Car Day

Posted on | 4 years, 1 month ago, in the early evening | No Comments

The thing about owning a smallish, oldish car that is paid off in its entirety and which you rarely ever drive … is that you tend to let its routine maintenance needs slide. It’s not that you don’t value the vehicle; and it’s not that you want it to stop working; it’s just that you figure, “It’s lived this long, another week/month/six months/etc. won’t kill it, right?”

Right. But then you notice that your tags are about to expire,* and that you have to pass an emissions test before you can renew them, and then you have a panic attack over how long it’s been since your poor car received even the most rudimentary attention short of having five bucks worth of gas flung into the tank so your husband could drive to his martial arts class.

So you take it to the local auto shop. You sit down in the lobby, approach the desk when they call you, cross yourself, lower your eyes, and make your confession.

Me: Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been 8500 miles since my last oil change — which took place, oh, I dunno, over a year ago …

[:: thirty minutes later ::]

Nice man in a jumpsuit: You ever do a load of laundry and realize you left a Kleenex in a pocket?
Me: Yeah.
Nice man in a jumpsuit: But you discover it before you throw your clothes in the dryer, and you fish that wet, dirty little wad out of your pocket and you say, “EEEW.” And then you throw it into the trash, but you miss, and it ends up on the laundry room floor by the drain where it filters dirt for about a month before you think to pick it up and throw it away?
Me: Yeah.
Nice man in a jumpsuit: That’s roughly what your air filter looked like. Also, you didn’t have enough oil left to shine a bald man’s head. Here are your keys.
Me: Thanks!

Once again feeling morally spotless, I zooshed over to the emissions place and spent forever in line. My car passed the test, so I took my little slip of paper over to the licensing place — where I dropped a ridiculous amount of money on a one-inch-square sticker that will keep me legal for another twelve months. Finally, I swung by the pet store and (a). spent an inordinate amount of time cooing over another cat that’s up for adoption, (b). was accosted by a small and sticky toddler who begged me to pick her up so she could see the kitty,** and (c). raided the aquarium aisles after some water treatment drops and new schwag for Howard’s tank.

How this took almost all day, I have no idea.

But I’m home now, and trying to catch up on a little Friday afternoon housework because the floors are getting revolting. Is anyone doing anything tonight? Any peeps heading out to the Merc? To the movies? I know the weather sucks, but if we-as-citizens-of-Seattle let that stop us, God knows we’ll never leave the house.


* Like, tomorrow.
** Since I saw no handy parent-type people to ask for permission to lift the young ‘un, I took a chance and held her up so she could see the kitty. She couldn’t have been any older than 2 or 3; and I never did see anyone for her to report to. When she’d had her fill of kitty-petting, she asked me to put her down, so I did, and she ran off. Then I found a dispenser of wipes intended to clean up pet messes and swabbed the candy residue off my arms, neck, and face. Cute kid, but she needed a freakin’ bath. And maybe some supervision.

Category: misc

Comments

Leave a Reply





Bad Behavior has blocked 788 access attempts in the last 7 days.