2002-07-01 - 9:20 p.m.
The day started slow, but picked up steam along the way. By noon, I had made an unplanned purchase of a new set of tires for the car. I took it in to the Grandfatherly-old-guys-across-the-street garage for inspection and they told me the tires were bald, cracked and likely to disintegrate at highway speeds....Yikes! Since we are going on vacation next week, making a six-hour drive, the deed had to be done. So I reluctantly parted with the $354 required to put new shoes on the beast and keep us from roadside calamity. Dealing with the car always makes me feel like such a.... girl....an air head, in that kind of fifties way. Like Lucy, if Ricky let her drive the car. No matter how hard I try to stay in touch with it's needs, I always forget about something. And I still cringe and hang my head when the guys at Jiffy Lube give me those disapproving little lectures. "Ma'm, When was the last time you changed this filter? How would you like to breathe through this?"
I'm really not the little-darlin-can't-break-a-nail type. I mean: I have a tablesaw. I'm the designated bug-stomper and mouse-trapper in our household. But when it comes to the car, I usually wimp out. (Aside: I used to tell myself that at least that was one of the advantages of my marriage: I had someone to take care of the car. Which in itself is a comment on the state of that relationship.)
Then, too, this particular car has a sour personality.I've always felt that, even though this car was the only thing I brought from my former marriage, it still carries some of the energy of my x-husband. Because he picked it out, and once had his vanity plate on it. It has attracted an unusual amount of bad luck: it has been hit six times. I must admit, "Mother Superior" as we call her, has continued to hold up and run reasonably well for seven years, which places her in late middle age for the life of a car. But she is a whiner. She developed this annoying habit with the bells... those obnoxious little bells that go off to tell you to buckle your seatbelt, or take your keys. One day they just started going off randomly. So you never know, if you are just driving down the street, when you will get the bells. She seems to have a way of knowing when you are in a difficult traffic situation. Or pulling up to a drive up window. And then she starts dinging. And lately she has developed a new habit. She dings whenever the driver's side door is open. Which adds an element of urgency to every entry and exit. It sounds like the bells are saying shut-the-damn-door-shut-the-damn-door-shut-the-damn-door.
And the radio/tape player mysteriously died some time ago. So we have to sing. Luckily Skootie is a walking library of song lyrics, but six hour trips can be a challenge. Someday we're going to get a car that doesn't nag us.That's really ours. But now at least we (and Mother Superior) are ready for the road trip....
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