interested in talking to us. I like the no pressure deal, but I could use a little enthusiasm. Maybe it was obvious that we weren't planning on buying right away, after all, it was our first day of looking and we spewed that line out at anyone who came in our general vicinity. Alex had a chat with one employee and asked him how low he could go on the price. He told us what the dealership had paid for the car and that he couldn't go much lower than what was on the sticker. And so we moved on to the next place. We spoke with Ed, a nice man who confessed to buying his reading glasses without a prescription. We told him what we were interested in and then Alex says "the other dealership said that they could give us that car for X". X was actually the price the last dealership said they bought the car for, but I wasn't going to argue. Alex was either honestly mistaken or he was driving a hard bargain. Either way, I saw a bargain and we weren't even buying today, so who cares? Friendly Ed drove us around to some different lots where they store their cars in search of what we were looking for. At this point I'm wanting to go home and also wanting some lunch, but I'm game so I take the back seat and wonder how long this is going to take. When we got to the second lot we saw this car, sitting all alone, it was just what we wanted. I wondered how he did that, because I didn't see anyone else at the lot. So Alex test drove and I sat up front and played with the stereo. (Yep, it's nice. Okay, can we get some lunch now?) Ed was sitting in the back like a chaperone and scared the crap out of me when he said "so if I could give you the same deal as the other dealer would you buy this today?" Then Alex scared the crap out of me (and the same time delighted me) by saying maybe. We drove the car back to the dealership to "talk about numbers". I called my sister to relieve me from my nervous breakdown and that helped a lot. She told me about a cordless phone that she's sending my way and reminded me that I could walk away from this whole car thing at anytime. I needed that.
When we got to the dealership I let Alex do all the talking. He had nerves of steel and I was hungry. He asked for the car for 500 less than X. That didn't work, but a valiant effort was made. At that point I was ready to bolt, figuring that no bargain was headed our way and it was the perfect excuse to get out of the purchase today. But then Ed came back and told us that he could give us 0%APR and the car would cost X. X... the brilliant X. The next thing I knew I was signing papers with my clammy hands. My scalp was sweating. I couldn't believe I was buying a car. I couldn't believe I didn't eat lunch. We drove away around 5pm in a slick black Matrix with a sunroof and a 6 CD changer.
Of course I woke up at 3am in a panic. Reminiscent of the tattoo freak out of '96, I shook Alex awake and asked him to calm me down. What had we done? "We bought a car that we deserve to have. It's going to be okay."
He's right. Having a new car kicks some serious ass.