And yeah, I’m on the pc!
Wanna know how Love Day began (and will) end?
Bungle has a new gig lined up, something he’s working on. Passionately. Which means he doesn’t sleep. He just lays there thinking. Sometimes if I roll over or get up to use the loo, he’ll start talking to me like I’m actually awake. I might mumble a few things in response, or react in a daze, but really, I’m just about me and the toilet and then getting back to bed. I don’t really hear s* and definitely don’t comprehend it. I gotta be awake in a little bit. (Which reminds me-I have to black out the windows for him tonight-they stuck him on a “3rd shift” and he can’t sleep with the tiniest bit of light in a room. And! I forgot to pick up the black trash bags while I was perusing cute little cupcakes to leave out for him! Not sure how I’m going to get this one sorted yet.)
Anyway…
I woke up to the alarm, and yeah, I snooze about 4 times because it’s really best that I “gradually” wake up. It’s like impending day doom, or something. I dunno. But it just works better for me that way. I adjust to “awake” mode. At 6:30 Bungle chirped, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” – “Omg, is it morning already? Happy Val day-I don’t wanna get up.”
Mainly because we’ve had maybe… 3 times to sleep in together in the last couple months? Either his work or mine makes us get up. Feel each other out in the dark for a kiss goodbye, and ask, “see you at lunch? No? This evening? Oh, crap, yeah, after my bedtime.” Way after.
So Bungle had to work today. More specifically tonight. And they called him in earlier, on top of that.
But what really made it all suck was the fact that his SUV decided to take a giant poop on his way out.
Top that off with the fact that I took it into the shop last night to correct an issue that’s been going on for a while, but easily fixed-not touching anything else. I took a wheel off. I put a hub on. I put the wheel back on. THAT WAS IT.
So what happens while I’m driving it down the street to pick up a little noisy part (again, something minor) just to get the car quiet again? It starts acting squirrelly. Now, we’ve had the fifth or sixth or elevententh snow falling at the time. Does that a lot. Never sticks, but makes a general slush of the roads, and general idiots of the drivers on them, so I’m trying to get back to the apartment so no one does a loop-d-loop into the side of me. Was my late night plus working on this thing.
“What in the tarnation!?” I snap at it. “Do you do this all the time?”
The thing with driving someone else’s car… You never know how much they don’t notice, or do and let slide-or what. All I know is I put a wheel hub on and fixed a pretty big problem with it, and 20 minutes later on a bumpy ass snowy road, the thing starts acting like I’ve taken a sledge hammer to the engine itself.
“Eversincha!” Bungle yelled.
😉
Every time I was in the car prior to this fix, I’d be riding shotgun. Every long trip we’d made, which were a lot recently, I noticed a noise-getting more and more distinct. And that last time, I was squirming around with how uneasy I was for knowing what caused it. Every horror story I’d ever heard punted around the shop made me cringe. Always the worst case scenarios. I mean, c’mon, what else would make it a story in the shop?
Here’s the deal with Bungle’s vehicle, though: every time I get rid of a problem car in the shop, his decides it’s their turn to act up.
I spent one day tracking down an old nemesis: fucking lousy side post battery. I to this day LOATHE a side post battery. Why? Because the are the most unreliable POS’s ever invented to cram more things into an engine bay that can’t accommodate. I always get these little “hey-hey! It won’t start” – or – “It’s making a wierd noise!” – or – “It’s acting funny!” when it’s dark outside. So that morning I’d gone out with a crappy flashlight and seen pink and about went brown myself thinking the darn thing had frozen up somehow. “But I just had it in the shop last night! I checked everything! I fixed the heating problem, cooling problem-it’s fixed! I put in new coolant, I made sure the mix was perfect! It can’t freeze! What is that?!”
I’m starting to think that taking it into the shop and fixing something is an enormous jinx.
So I bought a pair of cheap “wear around” boots (had just been wearing sandels until that was forced upon me) and a 150er drop cord so that I could snake power out of the apartment kitchen window and down to the parking lot…
Which, yeah, is against “code”. Every time I heard anything that sounded diesel, I would jump up to make sure it wasn’t the patrol coming to check out the downstairs neighbor’s call, “I just saw something bright orange snaking down past my window… then some chick run and grab it and drag it out to a car… It’s still there, too! With a hair dryer running!”
The thing wasn’t frozen, but the sidepost was being nasty again. Got that sorted in the shop, sent him on his way. Til the last trip and the noise was horrible, and I said, “You’re doing all this driving now, I better put that hub in. It won’t be cheap! But it has to be done!”
Noise gone, steering okay, clicking pin-pointed…
Never fix something small on your own vehicle. It just means the BIG thing is waiting to go “Ta-daaaa! Yeah? Yeah?!!! You like this, don’t you!”
So, I saw Bungle for all of 3 minutes on his way out when I got home. I said, “That thing was acting a little weird last night when I test drove it. Had you noticed that before?”
“A little. But it’s not bad.”
“Hmm.” …”A little” never makes me feel good. Makes me “a little” paranoid.
Then I get The Call.
Bungle Cell: “It’s idling real bad and stinking and flashing a light at me, should I bring it back?”
“Yeah-bring it back. Take Squeaker.” Squeaker-the inherited wagon that has brakes that squeak when you let off of them. It’s not a problem, it’s just embarrassing. Heh. “Eeeep!” every time. Pretty funny to listen to if you’re doing some maneuvering in a parking lot. Vrroom—Eeep! vrorooo…. Eeep! Eeep–eeeeeeeeeeeep. Squeak!
MF that Jimmy!
“Happy Valentines Day, by the way!” I jotted onto his card.
So it’s in a bad way. And I’m all the more pissed to know that by fixing something little and unrelated, something big and unrelated decided to crop up. “Why now!?” I demanded. “What the hell-why now?! Why every time I do something little, something big comes back?”
Oil change and thermostat-comes back with a dead battery.
Hub bearing/assembly, it comes back with a misfire.
What the devil is it going to do when I fix that?
Explode?
Regardless he’s taking stuck taking Squeaker into the city until 3am, and then must commute back here.
Hmm…
Way it goes, I guess.
Got the alarm set for 3 so I can put his dins in the oven so it’s warm for him when he gets here. Gotta take the rough, stinky car to the shop tomorrow and get codes read. If it’s a big job, I can’t do it. Because I don’t have a drive-way or a covered slate of cement or my nifty lamp tree. Only time we can tie up [shop] bays at work is if it’s a paying Volvo sitting in it. And @#$% have I done that plenty. And apartment complexes tend to frown upon cars jacked up in snowy parking lots with someone swearing while crawling all over it and stacking parts alongside the wheels.
Nope…
I just hope it’s the little thing I spotted but am still waiting on parts for.
Just something tells me it’s not. I’m not that darn lucky.
But I’m so hoping that I am.
“Triumph!” I had battled through a tricky car today and got it nailed down-f’ing nailed down! Only to come home to this.
I tell ya! No matter what, there is some car just waiting for their turn to saw at my nerves!
“Feeling good, yeah? Yeah… You got it all figured out, dontcha. All smart n stuff… All that book learnin’ n stuff, yeah? Well guess what!?”
“AAAIEEEEEEE!”
Jacky Green's 15k 