Oh boy! Guess it’s been a few. 🙃
How the heck are y’all?
Let’s see… the last three days… I left off with my body seemingly disintegrating and a billing mess with work stuff, and since then… there’s been a lot of good stuff going one. There’s been some challenging stuff, too, but a lot of good.
For starters, the hand, foot, mouth thing doesn’t appear to be hand, foot, and mouth disease. After my mom read my post, she connected with me and told me that she had a very similar (if not exactly the same) issue on her toes not too long ago before she went to Ireland. She said it started on her left foot and then moved to her right foot. It’s been exactly the same for me. She didn’t know what the issue was, but after like… two weeks, I think she said, it went away.
Well… I don’t know how long it’s been, probably close to that, and it would appear that my feet haver turned the corner and are now improving. The worst day was the 5th, I think. My toes were really bad that day–itchy, swollen, etc. But yesterday, they improved a bit from the worst of things, and today they improved a heck of a lot more.
The swelling has gone away, perhaps completely, and what’s left is a bunch of darker purple spots–the blistery areas, maybe? Whatever the case, I appear to be on the mend with the toes issue. After doing a little bit of googling, I ran across something called Covid toes (google it, and you’ll see pretty much what my toes looked like). I think I’ve narrowed what I have down to either that or chilblains.
So… having my toes on the mend is nice. 🙃 I wasn’t so fond of having swollen toes, with a side order of itch.
Knees and hips. I think either the 4th or 5th was also the worst day for my hips and knees. They are better now. Like I mentioned in that post–trying to remember that I’ll likely get a respite at some point. Well, it has come, gratefully.
Certainly, they are not good right now, but the pain that’s bad enough that it’s not excruciating or even really bad, but just bad enough that it stays with you constantly and isn’t something that you can really distract yourself effectively from.
I hope that helps give a bit of a feel for severity that you can understand better.
As of this moment, I can tell my knees and ankles aren’t great. There’s some very mild pain and throbbing, I think, but it’s on the level that while I’m distracted by writing this journal entry, I have to pause and pay attention to where the pain and other sensations are coming from and what they feel like.
Basically, it’s at a level that I can ignore and completely distract myself from right now, so that’s… super. 🥳
I’ve been trying to give my body a better chance to heal–doing better at not carrying heavy stuff as much. It’s a lot like it was 5 years ago or so when it was really bad. I would kneel down to lift the jack out of my car. I’ve done that a little bit as well.
Funny, now that I’m paying attention to the pain, it’s worse. 🙃
Of course.
Funny, on the 5th, I somehow tweaked… my pelvis? There was some mild ache on the right side that wasn’t my hip and must have been my pelvis. That lasted… a day and a half? I tried to take super care of myself with that, and now I think that’s gone away.
So… cross your fingers, I’m making progress in the right direction with those things. And progress toward a decreasing pain load is a massive deal for my mental health. Dealing with spikes in my daily level of pain when I already have everything else I’m struggling through really just… nearly deals the death blow.
But today, there’s a lot more relief on the physical symptoms side of things.
I laugh a little as I write that. Thinking about my body is kind of like thinking about gas prices. When prices got back down to $3.00, it was like wow! so much lower! (we’re back higher than that now, of course) When thinking about $4.40 gas, or whatever we got up to out here (I know a lot of you had far higher gas prices where you are), $3 gas is wonderful.
After having dealt with so much pain in so many different areas, the recent decrease in pain, though far from getting back to the zero pain of yesteryear, still feels great. It’s just funny that I’m happy about pain because it’s so much less than it was before.
Stomach.
The stomach issue has been a bear. The night of the 5th, I almost gave up. I was like, if it doesn’t matter what I eat, everything is gonna react the same way, and my stomach acid is just gonna burn the crap out of my esophagus anyway, then screw it, I’ll go eat whatever I want to and stop trying to take care of myself since it ain’t workin’ anyway.
Fortunately, I caught myself and was like, no, we’re gonna just get even tougher on it. So… as religiously as I’m capable of, I’ve been taking my pills exactly like I’m supposed to. I’ve been eating such a bland diet that’s aimed at reducing stomach acid. I’m not a foodie by any means, but it’s still been hard to eat so much food that has so much less flavor than I’m used to.
Old Fashioned oatmeal has been the number one staple, with bananas in it. Generally no oatmilk or soymilk or anything like that. Stupid walmart stopped selling the unsweetened soymilk, only selling the stuff they load up on sugar, like 5 or 6 grams of sugar per serving. It’s crazy–so much sugar in the American diet.
Gratefully, avocados and melons are on the approved list, as are apples. Most vegetables are and many fruits as well. So… that’s a bonus.
I’m breaking my vegan a little bit in an effort to help my stomach heal. Don’t know if it’ll work or not, but I got some of the yogurt that’s the super probiotic kind. Maybe it’ll help get my gut back to happy?
I don’t know. I really don’t get what happened other than my stress was so through the roof that… I had to add stories to the skyscraper so I good stress more. 🙃
Maybe that’s all it was?
Anyway, so for the last three days, I’ve been trying everything I can. I’ve even been sleeping in a recliner because lying down exacerbates my symptoms; and, as you know, being a really super light sleeper, sleeping in a recliner isn’t… great. But… hopefully, it’s helping. Things haven’t been amazing, but they’ve been much better. I’ve got the heart burn coming back as I write this, but hopefully, it’ll calm itself back down again. I tried eating some plain cheerios with soymilk, and it seemed fine, but I think I ate way too much (really full stomachs are bad for acid reflux, as I imagine you already know.
What else… my left should isn’t really improving at all. I’m wondering if I tore it. The symptoms have been the same for over two months now, I think. Pain in specific positions–positions that are common to any person who leads an active lifestyle.
I really hope nothing has torn, but… what else could be the problem months later and not have improved at all?
What else… after going through the last four months worth of receipts, the total for lost money was about $1300ish. So that’s better than I though. $300ish of that has already been refunded, and it appears that the relationships I’ve developed might save me. There appears to be a pretty decent chance that they’re just going to trust me that I bought the parts and never picked them up. They might actually refund me those parts without me having parts to actually return.
🤞🤞🤞
That would be super nice! 🙂
What else in car land? Ummm… on the 5th, I fixed three cars (just like the 4th). The first was a Honda Accord, an old one, that was a no crank, no start (supposedly). I got there, and the battery was drained down. I jumped it, but it was a crank, no start. It took a little bit, but I was able to get it started. It had been sitting for a good long while, so I’m wondering if maybe it just had bad gas.
Given that it was a 30+ year-old-car, it had a lot of other issues as well, so I made them a list of the things I noticed (they’re hoping to be able to drive it [1992 Accord] to Colorado). Next car was a 2011 Cadillac CTS that had a punctured tire. I ended up pulling out about an 8-inch long section of Stihl chainsaw (I think) screwdriver/socket tool.
I… don’t think that got in there by accident, and the guy said he was thinking someone might have sabotaged his tire. Well, after pulling that honker out of the tire, yeah, I think he might be right.
😶
The last care was a 2016 Jeep Cherokee that wouldn’t start… except… it did. 🙃 It took it a little bit, sputtering a tad, but then it fired up and was fine, and I couldn’t get it to not start again, so… it was fixed. 🙃
I’m forgetting something about the visit. I think there was one thing that might have pointed to why it could have been having a hard time starting, but that was three days ago, and I don’t remember now. 🙃
I haven’t gotten much done other than fixing cars and taxes the last four days. When I get home, I turn on some TV or movie while I fight through tax stuff. I spent probably 10 hours or so going through stuff to try and figure out what all got messed up with the parts issues. I still have a bit more to do on that, but it’s mostly done. I’ll put it all together and give it to Allison to look over.
🤞
As far as tax stuff is concerned, I was supposed to have stuff into my accountant by today, but… the other stuff got in the way. Hopefully, I’ll get a decent amount of progress made tomorrow. It rained all day today, but I worked anyway. Having not really made any money for months now, and with the business having been slow, I know from experience that if you want business to pick up, jobs lead to jobs, so you take the jobs you can get, wherever you can get them, whenever you can get them, and then business will start picking up. And… boom. It has. Did three jobs on the fourth, three jobs on the 5th, three jobs on the 6th, and four jobs today, and the phones are starting to take off again–ringing so much today that it went from needing calls to so many calls that I couldn’t get done with the one I was on before the next called (multiple times that happened today).
So that’s… something I’m grateful for today.
Anyway, on the 6th, as I mentioned, three cars. The first was a 2002 Hyundai Elantra that wouldn’t start. They thought it was the starter. Unfortunately, it was a bad engine. 😬 When I first cranked it up, it sounded like bad compression, so I thought to just go right into checking compression, but I felt like I shouldn’t, so… I didn’t. I tested a few things here and a few things there, and I was about to give up when I was like, screw it, I’m testing compression, and low and behold, cylinder two only had about 65 psi, which… though not completely dead, is a very bad cylinder.
So… there you go.
Car number two was a 1998 Dodge V10 that was a crank, no start. Turned out to be a bad fuel pump. I got down and smacked the gas tank, and it weakly spun. Then I smacked it a few more times, and it fired up! We let it run for probably 10 minutes before it died again. I’ll be back on probably Friday or Saturday to replace his fuel pump. I accidentally underquoted for the job, but that’s okay. He’s short on money anyway, and it probably already seems expensive to him, but it should probably be another $60-100 more than what I quoted, but whatever. It’ll help him out a bit, though i won’t tell him.
Car number three yesterday was a 2005 Pontiac G5. It had been sitting for a while, and they said it had a super bad oil leak. Well… I put some oil in it to see if I could find the leak, but it wouldn’t start. Sounded bad.
Another compression test.
Another bad engine.
😞
This one was even worse than the Elantra. This one had bad compression on every single cylinder (most likely the timing chain jumped). The lady said she was gonna go look for another car and asked for suggestions, so I gave her my best suggestions and got her email address to send her my “used car buying guide” that I created. I very directly told her to not buy a car without having it looked at by a mechanic first.
So what happened? Well, after going home, doing tax stuff, and going to bed, the first message I wake up to (I think) was from her–she’d bought another car and wanted to know if it was normal for coolant to be bubbling inside of the overflow.
No. No it’s not. That means you’re overheating–which is bad.
Oh, and I expressly told her to not buy American cars, as they… stink. suck. are trash. So what did she buy?
A Chrysler 300… one of the worst cars–ever.
You know, you try, but some people just… don’t listen. The upshot is that I have another appointment on my schedule now to fix a car–hers. Needs an oil pressure sensor, and it was low on coolant for some reason. And there are only two reasons coolant is ever low–there’s a leak (internally inside the engine, or externally dripping on the ground or inside the cabin), or someone did a repair and didn’t do it properly.
That’s it (unless you’re talking about a car that has already overheated, in which case it could be low because the heat pushed coolant out of the system through the overflow/expansion tank relief tube, but that’s only in play if the car has overheated already. I guess you could say there are three reasons, if you count that situation).
Anyway… so that was what I woke up to in my recliner this morning. 🙃
Oh, and my super old ugly beater van that is my work van that… for all the wrong reasons turns heads, got so bad in the suspension yesterday, that I was thinking the wheel could fall sideways at any moment. So when I got home, though it was dark outside, I pulled the wheel off and was going to try and fix it, having already bought the parts I thought it needed before I went to New Zealand.
Well… 🙃
How funny is it when the mechanic’s vehicle is so bad he’s never seen any car as bad as his?
😅
No joke, somehow, the upper ball joint had popped out of the upper control arm, such that it was sitting on top of the control arm–still attached to the steering knuckle!
😶😶😶
If that’s all greek to you, just know it was crazy enough to just sort of stare at and laugh when I saw it (though it made the repair a lot more expensive both in cost and in lost opportunities.).
Needless to say, I did not have the parts needed to fix my van last night. It was, however, still early enough that I could order the parts and have them come in from out of state by morning, which I did.
So this morning, before I started fixing any of the… 8? cars I had on the schedule at one point today, I drove, very gingerly, to AutoZone and started pulling my van apart, fixing it in a light rain. It took a while, long enough that my two easiest jobs canceled because they figured out how to fix their cars on their own–good for them, bad for me. 🙃 The rest of the cars for the day weren’t as promising. In fact, I had a few on the schedule that I wanted to run away from, but in the spirit of jobs beget jobs, I had taken them.
And then the phones blew up.
(very grateful the phones have blown up. 🙂)
First car that didn’t cancel was a 2016 Malibu that he thought was the starter, and it seemed like it might be the starter, but it was one of the cars with the auto start feature, and I’ve actually never tested the starter on one of those before. Everything was pointing to the starter. It wouldn’t start even jumping it from the relay: It would just click (the starter would click). So I jacked up the car, went underneath, and tried to do testing, but the design of the electrical connector on the starter was such that I could not figure out how to undue the connection.
That’s… a car pet peeve of mine. Every year, seemingly, they come up with some new annoying way of creating electrical connectors–specifically designed to make them hard to figure out how to disconnect, even for us mechanics.
Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart, so I went a different direction. I grabbed my scan tool and started looking up stuff, and low and behold, in a little out-of-the-way section of codes, i found that there was a transponder code error.
His key wasn’t being recognized, and, yup, he’d just had new keys made.
That would have been nice to know. 🙃
So weird, though, that it would allow the starter to click, and that it would click when I jumped it from the fuse box. The safety appears to be built into the starter itself (the ignition wire to the starter is actually two wires, so it must have a brain of some sort, keeping it from starting, even when it gets power, if the proper key signal isn’t present.
I guess that’s one more security measure to keep people from stealing cars, but boy does it make it more of a pain for us mechanics now.
Anyway, gratefully, it was just a key problem. So he ubered home, got an old key, ubered back, and he was good to go (I’d already left by that point, as I wasn’t sticking around to wait for him for an hour with all the jobs I had to do). But he was good and let me know all was well later when he got back: The car fired right up, and he drove away.
Second car was a 2014 Volkswagon Tiguan that had died while driving and had a camshaft sensor code. I got to the car, and per usual, checked the oil and coolant level before attempting to start the car. Coolant. Check. Oil.
None. Nothing on the dipstick, at least.
So I added two quarts, cleared the codes, took her out for a good test drive, and boom, problem solved. The camshaft code is a common one on a lot of cars if the oil gets too low or too dirty.
Keep your oil full and clean, folks. 🙂 Or buy an electric car, so you don’t need oil. 🙃
Third car was… a 2007 Dodge Ram pickup truck that was overheating. Well… I got there, and the radiator was low but the overflow was full. So… I added coolant to the radiator, went to fire it up, and coolant sprayed out of the open radiator cap.
That’s… a bad sign, if you were wondering.
I messed with the radiator cap to see if it would make a proper seal, but nope (not that it would do any good anyway, but I’ll get to that in a minute). So every time I cranked the engine, coolant gushed/sprayed out.
But what was… worse, was that the truck was just cranking and not starting. It was misfiring badly. Take those two things together (coolant gushing out when the engine is cranking (it shouldn’t even overflow let alone gush out while cranking], and not starting due to multiple random misfires, and you have… oh! and the customer saying white smoke was coming out the exhaust the last time it was running, and you have the sad recipe for a blown head gasket or a cracked head.
😞
Been a rough few days for people’s cars. So many catastrophic diagnoses.
The last car, gratefully, was not a catastrophic diagnosis, though it was way out of my normal area, and after dark, and it was raining raining, which meant that I was a sponge, soaking up cold water while lying on my back under the truck trying to change a starter with hands that were just warm enough to still be able to do their job but cold enough that it was harder to do my job.
I was so wet by the time I finished that job. And shivering. And ready for my heater. I stripped down to my shorts and cranked the heater, which was able to keep me warm enough to at least be comfortable despite having a massive cabin space to try to keep heated.
So there you go. I drove home, and I ate some dinner, and now it’s 1:30 a.m., and it’s time to go to bed.
Oh! I heard from some of my friends that are still in New Zealand! 🙂 They’ve been stuck because of weather, but they’re enjoying themselves and that amazing country. Would be so cool to go back.
I just might! 🙃
Anyway, I’d best be closing my eyes and getting to sleep.
It’s still raining. And it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow as well. 🙂
Oh, and I’m lonely. 🙃 I don’t mean that i a depressive spirit right now like is true sometimes. I just… have been longing for good friends, good family, real, ongoing connections. Of course, a significant other would top my list, but I miss my family whose spread all over and my wonderful friends all over the country and the world.
I miss my peeps.
G’night, y’all.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 