Someone mentioned something about Mopar performance parts to me the other day but I don’t actually see my car on there, or hubbie’s either which is a shame, but usually the way these things go. Neither of our cars qualified for “Cash for Clunkers” this past year, they were both a year too young. Figures, doesn’t it?

However I talked to Mum’s SO yesterday when he saw munchkin and I walking to city hall which is right next to his shop and he assured me the check engine light was probably something benign like the car just being upset by the cold or something like that. Rose had told him that we put more oil in the car and he said that would help for other reasons but probably had nothing to do with the oil because (duh!) the oil has it’s own separate warning light (mega-duh!) so hopefully tomorrow I can take her in for the oil change at least and start working out where to get the money to replace the brakes if they need it. I’m paranoid because one time I took the car in for brakes, not to him though, and the brakes had apparently completely creamed the rotors because they’d gone so long, so any time I have to do brakes I’m afraid I will also have to replace the rotors.

Despite that we’ve been working on things we can’t fix. I started white-washing the front of the house with primer on Thursday so that we can actually finish the exterior painting job. We already have the paint, may as well actually use it. I finished the front wall inside a little bit ago, but there’s the opposite wall which still needs to be done.

We’ve also been making a lot of headway on some dietary improvements. In the past week we’ve only eaten out twice, once was at a local Indian restaurant, and the second was getting Publix subs, however Kore and I both got wraps. Also we’ve started getting a lot more fresh vegetables, and getting fish here and there again, which is a little easier to do when we’re not spending $30-50 every other night ordering take out for ourselves and every one that’s over gaming. We’ve cut out a lot of the carbs and most of the artificial sugars in our diet. We don’t buy soda for the house any more, and got rid of a lot of things which were bad for us, such as leftover graham crackers, chips, and non-fruit or yogurt snack foods. Instead our fridge is full of things like spinach leaves, romaine lettuce, asparagus, carrots, celery, radishes and cucumber. We’ve been having salads as side dishes instead of starchy dishes.

It’s hard work, but we’ve pledged to stick to it. We’ve also pledged to continue making things from scratch. We got whole wheat, non-bleached flour to make some flat breads ourselves, and have picked up pita pockets for a small dose of carbs, because carbs are necessary just not the over abundance that I normally have. I know for quite some time it’s not been uncommon for me to make tuna salad, and put macaroni in it and then eat it in a sandwich, with chips.

I have the support of my new GP, which is understandable given my start weight for the diet…252.8 lbs, which is over 100lbs more than what I weighed when I first came to the states. However at that time I was 15, so I don’t expect to get down to 146 because it was an unhealthily low weight, my ribs were visible. I’ve set myself the goal of 180-185 lbs, which means I have around 70lbs to lose. I’ve set goals for mile stones, as rewards, and these are none food rewards, things like piercing my ear lobes for the third time, actually starting to get new clothes (I’ve decided I’m not buying any new clothes, unless it’s a job requirement like needing khaki slacks) until I get down at least 40lbs just over halfway.

I’m keeping a record of things and have a diet ticker again. This time though I feel that I am actually making a great deal of progress. I have cravings for the foods that I’m cutting down on but I’ve got the discipline not to act on them. I think I’m mentally ready now. I know this isn’t just a diet, it’s a life style change. I’m not beating myself up if I slip. I did still one baked french fry that I had made for my son the other night, because he needs more carbs than I do, given he’s growing, but well, it’s one french fry. I didn’t get a whole plate of them after that. I went back to my spinach salad. I know what I have to do and I’m ready to do it.

If I have to be strict with myself for a whole year it’s worth it, because I have the rest of my life that I can live much better because of it.

My husband’s car the hood was not closing properly and it was due for an oil change and an a/c top up. So, there’s both cars somewhat out of commission. Joy!

Friday I drove down to the next town in hubbie’s car with no a/c to find out if they could fix the hood or not, which they could but it was going to cost us $160 or so. So, we made the appointment for Monday. First thing Monday morning I took my car to the mechanic to see if he could sort the brakes out, he’d been out of town on Friday so he had a lot of work backed up and said he probably could but it wouldn’t be until Tuesday.

Then when I got back hubbie took his car down to the other mechanic for the body work.

Tuesday morning we elected to take hubbie’s car for the oil change and a/c fix because that would be faster than my car and we would at least have one working car instead of two semi-broken cars. So, this morning, given the mechanic said he probably wouldn’t be able to get mine done until today anyway so what was the point of taking it down there just to sit…I took my car in, so we’ll see how much it costs us. So far the repairs this week have come to about $240 dollars, which is somewhat good, because I remember something going wrong with my car just after hubbie and I got married and it was $480 to fix the brakes and then another $400 a week or so later because the driver’s side window mechanism corroded and the window would not stay up. The car originally cost me $8750…but I dread to think how much it would be if I actually added up all the replacement tires, brake jobs, batteries over the years and the wonderful alternator replacement, and cooling system kaput we had last year, and I wonder why we can’t afford to even look at hotels las vegas…we never have any money it’s all going to cars and doctors (don’t even get me started on doctors…)

We were having car trouble on the way here because the brakes were being a bit weird and she’s joking to me now that she should get travel health insurance before we drive back, but the car is mostly fixed now, and seems to have been doing pretty good this afternoon, so fingers crossed we can make it up there without having an issue. As it turns out hubbie will actually be off that day so if the worst comes to the worst we can use his car. Someone in the PD has taken ill so he’s been switched to working tomorrow and being off Friday, which is good in some ways, he was originally planning on coming with us today when I took K back, but then the car…yargh.

There was a show at Epcot where several car manufacturers showcased their “top of the line” cars and let you drive them on obstacle courses, or just around the lots. My husband wanted to go because he would get to drive a Hummer if we played our cards right. I was telling Mum how the regular obstacle courses were bumps and small inclines but the Hummer got to drive over huge tires and up a huge mound of dirt. I’d hoped it would get hubbie off of his yin to buy a Hummer, but it only intensified his wish to own one some day.

I’m not sure if I should be inclined towards happiness or perturbedness that he doesn’t go for things like the popular Mustang muscle cars. Either way it’s an expensive vehicle and we don’t seem to have much luck with cars staying in good repair. However he’s practical and is willing to shelve his desire for such a car until we’re able to afford it rather than putting us in further hoc.

Still that doesn’t stop you from dreaming. On the upside something like a Hummer might in theory be better able to deal with the potential soccer teams or something like that but I don’t think I could drive it. I’m really not sure what my dream car would be by comparison. I’d settle for something that had a slightly bigger trunk so it was easier to get the stroller in and out (but that’s not going to be a need forever) and something with a bit more cabin space so that the car seat fits better and my husband can still push the seat back as far as he needs, oh, and with good gas mileage. My current car gets 28 mpg if I’m very careful but my husband’s old car got less than half that.

The car’s been pretty sluggish starting up for a while but I figure that’s because she’s 10 years old now. Well, I took her in to have a check up. She’s at 999655 as far as mileage goes so I thought maybe it’s just the tune up that she needs.

When the mechanic had a look at her he asked, “Who pulled the fuse out that’s on the horn?”

I said, “Well, my husband disabled the horn about six months ago because it started going crazy one night in the middle of a thunderstorm and wouldn’t stop.”

“Ah,” he says, “Well, let him know not to pull fuses out again ’cause they’re not the same as they used to be. Used to be you could pull fuses out all day, but now they’re all tied in to everything else. That fuse being out screwed up the car’s computer and that’s why the car’s been starting so weird and running kinda ragged. It’s got no way to check itself…you’re lucky you didn’t stall out at an intersection or something.”

Luckily he had some fuses on hand and was able to replace it. So I asked him, “Well, what if the horn starts going bonkers again?”

“Just pull it out from the engine side.”

Sounded fair enough. Except I forget that my car was designed by squirrels on LSD. Why do I say this? Anything that seems like a simple task turns into a huge headache. Changing out the serpentine belt on my car takes two hours but on a regular car would have been done in 20 minutes. It took five people to change out the alternator which in most other cars is just “unscrew two bolts, take out, put in new one, screw two bolts back in”.

We got to my friend’s house that evening. The car had been running fine all day. We’d been in their place about twenty minutes when their neighbor came knocking on the door saying a car was going crazy in the parking lot. I turn to hubbie and go, “Oh, man, that better not be Gemma,” our friend goes running out with his car keys thinking it’s his alarm, but no, it’s my car. We turn it off. Another friend comes out volunteering to find the horn and remove the plug, given I’d reminded hubbie we couldn’t just pull the fuse out again after just having been warned about that. But they couldn’t tell where the horn was coming from and it wasn’t immediately visible, as well as the fact that it was going dark by this time, so we gave up and decided we’d look for it the next day.

The horn went off again about two hours later. So, we elected to leave for the night and rearranged the garage to keep the car in there over night in case it went off again.

Which it, of course, didn’t.

Our friend came round this morning to fix something on the water system and volunteered to remove the horn cable seeing as it was daylight and he would have more time to look around.

It turned out the horn was in…the bumper.

The bumper!

Not only that but after he got a wrench sorted out the cables and pulled and tugged for several minutes I went to test the horn expecting silence and instead got a more muted PARP which was coming from the opposite side to where our friend was laying under the car.

… WTF?

So, he slid over to the other side of the bumper and felt around in there. In a much more awkward position was a second cable which he was able to remove after much cursing and fiddling and exclaiming, “Your car was designed by idiots!!”

Then I was able to press the horn and Sweet Blessed Silence.

So, yeah, my car had TWO horns. There’s much joking in our house right now about “emergency back up horn”.

But, rabid LSD toking squirrels. They had a lot of fun designing my car, and my step-father used to wonder why Buick stopped making the Skylark and stuck to the Century.

Yesterday morning I called the EMT department who had sent us the pre-collections notice and found out that they couldn’t put the collections on hold right then, but they could put a note in my record that I was calling BCBS and if BCBS gave a satisfactory answer or if we found out it was our responsibility and made a payment they would take it out of collections, which was a big relief my husband and I both have credit ratings in the mid to high 700s and I do NOT want that screwed up because of an insurance company.

So, I called BCBS, had to wake hubbie up to verify that I was allowed to talk to them about the bill, and was then able to find out what they thought was going on. They claim to have sent us a check in October to cover almost all of this bill. But we did not get a check from them. Granted we get so many random letters from them during the course of a week it’s possible that it was overlooked. Also the fact that it took them until we moved here to get our previous address may mean that they sent the check to our first apartment while we were at our second and it was returned to them. Given it was not cashed, they could see that, and I went through all of our files back to 2005 and could not find a check. They agreed to re-send the check, but first I have to get our address updated again, which requires paperwork through my husband’s employer. At the end of the day we will owe $64 to the EMTs.

So, I call the EMTs back and ask if I pay the $64 will they take us out of collections while we’re waiting for BCBS to get us what they said they would, given they say it’ll be here in five days, but with previous experiences from them I don’t think it’s going to get here until after the bill has gone to collections; but the EMT I spoke to was sympathetic as they have BCBS for their insurance company as well, and said she could push the “send to collections date forward” and we could just send everything together.

By contrast getting our car fixed is proving a lot easier. My husband’s car was in a minor collision with a guard rail and needs some hood damage repaired before the power steering can be fixed. We took the car to get an estimate. The damage is about $3000 all told, which is a bit frustrating as we paid $2800 for the car in the first place; but the insurance will cover all but $500 of it (our deductible); and because our insurance company has agreements with certain mechanic shops in the area we can take it to the shop and get it fixed and the claims can be adjusted right there without having to wait for a claims adjustor to come out and all the paperwork to be done. It can just be sent right to the office.

In fact they’re so on the ball that before we left the office we had our claims number, by the time we got back in the door to our house the head office of the insurance company was on the phone verifying that we knew we had to pay $500 and that it would go to the mechanic not the company, and two hours later the mechanic was calling to verify what car to be looking out for and when today we would be bringing it in.

Not even two days and things are sorted out; but this bill has been hanging around since October apparently! Eesh.

I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than the mess with Sprint which I just sorted out yesterday that’s been going on since October 19th; but that’s a tale for another entry…

So, mechanic told me that it would take a half hour to forty-five minutes for the oil change and from what I described he figured the brakes may well just be because the car’s been doing a LOT of back and forth lately transporting stuff to and from the apartment and house and because we’ve been also doing a lot with the relatives and things while they were down for the holiday season but that he would check anyway to make sure because it’s the brakes and that could be something much more serious and deadly.

I get back from walking up to a local restaurant to grab breakfast and he tells me that he has bad news, and shines his flashlight into the car’s workings to show me that the brakes are pretty much gone in front. Given I had no means to get back home without the car that day and the brakes were going to be a bit more pricey than the $15 oil change I arranged to take the car back to him this morning after sorting out a means for us to get back to the house and getting some extra cash to pay him for the brake fix with and he would do that today.

So, there we are, the brakes are currently getting fixed. I love our mechanic. He’s very nice, generous and he always “does us right” as far as cost. The last time I had to have brakes replaced, we didn’t have him as our mechanic and it was almost $300, and I had to take the car back within two months because they were having issues again.

He’s doing it for half that, and he’ll do a great job too, probably last us longer than the $300 job did. He volunteered to come by our house to check on hubbie’s car which is having the power steering issues to see if there was a way he could help us get the hood up and closed so that we would have a second car. While hubbie can drive it at a pinch without the power steering there’s no way I could get it much further than the end of the street before I was too sore to drive it any further given that sort of heavy work is not something I can do with my chronic health condition :p I remember losing power steering in Gemma (my car) for a mile or so of road due to the alternator and the battery having problems and I was sore for a week. Not something I care to repeat with so much of the house still needing fixing up and unpacking.

Hubbie was telling me yesterday that he’s grateful that when something is wrong with my car that I tell him right away, that day or the next, so that we can arrange to get things fixed. Mechanic was also telling me that was very smart. He says that he sees so many horrendous problems with cars because people, particularly us ladies, who hear a “funny noise” and then forget to do anything about it, or a light comes on and they ignore it, and so by the time the car gets to the mechanic what could have been fixed for under $200 is a much, much more expensive, because instead of just being low on oil, the car is dried out and burning fumes tearing up the engine, or an alternator issue which could have just been bolted back on for $15 has to be completely replaced for $200 +. With the brakes if we hadn’t got that fixed we’d have probably had to replace the whole car because they would have failed and we would have been in a collision, or worse myself and the munchkin may have been seriously injured or killed.

So, ladies and gents, please remember to keep your car in good health just as you would yourself. Catch the cough before it becomes pneumonia!

It’s a fun time, seriously. It seems like any time that something can go wrong it will, and with my husband’s car we can’t take it to our regular mechanic because we haven’t been able to afford to have the collision damage repaired, and he doesn’t have the facilities to do anything for collision damage.