2021-10-08 — White Flag

I think I’m going to start posting a picture of myself with each daily post. I hate looking at pictures of myself, so I’d probably better deal with that. Otherwise I won’t.

Anyway, it’s 12:35 p.m., and I’m just now heading home from springdale. It’s been a long day, and I’m pretty tired.

I’m sure that’s a surprise. 🙃

I’m trying to write my daily Post here via voice to text on my drive home to give me more time when I get home to work on taxes before I crash again.

I don’t know why I have such a hard time saying no when people call. I can’t afford to keep saying yes. I have to get these taxes done. I mean, I guess I don’t have to: I could pay more fines for being late, I guess. But I want to get this done. I just don’t understand why I can’t say no. It’s just weird. It’s like, what am I afraid of? Losing some money? That’s got to be it. But it just seems like such a pathetic reason to not be able to say no. And I don’t have myself close enough to myself right now to actually recognize if that’s true or not. I think maybe I’m a little aloof from what I normally am with myself, in terms of being very on top of where I’m at and why.

I’ll tell you, I end up with much longer posts when I do voice to text. 🙃 The writing goes so much quicker. I just don’t know if it turns out intelligible or not.

So… The day.. I believe my first job was going back to the 1992 Ford F-150 that I did the thermostat housing on a few days ago only to realize that it was a bad thermostat housing out of the box, and that it was leaking at the bleed screw. Today I put the new radiator in and the new housing, and another new hose, and a radiator cap. I didn’t finish the job, though, because I’m going to have Sandy fill it and bleed the system tomorrow. I put gasket maker on the thermostat housing for the factory service instructions. Normally, I wouldn’t do that, but the factory service instructions called for it, so I did. That means that if you’re doing the job 100% right, you’ve got to wait 24 hours before you fill the system. So I charged her a little bit less since she’s going to be the one to fill and bleed the system, and then I went on to my next job.

The next job was a pre-purchase inspection which I did and which my customer was super happy about. She was thrilled with my communication with her, and how I updated her on each of the things that I found during the lookover. She asked for a link to give me a review, so hopefully that means I’ll get a good one here shortly. Any of you out there who feel like you can give me an honest review, I would appreciate it, as y’all know I’m starting over. No stress, though, if you don’t feel comfortable giving me a review.

GOOGLE:
https://g.co/kgs/ckQmPF

FACEBOOK:
facebook.com/nwamobile

The next job job was a big break job on a 2007 Dodge ram. He’d ground the brakes down to metal on metal on one side in the front, and both of his calipers were seized up as well. I didn’t realize it needed both calipers until it was already way late, so I only put on the pads rotors and caliper on the one side. He might have me go back and do the caliper on the other side as well, but I’m not sure yet. The fourth job was the battery job that went sideways because AutoZone’s system is wrong and said that a particular battery size was acceptable for the vehicle, when it wasn’t. It was a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo, and it said that either an h7 or an h8 would work, but that’s not true. The h8 will fit into the box, but it won’t allow the bracket to fit in there to hold it down properly. So you only can use an h7. Oh well. So that battery install took an hour and a half instead of 20 minutes.

The last job I went to was another 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. It was a job where another shade tree mechanic had gone out there to replace a starter, but he couldn’t do it, and he tried to force a way to do it by disassembling the starter in order to get it out. He tried to do the same thing to get it back in. But he just ended up leaving a mess of parts everywhere. I thought I could do it because I thought it was a different engine than it actually turned out to be. So I went out to do it, thinking it might take me a couple hours, but I’d get done. However, it did take me a couple hours, but I didn’t ever actually get it done. It was a completely different setup than what I was expecting, and a much much bigger job than I was prepared for. It was already after 9:30 by the time I got there, and I was looking at a pretty hefty job. And honestly, one that I wasn’t all that comfortable with.

I tried to find another way to do the job, find some other avenue of getting a starter in and out that didn’t require unbolting drive shafts and differentials and whatnot, but it was to no avail. I think I found a way there at the very end that wasn’t too bad, but by that point having already spent 2 hours trying to find another way to do it, only to be lacking still, I finally just threw up the white flag, apologize to the customer and headed home.

And that’s where I am right now–in the car, heading home. I’m about 5 minutes away from home, I think. Then I’ll eat a little bit, and then I will dive into taxes again. Probably not for very long, as I’m already exhausted, but I do want to get at least something done today.

So there you go. Another busy day on the schedule for tomorrow. I’m going to do my best to get these taxes straightened out. Hopefully I’m relatively successful.

Lots and lots to do.

But I’m grateful to be able to reach out to friends and family. I’m grateful to those who’ve taken their time and energy and lives to lift me up. It’s been a long, hard road for me for a long time. I probably whine a little bit too much about that. Don’t need to complain. Just tired. And I probably chose some of the hardest years of my life to make myself public to the world. But that’s what it’s all about. Unglamorous, raw, this is just what it is kind of stuff.

Well, folks. It’s almost time to sign off for the night. I hope you all had beautiful days today I’m filled with peace and light love.

My love to you all.

Lift the world.

~ stephen