2023-04-10 — Monday’s Monday… Ugh.

I’m pretty tired.

More than just pretty tired.

I think I finally got to sleep somewhere around 2:00 after giving up on trying to get my taxes done. I was just too tired, and my brain just wasn’t working properly, and my eyes were closing.

I guess either it’s not like the old days where I could do the all-nighters, or I’m just so perpetually low on sleep that I can’t do them, or something. Maybe all of the above.

I guess I’ll start with the good things, as today was pretty rough day, and it’s probably good to focus on some good things just start with.

On the bright side, apparently if I do have Poison ivy getting ready to show itself all over my body, at least I managed to keep it away from my more sensitive areas?

It’s been 24 hours, so that means I’ve managed to keep it off the most sensitive of areas. 🙃

I think I’m probably safe from having gotten any in my eyes, for the moment, at least.

And I’m still breathing relatively decently, so I guess maybe I’ve done well enough to not have major lung issues?

I don’t know how long it takes for lungs to react.

It hurts just a little bit to breathe, not much.

Anyway, I I slept in until like 7:30 because I was so tired. Unfortunately, what that meant was that I was scrambling trying to get taxes done with a full schedule of work to do as well.

It was a really bad idea to start a fire last night to burn those vines and trees. I easily could have finished my tax stuff yesterday had I not done that. So what I ended up with was a day that just…

Sucked.

I had notes in my tax stuff for things that I didn’t have documentation for. I knew I had the documentation somewhere, as I had just seen it yesterday or the day before, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched and searched and searched and searched, and finally I found it and a folder that I didn’t think I’d even opened in the last several months.

🤷

Anyway, there was a lot more to do than I had time to get done before I really just had to leave and go to work. So I took pictures of a bunch of documents that needed to be dealt with, and I went out to start the van to leave.

I was already pretty late because of the whole tax fiasco thing. And I was already in a pretty bad mental space because I was so far behind on the day already because of my choice to burn yesterday. So I was super stressed, and super frustrated because of the issues finding my tax document, and then I went out to start my van, but it wouldn’t start.

So I got my jump box and jumped it, but it died right away.

Lovely.

So in the midst of my super stressed out and in a massive hurry, there I was stuck. I also had to take all the tools out of the van that I had used to go through the woods with.

So that was frustrating.

Gratefully, I managed to make it to the AutoZone in Rogers, where I got some parts and picked up a battery for my work van.

Gratefully again, I was able to install it very quickly. I was frustrated with every hiccup and in a pretty terrible mood and angry, but realistically, I was able to change the battery pretty quickly.

Part of what was weighing on me, in addition to all the other stresses, and I don’t remember if I mentioned this last night, but for some reason, huge veins in my temple and forehead area, like varicose vein looking things, have popped up to the surface and look pretty nasty.

The vain part of me isn’t very happy about the veins. 🙃

I’m pretty self-conscious and feeling pretty unattractive right now.

(sigh)

They just came out of nowhere. And I can feel my pulse beating through them powerfully.

🤷

I don’t know. I’m pretty down today.

While I was working, I took time to take screenshots of all of the relevant bank account transactions that I needed to be aware of and account for in my tax stuff.

When I finally got a breather during my second job, having to wait for the gasket maker to set up anyway, I went to start inputting all of the data from the screenshots into my tax spreadsheet, only to find out that my bank account app doesn’t allow screenshots. What I mean by that, is that my photo app or file app or whatever showed the screenshots, but my bank account app had blacked them all out. So I had a whole bunch of black screenshots.

All that work haven’t gone through all of those accounts and having taken screenshots of the relevant transactions… Down the drain.

So I had to start over and do it all again.

I also realized that my scheduling was off just enough that two jobs that were super close to each other needed to be done at different parts of the day, so I had to leave and then come all the way back.

And of course I drove all the way down south to my second…

Oh, I guess I had better explain the day. The first job was going back to the break job that I didn’t do on Saturday night. So I went over to it, and I got it all done. As with so many things, it was not without a hiccups. The people who topped off the fluids the last time he had some service, way overfilled the power steering fluid and way overfilled the brake fluid.

Hot tip for the day: Don’t pay for the service where they offer to top off your fluids for you. It’s a bad idea. You don’t want your fluids topped off, plain and simple. Every single fluid in your car with the exception of gas and windshield washer fluid is part of a closed system that doesn’t ever get used up. So if you are low, it means there’s a problem. You don’t just go topping off fluids. You figure out why you’re low on the fluid.

Because they are closed systems, there’s only two possible causes for low fluids: 1. Somebody service the system and didn’t feel it properly, or 2. There’s a leak.

In the case of brake fluid, it can be a little deceptive because as your brakes wear out, it requires more fluid in the system to put the brakes on. So it looks like you’re getting low on fluid, but what it’s actually telling you is that your brake pads are wearing out. If you top off your brake fluid, you know longer have that simple and easy reference to see if your brakes are wearing out.

And if you just start going and topping things off, you make it annoying for mechanics in the future because they have to suck brake fluid out of the reservoir before they can do the brake job, otherwise it’ll spill out all over the inside of the engine bay.

You don’t want brake fluid spilling out on the engine bay. Break fluid dissolves paint.

Not so good.

Anyway, so the person who topped it off way over filled everything, so when I turned the steering wheel, power steering fluid bubbled out of the power steering fluid reservoir and onto the ground, and when I retracted the brake calipers, even though I checked to see the brake fluid level, it was a dual piston setup, so it pushed out a whole ton of brake fluid.

All over the engine bay. All over the ground.

And that’s even with me seating the brakes after each wheel.

So after doing the whole break job, finding in the process that he has at least two bad ball joints and a bad wheel bearing, I ended up having to spray down part of the engine bay and his suspension and wheel to rinse off the brake fluid.

Little issues that suck your time away.

After that, I drove all the way down south to do a job that’s been on the to-do list for weeks now. Valve cover job on a 2013 Honda Accord four cylinder.

We’ve had scheduling issues, but we finally got to a place where we could get it done.

Unfortunately, in my haste to get to the next job, I forgot that I needed to go to the main AutoZone parts hub in Springdale. I drove right on past and all the way to Fayetteville, doing the job there before realizing that I had to drive all the way back up north to get the parts that I should have picked up on the way south.

Anyway, the valve cover gasket job, which included replacing the air intake hose as well, went relatively well. Valve cover jobs take a long time, and they’re really annoying, especially on engines have timing chains, because I have to add sealant to specific places on the mating surfaces to keep leaks from happening.

It took a while, but eventually, I was able to get it all done. I ran into a bit of a hiccup with the air intake hose because the new hose, which came with new clamps, had this screw portion of the clamps facing the wrong direction. And since it was a predetermined clamp orientation, I couldn’t change the clamps and just spin them around the other way. They were stuck where they were– The screw parts facing down in tight spaces in the engine bay.

😶

Slight oversight in the design? 🙃

Uh… yeah.

Anyway, gratefully, I was able to reuse the old clamps which had the slots in the proper place for the worm clamp screw to be facing up or sideways as they should have been. 🥳

I went to the third job, and it was basically a repeat of Saturday night. I got there somewhere around 7:30 or so and found that he needed pads and rotors, just like my first job of the day today.

Again, like Saturday night, I didn’t charge him for going out there, even though he was a ways away. I figured out what was wrong in a handful of minutes, and it was going to be a long fix, and I wanted to engender some goodwill by not charging since I wasn’t going to do the repair that night even though I could have. It just would have meant being up until like 9:00 or 9:30 at the last job, and I really am tired of working so long.

So I didn’t charge and didn’t get paid for that, but whatever.

I’m stressed out.

Oh, the third job was actually supposed to be the fifth job, but when I drove back north to get the parts that I had forgotten to pick up earlier, they were having computer issues with their system and couldn’t get me the parts that I needed.

I guess you could say that it was a little bit of a blessing in disguise because I was able to postpone the two jobs because the parts weren’t available because of the hiccup in their computer system, which meant that I got done much earlier than I was going to be getting done, which meant that I was able to get home around 8:00 instead of midnight or 1:00 in the morning like I was probably looking at.

Super tired.

I think I finally have my taxes pretty well done for 2022. I’m going to go to bed, wake up in the morning and check everything over when my brain is hopefully working a little bit better, and then call it good.

I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic or real, but my head hurts on both sides where those veins are bulging out. My mom Said she’s never seen anything like that before with my pulse so strong through those veins. She’s of course seen those veins before, and that’s not really a big deal, but with my pulse so powerful through those veins, and my head hurting a bit where they are, both my mom and the internet seem to agree that I should go to the doctor.

I’m hoping that it was just too much heat and too much sun yesterday and maybe too much stress. All of those are possible contributors to the massive bulging veins, but I guess we’ll see. I’m trying to relax a little bit. Trying to breathe.

It’ll be nice to have the taxes done.

🤞

Love you guys.. 🙂

Oh, and the health update. I slept in my bed for all of maybe 2 days before realizing that I’m simply not able to sleep in my bed. Not only does it hurt my back, which I forgot about, but the stomach acid issue is a real issue. I wake up in the middle of the night, or in the morning with stomach acid pains.

Oh well.

Hope y’all had a lovely Monday. 🙂

Lift the World

~ stephen