2021-06-11 — Beat

I’m just beat.

It’s been a long, exhausting day, and at the moment, I’m not in a very good space–a bit frustrated (residual frustration… meaning that I’m not really frustrated at anything directly, just leftovers leading to a bad attitude).

Let’s see… the day… I hadn’t heard from my friend early this morning about the equipment he wanted to rent from me, so I started to get ready to head out for a long day of cars, but just as I was leaving, he called and said he still wanted the equipment, so I ran over, got the trailer hooked up with the new tow hitch, grabbed the fire extinguisher, got the excavator going and greased, and over the course of four hours, got the mini ex loaded and taken to his place, got the skid steer loaded and taken to his place, only overheated my brakes once, going down a super steep hill with about 10,000 lbs of extra weight to stop (the electric brakes on the trailer don’t think my truck is plumbed for trailer brakes anyway?). It was… an adventure, but he’s got the equipment, and this is actually a pretty good trial run, honestly. He’s a friend. He’s renting both the steer and the ex. It’s what he does for a living anyway, so he’ll let me know what I’m looking at with everything. Cross your fingers. Hopefully, it goes well.

So I was hours late to my jobs. The first one was fixing that motor home that I started to fix yesterday. I met him at the Super Walmart in Rogers, and got that taken care of. The second car was an ’07 Corolla that wouldn’t start, and it turned out to be just corroded battery cables, so I cleaned the up and covered them with anti-corrosion goo, and they were good to go. And the last job was what he thought was a misfire diagnosis. It sounded like the misfire repair I’d done last time didn’t fix the issue, but when I got there, it wasn’t a misfire issue at all this time. It was a completely different set of codes–the misfire issues gone. Just so happened that his check engine light went back on within a day with a new problem. This one, having to do with the alcohol mixture level, apparently. It was reading rich on both banks, which on those usually means the alcohol percentage reading by the computer is messed up and has to be reset, but you can’t really do that without getting a sample of the fuel and testing the alcohol content, which I… don’t have the equipment to do, so I cleaned his mass airflow sensor, cleaned his throttle body (both of which could also lead to the possible issue of those codes, but not likely the culprit, since the sensor was reading the alcohol percentage at 79% 😶)

So… I told him I could reset everything to factory specs, but if the alcohol content in the fuel really was above 10% (not even up to the 79% the sensors were thinking it was), then it could actually mess things up worse. I gave him the option of what to do, and he chose to not reset the system. He’ll see how it goes, and if it pings, then he’ll take it somewhere where they can actually test the fuel and verify the alcohol content before resetting to factory specs.

After that, I came home, and started helping to put refrigerant in my mom’s car to try to find the leak in the AC, but I don’t do AC stuff often enough to remember, so I ended up getting really frustrated because the system wouldn’t accept the refrigerant, and I got mad because every time I do AC stuff it just… ugh. But finally, I remembered what I was doing wrong, and boom… a minute later, I’d finished what I had tried to do (at least that step of it).

Unfortunately, I didn’t see where the leak was coming from. My mom said she’d lost the AC from one day to the next, so I figured it’d be a big enough leak to see, but I couldn’t see it, and the dye I thought i had wasn’t the right stuff, so that wasn’t so great.

She’ll drive as is for now, and if the refrigerant all leaks out quickly, we’ll get the dye and try again.

(sigh).

Long day. Time for gratitude.

#1. I’m grateful the little headlight connection adapters came today. I put them on the headlight assemblies, but I haven’t put the assemblies back on the van yet. One step at a time, I guess, and I’ve only been working daylight hours, so not having headlights hasn’t been an issue yet.

#2. I’m grateful to my mother who saved my bacon today. All that time working on getting the equipment over to Carl’s place was done with me working hard in the hot sun, running from place to place, and getting really hot and dehydrated and not doing so well. I called my mom, as I was going to have to come home to get my work van, and I asked her if she’d make me some food and drink to save my hiney, and she did–four sandwiches and two 64 oz 50% cut (1 to 1 water to apple juice because apple juice is crazy sweet by itself) bottles of juice.

That. Saved. My. Butt today. I don’t know if I’m out of the woods, but it’s the end of the day. I’ve eaten a decent amount today. My pee is a good color, so I’m hydrated, and… cross your fingers. I’m a tad sunburned. I think I might have overworked my adrenal gland a bit. I probably sweat at least a gallon of water today, probably more than that. Hot, humid, nasty day (weather wise).

#3. I’m grateful that my fire extinguishers came. Carl has one as well, but I want an extinguisher handy.

#4. I’m grateful that the trailer seemed to handle the heavy equipment quite well. My truck, that’s another story. I’d probably have been relatively ok if I had electric brakes, but… no dice there. I’ve been on FB Marketplace looking for another truck to buy… and I’ve been looking diesel. 😬 I don’t want a diesel. I don’t know how to fix diesel, but… I’m getting into an industry that sort of… might need that.

#5. I’m grateful that tomorrow is a new day.

Honestly, the day has been just fine. Just long and hot and tired and hard, and then the AC issue with mom’s car, and I let myself get pulled back into being frustrated with the guy who hasn’t paid me (the one I said I was going to let go of). He messaged me and said he was going to pay me and asked for me to email the invoice (which I’ve done probably 10 times already), and then days later he still hasn’t paid again. It’s… yeah… I thought I’d let that go, and I had, for all intents and purposes, but then he shows up like he’s gonna pay, but then it’s just the same old string me along thing.

Daily Accountability:

The Positive

1. 18 days. I’m still moving forward, creeping along, clean.
   
   …Having trouble thinking of positive things right now.

The Needs Improvement:

1. ‘Tis 11:24. Progress but not good.

Buenas, noches.

Lift the World.

~ stephen