Unnatural Disasters

 Wouldn't you know it was time for something, at least, to go haywire?

Today was that day.  Although it started out so nice.

I did the cat chores after sleeping late, and headed off to petsit.  Like I mentioned before, they have lots of available channels to watch on TV.  So I play with the cat and watch TV too.  Well that cat loves to watch tv.  I've never seen the like.  She hates news but likes action movies.

I don't get a lot of channels here at my place.   So there, I took advantage of being somewhere that has all those channels and began watching the series Jack Ryan, Final Season.  It's on Amazon, but I don't get Amazon video anymore, after quitting Amazon Prime.  Too expensive!   

I got through episode four, then had to leave, go home, figuring I'd come back this evening and watch the rest of the season episodes.  This was high luxury living for me.   The cat liked the episodes too.  What can I say.  We have similar tastes.

I had to return the Lebanon teens, fixed yesterday, along with the already fixed one from same place, in my bathroom.  

So I take off in my car to drive on home and the car starts sputtering, shaking and jerking.  The check engine light is flashing, plus a couple more lights and I can only go 20 mph or less all the way home.  Holy uncool.

I was worried sick, all the way home, mind racing, thinking how will I get the teens back home.   But, fortunately, a lady I know, came in from Millersburg to take me to Lebanon with the five cats.   So after we got back from taking them over, my next issue was fixing my car.

I figured it might be an ignition coil gone bad.   It's not like in the other previous car I had they hadn't started blowing when the miles got  high, like my current car miles.  I actually had a new one on hand, from years back, when I had the other car.  This one is same make and model just a year younger than my old one was.   But now its way up there in miles too.   I've only put half those miles on it.  The other came already on it.

I used same old method to find the bad coil, taking the ignition coils off one at a time.  If the engine idle speed stays the same when the coil is pulled off the plug, then its bad.   It was the third coil pack I tried that was bad.  This is a trick I learned years ago on youtube.

How I love youtube.

Here's the complication:  there was oil down the side of the coil pack.  To me, it looks like clean oil and if so, then probably I spilled it along the top there when adding oil, in a hurry, without a funnel.  But it could also mean a bad valve cover gasket.  The lady who got the spots for the teens, over in Lebanon, has a fiance who is a really good mechanic, who said they'd come tomorrow morning and check it out and if it needs a new gasket, he'll replace it right then and there.

I'm supposed to trap a mom and kittens in Waterloo tomorrow.

I got frazzled--stressed, over the car, and worried I wouldn't be able to help the Waterloo cats or take advantage of the Monday spots and wasn't in the moment, so.....this happened next.....

I started to fill the kitchen sink to do dishes.  Got distracted, and went out to clean litter boxes in the cat yard.  Got further distracted when someone stopped by, and we chatted a long time out by their car.  Went back inside to find the sinks overflowing, from me leaving the water on, and the kitchen floor flooded.  So was half the hall.  

Took me hours to clean that up, sweeping water into a dustpan and dumping it in a bucket.  HOURS.  But eventually it got done and now finally I get to go to bed for real.  

The kitchen floor is cleaner than its ever been.  The bathroom is cleaned up after the kittens occupied it, laundry is begun, my cats are fed.  Skippy and Sprite are happy again.  So its all good, well, except for the car.  

I didn't put my new coil pack in it, although that only takes a couple minutes, simply because there was no time and I had to put the old one in and the hood back down because even though it was supposed to quit raining around noon it didn't and looked like rain again.  Tomorrow allegedly it won't rain.

Tomorrow I'll get the car running, but I'm sleeping in no matter what.  Phone is off and I plan to have a very nice long sleep out.

I'm happy the car problem will probably be a simple fix I can do.   I envisioned being two or three weeks without a car and how would I manage.  The money it costs to take a car to a mechanic is a devastating blow to so many lower income and even middle income folks, but its not just the financial hit, the wait time to get into a mechanic can be quite long.   We don't have easy to use extensive public transit around here.   I live miles from even a grocery store.  Most of this town is suburbia like.   There are a couple blocks near the river I think are considered "downtown" but the rest is spread out with then some concentrated big box store type shopping areas, that also have grocery stores.    My neighbor, Jack, lost his will to live when he couldn't drive anymore due to medical reasons.  So did the Bird Lady.   A person then becomes isolated very very fast and completely dependent.