Okay so I think I am a little in denial and haven't taken a picture yet so I will just add it in when I do (and by the way could it please stop raining for a minute? That would really make me more inclined to stop for photos).
We knew we needed to get a new car for a multitude of reasons. We seem to have a lemon Prius. We were so happy to have it, thankful for the energy savings, etc etc. The savings were not so high as we thought (and was advertised) but the mpg was still better than any other car on the road. But then it started having issues. More than one, and the incompetent dealership we had our extended warranty through (*coughRonTonkincough*) didn't seem to understand what was going on or how to fix it. When our warranty expired, we knew we were only weeks to months from the mystery problem recurring and then we would be out thousands of dollars while service people tried to figure out what was wrong.
We were also coming to terms with the fact that for the moment, we may have outgrown a small sedan sized vehicle. I know I know- all of you who know me are laughing your asses off, so happy to see me falling from my high hybrid horse but there you have it. We cannot at this point have a single other person in our car. We cannot even bring a friend home from school. Do others have it worse? You Bet! Would we be okay if we could only have a compact car? Yes, and frankly we would not even notice it most of the time. Hell - we could get by pretty well on just one car again if we needed to. But am I growing just an ickle bit tired of being up here by myself on the high horse? Of driving the tiny car while single people I know drive around in their GIANT SUV's? Yes. I am. I do not want a life of driving a big car - in fact I would love to get to the point where I am not rushing from dropoffs to work to pick-ups and that riding my bike and public transportation will once again become a viable option. But for our life now I think the environmental impacts of driving a larger car are outweighed for me by the amount we would utilize the capacity the larger vehicle provides.
So I did my research, looked for a bigger car that wasn't too big. Something that gave us extra people carrying capacity and usable space. What we ended up with was a RAV4 with a 3rd row of seats. The back row folds down into the floor when not in use, making a large trunk space. It has decent gas mileage (when compared to similar or larger cars of course, it sucks compared to any compact car) and is a couple feet shorter than a minivan or full size SUV. The third row will allow us to participate in carpooling, taking friends home from school, driving anyplace with Andrew when he is in town. It will make vacations less of an origami project - I became an expert at filling up every nook and cranny of the Prius to make room for all of the stuff we needed for camping, etc.
Can you tell yet that I have a lot of anxiety and guilt about it still? I have had the weight of the dying of our planet on my shoulders since I first went to outdoor school in 5th grade. Most of the jobs I have ever had has dealt with teaching people about the value and importance of protecting and saving our planet. It feels like a dishonor when I do things I don't HAVE to do that I know have a directly negative impact on the world. I feel guilty getting paper cups at coffee shops, using a ziplock instead of a tupperware, dead batteries make me shudder...
There is a part of me that would love to traipse the Earth as certain others do - to either not know or not care. To think that I am a part of manifest destiny, and that everything around me was put there for my use and abuse. Or maybe I would like to be a native person deep in the Amazon rainforest, left with no choice but to have nothing. To live in the States, with all of the disposable everything all around us, with a pace of life that demands getting from one place to the next quickly, is for me a life of almost constant guilt. I know it is the guilt of the incredibly privileged, the woe of the wealthy, the burden of the burdenless. But it's my guilt dammit.
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