I will preface this topic by mentioning not everyone will have as bad an experience as i did and there are a few reasons for that.
- Some people have spouses who can drop them off for work in the second car until the first one is finished with its necessary repairs
- Some people live in the same city that they work in so its easier and more feasible to find a coworker to carpool to work with until the car has had its necessary repairs (providing gas money to the coworker can make the extra effort to come pick you up on the way worth their while)
- People who live in the same city as their parents who are still married may be able to convince them to loan their adult child one of their cars for a week while both parents share the remaining car between them.
As a single woman whose parents are not together who lives in a town two cities away from where she works…none of these notions were an option for me and any complication that might have been, was.
One monday i got up, got myself and the homestead ready for a day of work, put the key in the ignition, and the car wouldnt start. The more i tried, the less it did. The lights flickered on the dash and the engine sounded worse and worse as it tried and failed more and more to turn over. So i figured i needed a new battery. It was the wee hours of the morning in the middle of nowhere. I figured if i wanted to go to work id have to pay a tow service to jump me. My friends wouldnt wake up for hours. A tow company would be hundreds of dollars and my friends would be free, and id still have to pay for a new battery after, but i was committed to showing up for my bosses and my patients. I needed to get to work, so i elected to go ahead and call them and pay the money to get a jump in the dark before dawn. The tow service mentioned that it would be an hour before they could arrive. I thought about it. An hour would put me very late to work and in two hours my friends would be awake and could help me with jumper cables. I politely notified them i’d changed my mind and would wait for my friends to wake up because an hour put me at very late to work, not just a little late, at which point it was worth it financially for me to just wait until my friends woke up and could jump my car for free. The man said he could talk to his guy, expedite the matter, and get him there in thirty minutes if that would keep me as a customer, that an hour is just something they say to give themselves wiggle room, but he’d tell his guy it was important he be there as early as possible and he could get him there in half an hour without speeding.
One hour and thirty minutes later he arrived. I should have known the man was just saying whatever he needed to say to keep me as a customer. He never even called the driver who was unaware he was supposed to arrive in thirty minutes and said that was not even a thing he could have done because it took half an hour from the time i called for the call center in a different state that is “the office” to contact the tow driver and let him know there was a customer. He parked next to the carport and jumped the car. It took him a while to get it running and he said he had to give it gas to get it going, so he didnt think the problem was just a dead battery. He said “something’s not getting juice”. He was very kind and good conversation in the freezing cold. This cost me $250. I thanked him and drove to the brand new auto parts store that had moved into town. The manager there was named “Brian”. He wore an old fashioned news boy cap and was outside smoking when i arrived. I left the car running and went inside to inquire about a compatible battery. They confirmed that they had a compatible battery in stock and told me i could go ahead and shut off the car. I did as they said and went back inside the warm store to wait for them to come out with the cart and a new battery. They did a lot of looking at the computer and making “hmmm” noises and checking the shelves behind the counter again, but no cart on wheels emerged. Finally Brian said, “Well, theres good news and theres bad news.” I said, “what’s the good news?” He said, “there is a battery that’s compatible with your car and we do sell it.” I asked, “what’s the bad news?” He answered, “its 3 cities away and we need about two hours for someone to drive it here from a different store. Can you stand the wait?” I said, “welp, it doesn’t look like i have much choice. The car is off now and i need a battery.” Brian offered to get me a chair to wait two hours for the guy driving the battery down in his car to arrive but i had a better idea. My best friend lived a mile from the auto parts store and i woke her up (sorry) asking if she could come get me, and could i hang out at her house where there’d be electricity, food, cats and a bathroom for two hours. She said i could but she was in her pjs and not quite ready to get in the car and go out in a small town. I said i’d walk. Brian then offered to drive me over to my friends house. He said i was not going to walk in this cold and wind. He’d drive me, no problem. So we got into his old thunderbird in which i had to slam the door shut and pull very gently on a temperamental seatbelt to get it to reach the buckle and off we went to my friend’s house. She made a wonderful breakfast of quinoa, imported italian olive oil, sesame seeds, lemon pepper dash, and shredded seaweed strips. It was savory quinoa breakfast. If you eat anything at an italian’s house you will know that the olive oil is more of a sauce than a method of making sure something doesnt stick to a pan. The quinoa was drowned in the liquid gold and if you’ve ever tasted italian olive oil you’ll understand why this was a generous hospitality in drowning my food in it. Anyways, i played with the cats. We had a good conversation. I charged my phone. Her husband woke up and found me in his kitchen again. Im always surprised by how chill he is upon discovering unauthorized visitors in his house but he’s italian so he basically upon discovering visitors just offers food and begins discussing any current events he has strong opinions on. I enjoy knowing both my best friend and her husband immensely and appreciate them more than they know. While i was at my friends house i got a notification on my phone. My grandmother had deposited money into my account, effectively paying for the new battery and the car jump by the towing company. It was very kind of her and helped immensely because ever since the tow driver had spoken the words “im not sure thats just a battery problem” i kind of knew other more extensive repairs were coming down the pipe.
2.5 hours passed and Brian gave me a phone call to let me know i could come back. My best friend drove me over there and he put the new battery in. He lost a screw somewhere in there with cold numb fingers in the wind so he bought me a replacement one out of his own pocket, saying it was his fault. That was nice. He said the battery should last about 4 years. I heard the tow driver’s words in the back of my head. He didnt think it was just the battery. He figured there was another problem going on. I had been dealing with the screens on the car going black from time to time and the car being slow to shift for about a year. I wondered if these things were all related and tied up in a bigger problem about to come to a head. I knew this car had a history of transmission issues and nissan had not fixed them in the 2019 model, but they offered a lifetime warranty upon conditions, for the transmission and engine….one that could only be honored by the location in boerne that stole $25,000 from me when i bought the car with a cashier’s check, the employee made off with the money, and signed me up for financing, ruined my credit, saddled me with relentless bill collectors, threatened to repossess the car, and forced me to sue them. We settled out of court. Nissan paid the loan off, and their senior employee wrote a letter to the bill collectors and upon receiving it they began to fix my credit and closed my account with them and stopped harassing me. Im not stupid enough to bring the car back to that den of thieves for any kind of maintenance after suing them and in my opinion winning, even though i felt the employee should be fired and they couldnt let me know if any disciplinary action had been taken, which to me means it probably hadnt, because if he was fired, why wouldnt they just say so. So i was aware that essentially, whenever the transmission went out, it was my responsibility, and after san antonio stated that they would not honor the warranty provided by boerne because that was between me and them, i decided hiring lawyers to make them do so would be pointless because by the time i won, theyd be disgruntled enough to destroy the car in retaliation when i handed it over for maintenance, so i just gave up on doing the “every 5000 mile oil change” with nissan (my end of the agreement) and started taking it to walmart in a town closer to me. Nissan used to make us “stuck customers” who were trying to maintain our end of a conditional lifetime transmission and engine warranty wait about 4 hours after our scheduled appointment to get our oil changed, no doubt hoping we’d give up and not uphold our end of the bargain. I just procured an uber and made a shopping run in san antonio and got food, then returned. Others chewed them out. I knew it was pointless to yell. They won if you yelled. The point was to frazzle you and get under your skin. Car sales these days is psychological warfare and those are not god-fearing people you are dealing with. Those are money motivated people who care only about bringing home the bacon for them and theirs and if their gums are flapping, lies are happening. They’re also assessing your body language and tone to see if what they’re doing is working. You must be careful what you give away when talking to these people. So, in summary, i could feel “expensive” coming and figured it would most likely be a transmission issue since this model of this car was notorious for having transmission issues early on. Against all better judgment, i hoped it was fixed.
I went home. By now it was evening and i prepared for the following day. The following day, i started the car and it was slow to shift again. The first problem was that i put it in reverse and it still thought it was in park. The parking brake was off but it operated as if it were securely on. I turned it off and tried again. The screens were off and the buttons did nothing to turn them on or navigate them. This time the car went slowly backwards but my foot was all the way down on the pedal. It was like driving with an insufficient parking brake on. You went, but not very fast, and your foot was all the way down on the pedal. Part ways down the road the car began violently shaking as if i was driving on cobblestones. my teeth were chattering and it felt as if the car would surely break apart. I realized the tow driver had been correct. It was not only the battery. I had to call work once more in my shame and tell them i wasnt going to make it. I drove a minimum of two hours a day and as much as i drove, i needed to go ahead and make sure this car was not on the verge of breaking so i would not be stranded. It needed something and i needed to figure out what.
A friend in the city i worked in had offered to take a look at the car if i had any further car troubles after the last car trouble he fixed but reasonably, i figured that offer was conditional upon it breaking in the city he was in. I didnt think he, with a child and a day job, would be willing to drive two cities over to look at my car, so i didnt call him. To me, he was a world away living his own life and this was my problem, in the town i was in, to solve myself.
I drove it to the nearest town with mechanics and tried to find one that could look at it same day. I tried every mechanic in town. All said no. The nicest, most affordable, and christian one i’d used before said the answer would normally be yes, he’d fit me in, but he wasnt even in town…he was out of state getting an experimental cancer treatment. He was dying. This town has its own cancer treatment center and you’d be hard pressed to find a citizen of it that hasnt had cancer or is actively dealing with it. Babies, toddlers, high schoolers, elementary aged children…. I wondered when i moved out here how come a small town gets an entire cancer treatment center…. I wondered why every single person either had cancer or had an immediate family member dealing with it. I figured it had to be something specific to this region. Upon further investigation i concluded the problem was in the river. There were two large plants upriver who were known to dump waste into the river and upon testing it was identified that there were 13 cancer causing chemicals in the sample of water taken from the river in this particular town. How many of those do you think get filtered out in the processing of the water before it is routed into the tap of the houses in this town? Zero. Bacteria is filtered out. Chemicals remain. So everyone in this town goes swimming in the river. I used to as well until i began developing a multitude of moles on my arms, I quit swimming in the river, burned the moles off with an at home mole removal pen, and didnt develop any more after i quit going in the river. The neon green color of that river seems like a warning that theres things man-made in the water that we ought not come into contact with. Thats not just algae as i originally thought. Beyond swimming in the river, people in that town drink the water from the tap, cook with it, and bathe in it when it comes into the shower or the tub. Effectively, by using the water, they ensure everyone has cancer at one point or another in their lives. Its a small town. They’re married to their cigarettes and their river and they dont want to hear anything i have to say about either one, so i leave them to their plight. But, when i call and find out yet another business is being closed or another person is unavailable because they’ve succumbed to cancer, im reminded that the river is not to be messed with and i think its sad that the citizens of this town have chosen to have eyes wide shut. If they wanted to, they could see that the cancer rate there is much higher than any other city in texas, and if they wanted to, they could have a lot to be incensed about, but they mostly just label me a crazy conspiracy theorist and tell me everybody has cancer, thats just life. They dont get out much so they dont know that for the rest of the world, its less usual. The powers that be have quietly made cancer treatment very available for this area and hoped that the problem would be overlooked. Mission accomplished. It saddens me that this auto mechanic is dying because he is a good man, who has historically made auto repair affordable and available to people without gouging them for money just because he could. He wasnt a rich man because he chose to take small profit over large profit in order to be kind to people. He was well loved in the community and i told him i was sorry and hoped the test he was going for brought good news, and he said that it likely wouldnt but he was not without hope. The bible tells you not to lose hope, and he considered himself a man not without hope. I could tell from the quiet tone and the trailing of his voice that this was a season of his life that included unknown territory, uncertainty, and sadness. Our conversation ended and i continued my search for a mechanic who could look at my car.
I found one who could look at the car in two days and wouldnt charge me a storage fee for parking on his lot until then. However, i had a new problem. I had been on the phone to a wretched little man who i would meet later in the week named Renee. He was the representative of the enterprise in the town where the mechanic that could look at the car was….the town where i was currently located. “Enterprise” (the call center in india) booked me for a sedan rental car at 10:00 am. Renee called me immediately afterwards to tell me no such car existed. (I knew this would be a problem and i’ll spend a paragraph detailing why).
Before the pandemic enterprise and companies like it had an abundance of cars. However, cars break. Cars require maintenance a lot. When you rent a car, you expect it not to break down right? Right. So how do car rental agencies prevent this occurrence from happening? Well, me, if i was in charge? I’d open my own mechanic shop and stock it with licensed mechanics whose sole job was to maintain the rental cars. I’d have each car checked every so many miles and make sure no maintenance was required, and if there did arise a problem identified, id have the mechanics fix it. But, this would be the harder more time consuming option, albeit the more efficient one. Instead, rental car agencies just buy cars, and get rid of them all before they turn two years old, then buy new ones. That way, their cars are always new, and they figure, they probably wont start to break within the first two years. Well, during the first few years of the pandemic, production ground to a halt. Materials were not being harvested, countries were not accepting materials from each other. Factories were shut down. New cars were not manufactured. Stupidly, the rental car agencies dumped all their cars like they always did and were never able to replenish them in the numbers they had had. So, now we have a shortage of rental cars, which is fine if you are booking for a vacation and can call ahead, but for car maintenance, you never know ahead of time when you will need a rental because your car broke down unexpectedly.
So this wretched little man Renee set about giving me all sorts of lip and attitude because i was trying to inquire about the likelihood of me waiting in town for a car to return panning out or if it would be worth it for me to even try or if i should consider other avenues and keep trying to solve my problem another way. I just needed to know if “i’ll call you if we by chance have a cancellation or a car come back early” was a likely thing or a long shot. Was he saying the polite version of “sorry, goodbye now” or did he actually mean that might happen. I was not testy, accusatory or disgruntled at all but he was immediately very angry with me that i was trying to gage the likelihood of something, anything that he had said, happening. As far as i could tell, he had spoken, he had said all he had to say, and if i wasnt getting it, i was just stupid. Clarification was not required and i was wasting his time and inconveniencing his day with my slowness to understand what he had clearly already stated in all detail that was necessary. I got the sense that Renee was a man that wasnt over-enthused about dealing with women, because i had asked no stupid questions and in actuality had talked very little during the conversation, and still the immediate implication was that i was stupid and not hearing him. This was not a deficit on my part. This was a hang up on his end and i knew that. I made a mental note that finding a rental car in this particular town would now probably be extra unlikely because the gate keeper to those cars was now extra un-fond of me, and unlikely to help me even if a car did come back. Sure enough, during a later phone call to clarify whether a car coming back would be mine or was their a waiting list ahead of me, Renee went ahead and confirmed that if a car came back, he wasnt giving it to me. There was a whole list of people who had inquired before me, and he’d be giving it to one of them. The sentiment was “you’re not getting a car.” So i called the city i worked in. Its hard to explain…its a town of the same size but primarily year-round, half populated by visiting tourists. So, most of the people were staying in hotels near main street and did not need rental cars. The citizens themselves were usually wealthy enough to live there and had multiple cars of their own. So i figured, maybe there’d be more opportunity for a rental car in this city. I spoke to Andrew, a very nice happily married young man with multiple children who sounded lovely. He actually lived not too far from me and had similar ideas on technology, the government, and the direction humanity was headed, which we had ample time to discuss while i squatted in the enterprise office for four and a half hours hoping upon hope for a rental car to return so i could have it…. Andrew was very kind and friendly and said he had one car scheduled to return at 4 pm and if the person didnt call and add another day onto their rental or another car came back early, i could have it. He didnt yet have a waiting list and if one came back it was mine. I was just an hour away on the highway and had to find some way to make it to that city.
First i tried uber. Not one person would pick up the drive. They’d get paid $46 before uber took their cut for a two hour detour from their day. I didnt blame them. It wasnt worth it. I then tried a taxi service. The first one was permanently closed (out of business) and the second one just would not for the life of them ever answer their phone. It just rang non-stop with no call waiting or answering machine. I could find no one to take me to the city that the kind enterprise employee without a waiting list was in. He mentioned that he normally worked in the other city with Renee but the guy for the city i worked in called in so he was temporarily stationed up there where they had less demand for rental cars so he’d probably be more likely than Renee to be able to get me a rental car this afternoon. I felt that my best chances of getting a car were up in the city where i worked. Andrew seemed pretty sure that if i was there by closing, he could get me a car that afternoon. I was scheduled to go to the dentist in austin the following day and id already rescheduled once and each time i owed a $75 cancellation fee which they had waved the first time but i was pretty sure they wouldnt do it a second time. Also if i wanted to keep my job i needed to hurry up and have a means of transportation because if i kept the dentist appointment this would now be three days in a row i hadnt shown up for work. I needed a rental car pronto.
I didnt want to do it but i felt like i had no choice. I called my best friend and begged her and her husband to take me to the city i worked in so i could squat in the enterprise on the off chance that they might have a car get turned in that afternoon. I told them id give them $200 dollars for the ride. They refused the money and instead had me fold all their english and italian inserts for their christmas cards in the back seat of the suv as her husband drove us to the city i work in. They made sure i had food and water before leaving me. We stopped at the health food store and i got a fuji water and a couple baby food smoothies with the twist off caps on pouches (they keep well without refrigeration and are good for a quick blood sugar spike when needed). They dropped me off at the enterprise and i just made conversation with andrew, the enterprise guy, until a car came back. As soon as he came in to turn in the key at 4:05 (the branch closed at 4:30) i wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss his feet. The car that was supposed to come back at 4:00 pm didnt and another car that was turning in today left theirs at the boerne location instead. So, technically it was turned in, but not accessible to me. Then this guy came in and turned in his key two days early out of the blue, thus producing a car i could lay claim to, and i wanted to hug his ankles, but i was pretty sure without context, this would be interpreted as extremely weird and unwanted, so i glued myself to the seat, sat on my hands, and tried to stay silent throughout the turn-in process. They did a walk through together and i watched out the window. He got in his daughter’s car and left. Andrew came back inside with the key and said, “so its not the car i was expecting but he turned his in a little early. Its that mitsubishi mirage out there. Do you want it?” I clapped my hands together and nodded my head up and down emphatically exclaiming, “yes, yes, i’ll take it.” He asked me to let him pull it round back and vacuum it and then i could take it. He did and i gave my credit card details, my insurance company, and my name and then i asked what else he needed and he said “nothing. I’ll show you where everything is on the car incase its located differently than on your car and then you can take off.” He did get me in the car and show me where all the buttons were and then he said “you’ve been more than patient. This is now your rental car and you are free to go.” So i did. I stopped briefly at the grocery to pick up one item, i don’t remember what but i think it was a maintenance item more than a food item. It was something that id been meaning to get. I think it may have been baking soda for the laundry but im not sure. I called everyone who had been praying about the matter, including work, and let them know i had procured a rental car. This was especially good news for the speech therapist who had offered to drive me an hour away back to my home town if enterprise didnt manage to get a car for me that day in the city i worked in.
I noticed that night that the rental car took a while to turn over and worried this one needed a new battery too. The following day i drove it to austin to go to the dentist and stopped at an auto parts shop to ask if they could test the battery on a rental car just to see if it was good. They said they could, tested it, and told me the battery was brand new. They said, “this car has a lot of miles on it huh?” I said, “not really…22,000.” The woman looked confused. She had me open the hood again and we examined it together. She said, “theres your problem. The serpentine belt is on its LAST leg and i do mean VERY LAST. That needs replaced desperately. Its weird that ran out already at only 22,000 miles. The condition its in, you would think there were a lot more miles on this car. What year is it?” It was a 2024. She continued to look confused. She didnt seem like someone who was trying to sell me something. She looked legitimately confused about what she was seeing and made no immediate suggestions about anything she could sell me to fix it. She explained, “so thats whats draining your battery and its going to continue to do so. See how its running for a while before it catches. Put a new belt on this car and it would be golden. Theres nothing else wrong, but that serpentine belt needs to be changed.” She told me to call the rental agency and see if they wanted me to take it to firestone and get it done while i was in the big city and they could fit me in within an hour, and they could just subtract the cost from my rental fee. I knew what the answer would be. I figured they’d have their own guy who gave them a discount price and they would not be down for firestone in austin to do it, simple as the procedure was, so i asked the woman, “do you think it’ll make it a week before i need a new battery.” She shrugged, “maybe. If you want to try and hold onto this rental with that serpentine belt for a week, long drives are better than short. Make sure after you start it you drive it for an hour at least before shutting it off. No quick errands. Also, rev the engine as much as you can. When you start from the stop light or entering the highway, really punch that accelerator because that will charge the battery. Also, dont drive much at night. The headlights will drain the battery. When i got the rental car it made 4 noises before turning over when i put the key in the ignition. When i turned it in it made 6. So, it was draining the battery and getting progressively worse, but i did all the things the lady at the auto parts shop told me to. If i turned the car on i didnt turn it off before an hour. I left the car running while i ran into the post office or didnt go at all. I tried to turn the headlights off as soon as the sun peeked over the hill. I called andrew and told him about the serpentine belt and he said if i paid for it it would not be taken out of my rental fee so he wouldnt recommend doing that. He said i could keep it and theyd address the needed repair when i brought it back or i could turn it in and they’d call me when they had another one available. I had worked so hard to get the mitsubishi and id likely have to squat and involve friends again to get another, and there was no guarantee i would. So, i decided to keep the rental car and hope it could limp along to the finish line of when my own car was repaired and ready for pickup. It did. It turned out the alternator needed replaced on my car. So while i was nursing the badly worn serpentine belt and a draining battery on the rental car the mechanic shop was ordering a new alternator for my car and then calibrating it after installation because everything’s a computer now and you have to drive it for two days after installation to set all the sensors and computers up again so it knows where the car is, where other cars are, and does all the beeping and lighting up the side mirrors exactly when it should. To the mechanics credit, they were quick with getting it in and quick with the turn around. Just under a week for the whole thing. I appreciated that because rental cars are not covered at all by my insurance, even in the event of a car accident, so each additional day i required a rental car would add up financially and their quick turn around for getting me my car back was not only financially appreciated but probably what allowed the serpentine belt to limp along to the finish line rendering it an enterprise problem in the end and not a me stranded on the side of the road problem. I topped off the gas tank after work on the final day of the rental and drove the rental car back to the enterprise where i would finally get to meet grumpy-butt renee. He was about as i imagined him, a short hispanic man who felt women didnt even require eye contact. He seemed to think talking to me at all was beneath him and appeared disenchanted with life as a whole. He found nothing to smile about the whole time i was there and was very short and curt with his words. He did a lot of sighing and seemed inconvenienced with everything. I struggled with whether to tell him about the serpentine belt because i knew andrew understood that it was a maintenance wear and tear problem that i could not have created in 6 days but i felt renee might not hesitate to try to charge me for the car returning with a problem that wasnt noted on paper when i first took the car. My coworkers all voted to tell him because they didnt want the next renter to get a car with a nearly dead battery and be in a worse position than i was. So i did. And immediately after i told him his face changed. Though he had previosuly been arranging me a ride to the mechanic shop, now we would need to go out and look at this problem. I could tell i had made a mistake and he was going to try to pin this serpentine belt replacement on me. Just then Andrew came out of the bathroom and i recognized him, “Hey, you’re over here now!” He said, “hey, yeah i am, did you get your car fixed?!” I said, “yeah, and the mitsubishi made it. I did exactly what the auto parts shop said and made long drives not short ones and it made it.” He said, “good im glad.” As we were catching up renee stated that this serpentine belt no longer needed to be examined right then and in a few moments andrew could watch the store and he’d take me to the mechanic shop. Andrew had impeccable timing. I think that timing was probably a God thing so i didnt end up punished for my honesty.
Andrew had always opened the door for me and offered to carry one of my four bags to the rental car. Renee opened the door and walked through, allowing it to swing back and hit my arm on the way out. I pushed the door back open and struggled with my four bags of stuff to the car because renee made no offer to carry any of them. It wasnt cuz i was a lady that i wanted help carrying the bags…for the record i dont consider myself “a lady”. Im covered in dust and chicken poop way too often for that nonsense. It was simply because there were four brimming bags that i would have liked help. when i left the car at the mechanic shop i had to take everything of value or necessity to access that was in it and because i have a one room tiny house, i store a lot of stuff in the car. Renee also didnt open the car door for me and then berated me when i took too much time to get in saying that he had other things to get back to at the office so i should get in as quickly as i could. Then he demanded to know where he was going. I told him the name of the place and showed him the address but this was not sufficient. He raised his voice stating that that was not what he needed. He needed step by step instructions to get there. I loaded the directions on google maps and pressed start, turning the volume up on my phone. It gave him directions. The rest of the car ride was had in silence save for the little robotic voice telling him to turn right at the next light. He dropped me off and couldnt leave quickly enough.
I didnt think much of renee. He was a very unhappy little man. Andrew was happily married, had a gaggle of children, a house, and didnt mind that he was working at enterprise rather than using his bachelors degree. He was a smart, well educated man and yet was working at a rental car desk and it paid the bills and diapered his children and allowed him to provide for his best friend/wife whom he loved and he seemed more than content. Renee must not have had such a cozy home/family situation because he was mad about something. He seemed mad at life itself. The bible says to pray for your enemies but people like renee make it hard. Maybe when im in a more enlightened season of life, but for now, that icy man, all i can say is i wont wish for anything bad to happen to him.
Inside, after all the ordeal with uber, the taxi services, and my neighbors, and the three hour stay watching roseanne on their couch in the waiting room next to the counter, the mechanic shop owner didnt remember me. I would have thought they didnt get such a circus ride showing up every day. But, alas, they wanted to know who the heck i was and why i was standing in their office. I had come to pick up the nissan. I paid and they gave me my car. I thanked them for the quick turn around time. I knew they had actually put in a new alternator because though the car had been set and callibrated, it took a whole nother day for the systems that said “on” to start functioning. It said the sensor that alerted me to a car being next to my car in the lane beside me was on, but it neither dinged or lit up the side mirror until the following day. So i knew they didnt just keep the car and tell me they put something new in when they didnt. Everything ran smoothly for 48 hours. On the third day is when the driving on cobblestones shaking began again. I decided i had had enough of enterprise for the time being and i would not take it back to the mechanic shop. I had just gotten everything that is normally in the car back in the car. All the feed bags and car stuff and paper products and gps’ and nail care stuff (i hate hang nails). I didnt fancy dealing with renee again. I was done. I would ignore the shaking until the transmission broke and i wasnt replacing that before i had to. The cobblestone thing usually happened right after i turned the car on and on cold days. After it got running it disappeared. I could live with it for now.
Upon getting things back to normal at work my friend who had done the second to last car repair in the city i worked in asked where the nissan had been. I told him it was in the shop and needed a new alternator. He said he would have put in a new alternator for me, that he changed his own in the sutherlands parking lot one day, and that he knew how to do it. He said he was good with cars but since he wasnt certified, no mechanic shop would hire him without a certification and two years experience at a shop. I said, “well each time it broke it was one or two towns away from here. I didnt think you’d want to drive all that way.” He said, “i would have driven.” The basic message of the conversation was ‘in future, in terms of car repair, i got you, and i wouldnt have charged you $2000 neither’. note to self: next time call the friend, idiot. Boy wouldnt it be good not to have spent that $2000 and instead spent $500 or even $1000. Oh well. You live, you learn. Ive been trying to remember when this change in attitude came about, because i used to think everything was a personal catastrophe happening to me. I think that when a diagnosis i had, that impairs me in no visible or professional way, disqualified me from adopting healthy children, because im “disabled” but qualified me to adopt medically terminal or behaviorally complex children (ie children with a history of setting fires, self harm, or molesting foster siblings), i realized that it was not about me being unfit as a parent. This was how i knew it was about money for the state and not about finding children homes and loving parents, because if i was disabled, how was i more equipped to deal with medically complex or behaviorally complex children? I think thats when i understood that this is a fallen world where unjust things happen to righteous people, and theres nothing we can do about it. So i stopped kicking and screaming and just started making the best of each situation and moving on. I should not have had to take an adjustable rate mortgage with my excellent credit and $40,000 down payment, but, i dont make those rules, and because it was a tiny house on land, and not a tiny house on wheels or land without a structure on it, it allowed the bank to say there were no comparable properties, even though the realtor found them three…and they knew no other bank would take on the property so it was their deal or no deal. They said it was a risk for them so i had to make it worth their while with an adjustable rate mortgage. Sometimes you can make the “right” decision and be miserable or make the “wrong” decision and be happy. After much contemplation i made the financially wrong decision so i could be poor and happy and i dont regret it. Many other people had been trying to purchase the property and were completely incensed when i managed to do it before them, and they wanted to know how i did it. Simple. I took the raw deal they refused. Thats all. You decide what youre willing to give up to get what you want and they werent willing to give up as much as i was so they didnt get the property. They harassed me for a year to see if id leave and sell the property to them but i just got padlocks and guard dogs and moved on with my life. Nothing is going to make what happens in your life just. This is a fallen world and it will always be primarily unjust. All you can do is your best and keep getting back up, keep moving.
Im back in my car and waiting for my next paycheck to pay off this month’s expenses, which will include all the car related ones, and see how bad its going to hit and then start making preparations for the roughly $2000 i will owe in taxes soon. Im employed by a privately owned company and their forms are not, how should i say, the most intuitive and professional kind that could exist. I elected to withhold the most amount possible from my paycheck for taxes as a single person. However, every year it leaves me owing the irs roughly $2000. My director said he solved this problem for himself by asking the company in writing to withhold an extra $400 a month from his paycheck. In that way he ensures that he always gets some back as a refund when tax time comes. I looked at him as if he had just said something in chinese. He was talking about withholding my entire monthly food budget for taxes purposes. I wondered what kind of paycheck he was really getting that he could afford to part with $400 a month and then realized he didnt live an hour away in each direction so he could work 8 hours a day rather than 6 and also his hourly rate would be slightly higher than mine because of 6 years of schooling versus 2. So, he probably can stand to part with $400 extra a month but i cant. I just plan to have to part with $2000 from my savings in the beginning of each year, so i try to make sure there’s $2000 on top of the emergency reserve i like to keep in that savings account. In two days i’ll get paid, turn round and pay my bills, and see exactly how much im going to be missing from the savings account come tax season next year. Best case scenario, i can work enough to put a little extra in there to use on taxes. Totally acceptable scenario, i have to take $2000 out of my emergency reserve to cover taxes….worst case scenario – i have to take more than $2000 from my emergency reserve to cover taxes and car repair and recent chicken pen expenses. We’ll see. Tax season would hurt a lot less if i knew they were using my hard earned money to pave roads or maintain parks…something useful…not studying the effects of cocaine on hamsters or measuring whether teens today are more depressed than teens 20 years ago. Do we really need $160,000 to figure the answer to that question out? And who the h*ll cares what coked up hamsters are doing? If you dont know how to wisely spend my tax money just give it to me and require me to donate a certain percentage of it to a cause of my choice each year. Ill pave roads and fund the fire department and you can play with your hamsters and answer the hair-brained questions thought up by the psychedelic corners of your twisted mind on your own dime.
Anyways, in the post pandemic world, if you are single and live in a remote area, car maintenance and rental cars are going to be a problem, so just plan for a long and complicated experience. Or just be married or live in the city. (Not for me.)