I woke up at 5am. After falling asleep sometime well after 2am. Seriously. And I was wide awake and in pain. But it was chilly in the house, it didn't take me too long to get out of bed (for the first time all year), so I just went with it. I made my iced coffee, turned on what passes for local news, and started my day. It took me until I left to realize it was Friday. That's not surprising.. unless I have a doctor's appointment, I usually forget what day it is. Especially when a holiday falls in the middle of the week. But I had a plan today: take my car to the local garage, find out what's wrong with it, then take it to get the long overdue oil change. Hopefully it'll stop throwing temper tantrums, especially if it was a quick repair I could afford. That was mistake number one.
My car requires some super expensive specialized computer scanning equipment (yay German technology!!) that some shops don't have. And those that do want an arm and a leg to use their scanners. Then they want you to pretty much sign over your first, second, and third born children to fix anything on your car. (If you're REALLY lucky? They'll even fix it right the first time!) At least the basics are the same, so over the weekend, I started with the basics to try to find the problem. So when the mechanic with the really cool scanner (if I had over $10,000, I'd buy myself one) hooked it up to my car, a random air conditioner code came up. "Does you're A/C work? This might just be coming up if someone was randomly pulling things, but who knows.." Oops. I checked fuses, but not all of them are labeled, so I sorta kinda pulled a few out to check them to see if any were blown... and may have broken my air conditioner in the process. Not that I use it anyway, but still. Then I found out that what IS broken is a $45 part. That runs about $100 in labor. Unless the stuff surrounding it is rusted, swollen, and caused it to break. Then it's a few hundred more. What're the odds given my luck, right? (I'm still a bit pissed I may or may not have inadvertently broken my a/c system..) Then I went and got my oil changed. Of course they had 1 oil filter left, and the box was mislabeled. But I had a coupon for it, and a coupon for them to check the a/c system, so I figured what the hell, right? I can exonerate myself. Or not. "We can't do this. It's going to cost about $140... blah blah blah, unless it's the compressor, but first we'll start by making sure if there's a leak and finding out where the leak is." The guy is usually pretty straight forward with me, but it's a newer car, so I stupidly blurt out without thinking how could my car's a/c system get a leak in it already? "Easy. There must be a hole in it somewhere." If my car wasn't on the lift, I'd of kicked him right off that table. Really. A hole? I never would have guessed. Not to mention I already kinda pissed him off by making a very valid point about asshole customers illegally parking in the handicap spaces, to which he admitted they're pretty lenient about. I brought out my placard registration and ID, and tried to stay calm while I explained to him just how much trouble he could get into by allowing that practice if I needed that spot because he chose to not give a damn that some lazy asshole customer wanted the spot next to the door. (It was always a pet peeve, but since I broke down and got my own blue window card, it pisses me off).
Then I'm stuck in the waiting room with an old man who reminded me of my grandfather and an almost completely deaf WWII veteran. Turns out, both grew up and worked where my family grew up. And the stories began. Most I knew by listening to my grandparents and mother, but these had a lot more detail---details purposely left out to a growing girl that shone a whole new light on things. It was like going back in time. And straight into a movie. Of course my mom laughed at me because most of it I hadn't figured out by now, but what are the odds that up here, in the middle of nowhere, I run into 2 old men in their 80s from that far away? Seriously?
As if that's not enough to learn in one day, I learned why they're called flights of stairs. Not because stairs fly, but because people and objects fly DOWN them. As I did. I knew I bruised more easily over the last few years, but I look like I went several rounds with every step and lost. How? I'm not sure. My entire side just weakened and next thing I know I'm on all fours at the bottom of the steps on the concrete floor. I ache like hell now, but the next few days are seriously going to suck...
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