As I mentioned a while back my family is driving to Pennsylvania soon and therefore two new tires were needed for my car. This past Tuesday was "new tire day" which meant Olivia, who usually takes my car to her part time morning job, had to take the red truck instead. The red truck inspection is expired also and new windshield wipers are needed for it. In addition to my new tires, the car Owen drives needed two tires, and since my old tires were good enough for an "in town only car," John was gonna have the tire store put my old tires on the rims of Owen's. By the way the green suburban will celebrate its 13th birthday this July. Happy birthday to it. As per usual the tire store people informed John the green suburban rims aren't the same size as the white suburban rims. I could cuss right now, but I'm not finished.
Back to my car....during the process of my car receiving the new tires, it was discovered it needed a new Pitman arm/arms. Have you ever heard of a Pitman arm? I have. BECAUSE before we bought my white suburban from Melanie and Randy, we had to have new Pitman arms on my green suburban. Is it one arm or two? I don't know. The reason I know Pitman arms exist is because the Pitman arm affects the wear on the tires. I know this because when I was driving my green burb, with new tires and a bad Pitman arm/arms, the new tires became ruined due to the bad....appendages. Are ya following me so far? I got screwed money wise....
For some money reason John was unsure about pulling the trigger on the Pitman arms on Tuesday, so he came home to tell me I had new tires but the Pitman arm/arms was/were gonna need replacing in the near future. Since we're about to put 2500 miles on those new tires with old arms, I said, "Get the dang arms." So on Wednesday, my car went back in for new arms. That meant day two of Olivia taking the red truck to work.
Another part to the story....
Last week Caitlin took her car to the Rocket Fast car wash and later discovered, with all the rain we've had, that her windshield wipers had been broken during the car wash experience. After John got home from work on Monday, He began the process of trying to fix the wipers only to discover the mechanism that works the wipers was what had been broken. He then searched online about how to fix it. He took the broken part off the car...removing nuts and bolts (it matters) went to the local parts store only to find they didn't have the part. Tuesday he found one in town...98 bucks....and Wednesday was "fix Caitlin's wipers day" at our house. That was a very expensive car wash.
After work and with the part in hand, he began putting it on the car. Before all this I'd made a plan for us to go shop for shorts for him for our trip....store closing at 9:00. It was all going as planned, until it was time to put the screws back in place. Well, it seems he'd put the needed parts and a pair of pliers on the back bumper of the red truck. The red truck Olivia had driven to work two days in a row. So many cuss words here.... John then had to go to the parts store and buy new nuts...... I'm back after a giNORMOUS laugh. After the purchase he began the arduous process of putting everything back together. It took longer than he expected, or planned, so we only had thirty minutes to get to the store and pick out shorts. I suspect he made sure the car repairs lasted until 40 minutes before the store closed. Huge sigh. Finally he closed up his shade tree mechanic shop and we were off to the mall with most of our car repairs behind us.. Not yet. As we were driving to the store Caitlin called to say her car wouldn't start. Yeah, I just said that. After we completed our very fast shopping trip, five items bought under half an hour, we came home to find the battery dead in her car. Jumped it and boom. No worries. Whatever.
It was a full day and week of car crap. It's my fave.
That's what it's like for people whose cars collectively are somewhere in the family of 73 years old. And I'm not even kidding.
Other car issues left to face:
John's truck registration is up in June, mailed that today.
Owen's car has a cracked windshield, is out of inspection and needs two tires desperately.
All this was a reminder that many things are intertwined. Who takes what car and where, where you have your car washed, and most importantly the car people make sure no two rims are ever the same size so they can stick it to you every single time. That's what I said.
Billie June's birthday weekend has begun and with the open road facing us soon I still have much to prepare.
I suspect I won't be back here for some time.
In the process of every day life I found this picture of the Billie and I don't know who took it but it's quickly becoming one of my new faves.
Much love and appreciation to one of the all time greats.
