Confessions of a One-Track Mind

It started out as a perfectly ordinary Sunday morning. I got up, dressed for church, grabbed a cold beverage on the way out the door, and headed on down the road.

I got to the end of the road, turned onto the main drag, got less than a hundred yards when, as I was shifting into third gear, there was an ominous "clunk" from my drivetrain and my engine died. Wouldn't let me pop the clutch to restart it, no--it died. The engine stalled, the power steering died with it, and I just barely managed to wrestle it halfway across the nearest driveway before it quit altogether. And wouldn't restart.

Oh, it's trying to start: I'm getting noises that tells me the battery is trying to crank it. There's half a tank of gas; that isn't the problem. I'm guessing something in the drivetrain has gone poof, based on how it conked out, and two other facts: My car has upwards of a quarter of a million miles on it, and two, my extensive (and expensive!) experience with imported cars.

On the whole, I've found my Honda and my previous Subaru to be reliable in the extreme, but they tend to be somewhat over-engineered. One, they overrode things so that you *can't* start it up and limp home with it, and two, it's *never* just a part that needs to be replaced, no, it's a unit. Like, instead of a $20 speedometer cable, it needs a a $200 "sensor bundle". Still, considering I've had this beast for something like ten years now, and it's a 1990---I've had remarkably few problems.

It remains to be seen if this is going to be the killer. If it's going to cost more than a couple hundred dollars to fix it, I may end up looking for a replacement vehicle. And either way, it's going to be a few more weeks before I can do anything, even get it diagnosed.

I got J to come and get me and use her AAA to tow the beast to my house (less than a mile). Of course, she was at church with her phone off, so I spent two hours sitting there awaiting a call back. It was okay, though. It wasn't horribly warm, I had the aforementioned chilled beverage with me (diet Sunkist orange, yummy!) and a steno pad, so I whiled away the time scribbling.

I'm surprising my self with how calmly I've taken this development. If it had happened three months ago, I would've had a total meltdown and walked into oncoming traffic. Since I have a job---a work from home job!---I'm not massively screwed. Yes, it's an inconvenience; I'm going to have to figure out the fine points of the local public transportation to get to my meetings at the library this week---and to do any shopping until I can get back on the road---but I don't feel like the sky is falling. And that's huge.

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Talk about being all dressed up and nowhere to go. Here I am, nicely garbed and ready to head to WalMart (because I discovered last night that I'm supposed to do hospitality today---I've *got* to stop signing up for this shit!), and lo and behold---my battery is ded. Defunct. Terminal, no pun intended.

I've called the church and left a message, inwardly cringing, because this was NOT what I had in mind. Granted, I was just going to grab some chicken and salad, but I had every intention of coming through with what I promised.

God damn it, WHY? If it's not one thing, it's five things! And they're all back-to-frackin-back!

iefalheihfiofejhaoiegfyeivhfdv!!!!!

Finally got through to Unemployment, where a nice lady named Melanie got things straightened out so I SHOULD see money next week.

Met up with Big Red, collected chocolate and a WalMart gift card. Yay.

Went by 'Bunny's and collected leftovers and schmoozed. Yay.

Came home and found out my goddamned refrigerator has died. Fuckity-doo-dah. The fact that I have a whole turkey, two packkages of pork ribs, some ground beef, ground turkey and assorted other things in the freezer alone---fucked. Can you say fucked?

Nothing is ever simple, and "It's all good" never seems to last for more than five minutes or so.

I swear, I'd sell a kidney if I could find any takers. A-positive, anyone?

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11:30 PM< ETA:

I flipped the kitchen breakers on and off and, cross your fingers, everything has frozen back up and the temp is down to 20. Maybe a door was ajar...? I didn't think so, but...given the fact that this fridge was at least secondhand when I got it, I suppose I ought to start thinking about a replacement.

If that wasn't stressful enough, I headed over to church for a small soiree, and got pulled over by a sheriff's deputy who claimed that I hadn't completely stopped before a right on red. Oh, and the fact that my tag *technically* expired on my birthday...all he did was give me a warning, but I honestly didn't need that shit.

Made a helluva good deal at church: Someone brought in three rotisserie chickens for the event, and there was a whole one left over, for which I swappeed the remainder of my birthday sheet cake. (9/10ths left, and there was no way *I* could eat it single-handedly.)


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