ocg's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 12.26.2003 Christmas tips What do you do when one car's CV joints are just about shot, and the other car won't start because the ignition is shot? Well, here are a couple of things you don't do! 1. Drive the car with the bad CV joints from Portland to Coos Bay and back. Reason: Because on the way back, on Christmas day, when your husband has to be at work by 3 and you actually got out of Coos Bay on time and everything is cool and you just got a bunch of pretty smelling stuff from Victoria's Secret and are dreaming of vacuum sealing foods when you get home, and washing your pretty new drinking glasses, and making your Jar-o-cookies that your brother's girlfriend so thoughtfully made you, and using the tools that your step dad just got you, because, even though you've never really gotten along, you and he have found this great new common ground of tools and gadgets, and he is actually encouraging you in something, just as you are reaching Cottage Grove, the car will start making freakish jerking motions, as though it is vehicularly communicating, "I could take you both out at will! Anytime!" And then your husband has to call in to his hospital to tell them that he doesn't think the car is going to make it, and they tell him it counts as an absence, and he is ALL work ethic and emotionally torn up and obsessing over it, and you limp the car home at 45-60 (when you're lucky) miles per hour with every muscle tensed in your body, praying, just praying that it'll make it, because your real dad used to drive a tow truck and regaled you with stories about charging people exorbitant rates, especially on holidays, and why did he just tell you this two days ago? And then you make it (enter hallelujah chorus) and empty out the car into your house which still looks like a landing zone for a nuclear bomb (exit chorus), because all of the presents for this weekend with his family are everywhere and when are you going to have time to wrap them and put this all away, and you're starting this new job probably on Monday, but you don't know yet because you have to call her ON Monday to find out and you do this: 2. Try to let your very intelligent but sometimes vehicularly inept and spontaneous husband change the ignition in his car on Christmas day. Reason:Because you'll get your other car unloaded, and your husband, still obsessing over the fact that he had to take the day off, will get fancied up in an old ratty sweatshirt, and wanting to be a good supporting friend and wife, you dress up much the same and head out to the parking lot to help him if you can, and he's already got the parts and a book for his car to help him do this, so he's thought ahead, right, and has read through this book, and it should all be easy easy, ok, so you let him do his thing, even though you want to get in and do it because you were raised around cars and even though you don't always let him know it, you know way more about cars than he does, but hey, he's a smart guy and can figure this stuff out, so you get to work on cleaning out his trunk which is so full of crap that you can't fit anything else in there, and he's been telling you since he met you 5 1/2 years ago how he's, "really got to clean that trunk out", and in the last year it's become a running joke and his way of letting you know that he probably would not be doing something, along the lines of, "Yeah, I'll get to that right after I clean my trunk out." So you're pulling out pop cans and rusted wrenches and nails and pennies and oh, there's where that pack of OB tampons disappeared on that trip you took snowboarding about six months after you met, you know, the make-it-or-break-it one where you have to play cool because is this really going to be a long term relationship, you don't know, but if it's going to go any farther, this trip has got to be golden, and wow, they get really big when they get wet and sit in a trunk for 5 years, and you organize his tools for him in the 5 different toolboxes jammed in this trunk, and he has more bottles of fluids for his car than he has for his own personal hygiene, sheesh, who packs all that stuff around, and you finish and check on his progress, and start reading the book he got for his car and ask him if he brought out a drill, because he has to shear off a couple of bolts, and he quickly comes to the realization that, oh crap, he can't fix this, he's not even sure he has the right ignition, and wow, that wasn't the section HE was looking at in the book, but, yeah, that looks like what needed to be done, and two hours later you have a steering column disassembled on the front seat and nowhere to go but inside, because, hey, that black rain cloud you passed on your way home has caught up and it's pouring. Yeah, don't do that. 6:28 p.m. - 12.26.2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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