2020-06-08 — A Little Lighter

Hiya, peeps. 😊

Another day has come and passed, and I felt noticeably lighter today (morale wise). That was nice! I was up and out to work relatively early to the first car, owned by a very patient lady who’d contacted me after having the AutoZone peeps recommend me to her. I think she waited for three days for me to get to her, which is an eternity in the mobile business.

She was super nice, as was her mother–an absolute gem of a woman by the experience I had with her. She was just so… light and happy.

Man, I wish I was at that place as my normal mode of being 😊. I’ll take the lighter day today for now, though.

The older mother was sitting in a chair on the front porch tending her various plants, just smiling, happy, and friendly, as if filled with infinite patience, kindness, light, happiness, etc.

Lovely lady. 😊

The car, on the other hand, was a Chevrolet Cruze, and if I haven’t written anything about Cruzes or Chevy vehicles, in general, then… well… don’t buy them. As my grandad used to say, “General Motors junk.” It’s certainly true today, in my opinion, as one who works on General Motors vehicles probably more than any other, and Chevrolet cars, especially the smaller ones (Cruze, Sonic, Aveo, etc.), are some of the worst offenders.

Anyway, it was having some sort of timing issue, and it took a while, but I finally got it figured out, I think, and she was super happy.

Then I had the unfortunate opportunity of telling a man that his engine had seized up. ☹️ He was driving down the road, and it just… boom. I had actually referred him to another mobile mechanic on Saturday, I think it was, who’d diagnosed it (I didn’t have time to get to it. I actually said, “no” 😎), but he wanted me to come and give a second opinion, so I did.

He took it super well, and I was able to alleviate his concerns that it was his fault. I have no idea what caused it, but it didn’t appear to be his fault, so I think that was comforting to him. He thanked me for telling him that. (It would stink to be told that a needed several thousand dollar repair is your fault.)

The third car I did was a key-stuck-in-the-ignition no start, and it turns out that after he removed the battery from the car to replace it, he didn’t bolt the battery-to-block ground back down, so the battery wasn’t properly grounded, and the car couldn’t start as a result and locked the key in the ignition.

The last job of the day was mine as well (David did 6 cars today, and I did 4). It was a 1999 Honda Accord that was also a no crank, no start. The owner was a younger kid, and he thought the issue was a battery cable. It actually turned out to be a missing rubber clutch pedal stopper, which was keeping the clutch safety switch from being activated, which in turn, kept the car from starting. (if you’re not familiar, manual transmission vehicles have a sensor on the clutch pedal that makes it so you can’t start the car unless the clutch pedal is depressed.

Automatic transmission vehicles have a similar sensor called the neutral safety switch that won’t let the car start unless it’s in Drive or Neutral. Anyway, with a bad stopper, the sensor wasn’t receiving the signal that the clutch was depressed, and thus, the vehicle wasn’t able to start.

He was super happy. I also taught him how it all worked and showed him how to bypass the clutch safety switch in the future if it ever came to that, so he wouldn’t be stranded somewhere.

And… that was the day.

I got home at 9 something tonight, ate and drank, and went out for a run in the gentle leftovers of the tropical storm that hit the gulf. I only went out for 15 minutes again, like the last three nights since I’ve not been feeling as well physically, due to the heat and my less-effective handling of it.

It might be the last night of having Che on the run with me, as Liz is going to be by in the morning to pick her up.

Back to falling asleep while writing in my journal…

So… Yeah… It was a good day, the lighter, happier kind. 😊

#1. I’m grateful that strawberries were only a dollar today. I bought three things of them, dropping one off, along with gummies and sour patch kids, to the Bentonville AutoZone peeps, and eating the others throughout the day.

#2. I’m grateful to have just been in a less-prone-to-stressing-out mood today. It was nice. It was a busy day, but I didn’t feel stressed about it much at all–just sort of rolled with it.

#3. I’m grateful that my days watching Che are coming to an end. She’ll be heading back to Liz’s in the morning. I love dogs, but she just doesn’t fit into our lives here. She’s extremely high maintenance, partly, i think, because she’s super smart. It’s been nice to have her here in some ways, and it’ll be nice to have her leave. I just don’t have time to people attend her, and I’m becoming rather itchy with all the tick, chigger, and other big bites that have multiplied as a result of being in regular contact with dog hair that’s in regular contact with those bugs.

#4 I’m grateful to have had a fairly decent attitude toward hardship today. I risked it on the first car, gambling the cost of a part that I thought was likely the issue but wasn’t sure. I was lucky and got it right, but I was prepared to have been wrong and to have eaten the cost and been fine about it.

#5. I’m grateful I was able to get a key cut for the Durango. It was a little adventure yesterday breaking into the car, especially since all the tools I have to break into cars were inside the locked car 🙃, but I got it. Today I had another spare made, since the current spare is with my mother in Washington state.

Well, folks, I’m falling asleep right and left (that’s not political speak 🙃)

Good night!

Lift the World.

~ stephen