Blowing Gaskets

Well… the phone rang this morning with the despicable news that my car, lovely, scraped up Miss Irma, had not only cracked her radiator and ruined her temperature gauge, but she had blown her head gasket as well.

I don’t know what the gasket is responsible for, but evidently it’s major, because the voice on the phone was very serious.

And it’s deadly expensive.

BUT, and here’s the only real rainbow here, because I am the original owner, and because I left it in the hands of the dealer, this repair is covered under Hyundai’s 10 year/100,000 mile gaurantee.

Yes, say it with me now:  “WHEW!”

But I will be sans car into next week.  NEXT WEEK!

There is something about car problems that is absolutely overwhelming.  Here you have this big heavy machine at your disposal and absolutely no idea how it works… you are completely dependent on the service technicians to tell you what it needs and then you just kind of sit back and hope that it all works out alright.

Looks like I’ll be doing a lot more walking than I thought…

Feet, God gave ’em to us for a reason…

Well, the car debacle has gotten more frustrating.  I mean, to someone who’s completely without funding, a $1100 price tag for a repair is like, impossible and therefore borderline hysterical.

I spent the better part of the day arranging to have the car towed to another mechanic (thank you Doc) with excellent references (wow, Yelp is kind of amazing, isn’t it?  I only just discovered it.  Amazing!) who quoted me a lower price over the phone.  Then I called back the dealer to let them know what I was up to and they brought their price down to $850 plus tax.  Considering how much it was going to cost me to tow the car and how much was already due to the dealer just to diagnose it, it worked out to about the same cost.

So, long story short, a dealer will deal with you a little on the repair.  Good lesson.  Now, can someone direct me to the money tree?  Because it’s STILL TOO MUCH MONEY.

(pant, pant)

But then I think about how the car has been really reliable and this is its first out-of-warranty fix, and that amount seems more palateable.  I mean,  Visa and I are becoming better and better friends (she says wryly) so I can look at that shining piece of plastic and put off screaming for a month… and then I can scream a little bit every month until it’s paid off… which at this point is looking like a DAMN LONG TIME.

(pant, pant)

But that’s not why I’m writing today… I’m writing because amidst all the grump and harump and ‘Are you fucking kidding me?!’ I took my pale little self out on a walk and had the most beautiful stroll.

See, I am very close to many things- the grocery store, the bank, restaurants, the mall and movie theater… yet us West Coasters DRIVE EVERYWHERE.  It never occured to me to walk to the bank before.  But because I am without car, and because I had a check (WOWEE ZOWEE) to deposit, I trotted my little under-used legs on out the door.

And in case anyone’s not been paying attention to the weather, today it was GORGEOUS outside.  Like Spring weather, absolutely beautiful.

I walked through the neighborhood admiring people’s lawns, the trees, the blue, blue sky.  It was a truly happy experience and I was thankful that I had to use my feet to get there… because in the four years I’ve been living here I’ve never once walked to the bank!

All in all it was about a 45 minute round-trip.  I came home feeling exhilerated, I drifted off into thoughts of scripts and characters in the walking and found some solutions that had been eluding me.

I’m only going to be here for another couple of weeks, but I think I just might do a little more walking in the meantime.