What To Do About the Car....

It would not start today.  Made some horrible whacking sound.  Not the clicking of a dead battery.  A whacking sound.

Later on, it started as if nothing had gone on.

I don't like that.  I want something not working to stay not working so I can figure out what is wrong and fix it.  Now, I know it will happen again, when I'm least prepared for it to happen.

I had the battery checked and the battery was fine.  I wish the battery hadn't checked out.  That would have been simple enough.

It's still dripping oil too.  I can't pay out a thousand dollars or more, for a little seal to be fixed, on a car with 220, 530 miles on it already.  I shouldn't do that, should I?  And now, likely, I got told, it may be the starter or starter switch leaving function, or even the fuel pump or timing chain going south.

220,530 miles.  10,000 plus cats hauled.

It's done its job.  I know that.  Been a great car.  But don't leave me now!

I don't have a Plan B.  I live too far from even grocery stores.  I can't exist without a car here.  And how terrible would it be if I could never ever escape this place again?  Be like being in hell would be, I guess, caught in eternal suffering.

Ok, so having no transportation isn't acceptable, or even survivable.

What do I do to get reliable transportation?  Do I sink thousands into this car that has already so many miles on it and reeks of hauling too many male cats?  (I don't have thousands to sink into anything). Currently, I can't say it is reliable transportation.  I don't know, when I set out, if I will make it there, or back from there. Which is scary.  And much like not really having transportation now.  I can walk 12 or 15 miles if I have to, to get home.  That's my range. That's how far I go now, in the car,  pretty much.

I gave up on getting the electric mower fixed.  To get it fixed under warranty, it has to go to Portland.  But shipping it up and back, which I'd have to pay for, negates the benefit completely.  So I'd hoped to drive it up.  I don't think that will ever happen now.  I suppose that mower, used under a dozen times, will end up in the trash.  Not green, I know, but I'm not paying to ship it to Portland either.  My car might make it up with the mower, but it might not.  And even if it did, that cuts short other trips I might make with the car before its death.

That means I'll have to kill the lawn.  With grass killer.  Which will make me mighty unpopular on the street, but then I have no friends on the street as it is.  So who cares.  Kill the grass, people will talk for awhile about it and about how strange I am, then they'll forget it.  I'm not so strange.  I'm just trying hard to survive.

I might be stranger now than I was before I got sick with that stomach thing.  Yeah, that did a number on me.   I got better using anti nausea pills that dissolved on my tongue.  But then.  BUT THEN, I broke out in hives an hour after taking one.  My face began to itch.  Then I felt the bumps.  I ran to the mirror.  I watched in horror, like I was in a scary movie, as the right side of my face began to enlarge before my eyes.  Transfixing!  I couldn't take my eyes from the sight of my face transforming.  I tore myself away and ran to the cupboard and got an antihistamine and I chewed it, so it would work faster.  Tasted awful.  You go eat a chlortrimeton tablet.  I didn't want to die of anaphylactic shock.

I got it in my head I could stop the diarrhea then my own way.  I'm lactose intolerant.  Cheese shuts down my intestinal tract.  I got some cheese.  I ate the cheese.  Pain followed.  Days of it.  I must have overdone the cheese.  I love cheese.  But I can't eat cheese.

After all the sickness shit the last three weeks, I'm stranger now than I was.  That cheese was good though.  Really good.  Now it's back to carrots.  Fun.  I might be eating carrots but I'm thinking of cheese.

I've not found a dentist yet either.  Not only did that one tooth break when I bit on popcorn, but a front tooth filling cracked and part fell out.  Now there's decay at the under edges in two places.  Front top tooth.  My life is dribbling from my hands.  I have no one to consult, on the car or anything else.  I'm in this alone.  I have to be an expert on EVERYTHING.  I have to know how to fix EVERYTHING myself.

Wish I had a giant trunk in a basement wrapped up in chains.  When I need dental work done, I'd dress like a pirate and put on reggae music and go down in the basement, taking gulps straight from a bottle of Rum. Finally I'd open up that chest which would be piled high in big denomination bills and stuff a bag full and climb back up the stairs.  Then I'd get my tooth fixed and pay cash or the car a new engine and pay cash.

Ah, the pirate's life.  That's for me.  A big old trunk buried somewhere, wrapped in chains and full of cash to pay for my day to day needs.  Down the dimly lit stairs I go, down the cobbled dark, damp corridor, holding a flickering candle lamp I am, grinning ear to ear, singing a pirate hag song, cats at my feet a following.

I was going to make one more Portland trip, had said yes to it, to helping the FCCO transport Corvallis registered cats up to be fixed in Portland.  Something happened so the Corvallis clinic had to be cancelled but after some people had made reservations, is the thing.  I wanted to help, still do, but I'm not sure I really should, given the state of my car.  Would be a risk.

I hate sitting home, going nowhere.  I  hate having no human contact at all.  I just hate it. So I guess I will risk the trip, that it might be the last great adventure in the car, rather than sit here another day.

It's like gambling, to drive out my driveway.

What the hell, anymore.   Everything costs so much.

And we're so spread out in this country, we can't even feed ourselves unless we can get to a store that's often miles away and to get to one, you got to have a car and to have a car, you have to have money.

I guess I just hope for the best.

There's no Plan B to be had.  Not around here.

There's only wishful thinking and duct tape.

I've got to score a cheap half decent car.