Hey, folks. 🙂
Well, the day often go quite as planned.
I went and helped the hill family with the Saturday morning gardening instead of being out working on cars. I think today was the first day of regular Saturday morning garden stuff.
Then I tried to fix that dumb leaf blower, But it’s still not working right. I can get it start now and run a little bit, but it revs up and down like it’s got an air intake leak or something like that. I did pinch the fuel line at one point, so maybe that’s the issue. Maybe it’s got a little bit of restricted fuel flow.
Ugh. I hate paying other people to do stuff that I can do, but good gravy, I really just need to drop it off somewhere, and let them fix it, and get it out of my hair.
That’s one of the funny things about being able to make money just about whenever I want. I can pretty much have as much work as I want to have, so when somebody asks me for help, and it’s going to take me 2 hours to save them $75, I’d rather just work those two hours and pay for whoever it is to fix it.
That was on full display today, as I spent several hours now trying to fix this stupid leaf blower. I could have bought one… maybe two of them for the amount of time I’ve put into it. 😅
My brain tells me that I don’t want to pay somebody to do something that should be easy, but reality is… different.
Anyway, so I spend a good while trying to fix that leaf blower again, getting it started, but not fixed.
Then I went over to the pond area and cut down a whole bunch of trees, realizing that there was poison ivy everywhere, and that I probably got myself tagged with poison ivy leaves and vines a little bit.
So I went home, showered, and then headed out to the one job I had on the schedule today.
This was another “why” experience. Why do I keep saying yes to people who live way the crap out in the middle of nowhere. Especially when they’re going to bring their own parts?
It’s just nightmarish.
I guess it would be better if I communicated better. Then I’d feel better about it, though still not good. For example, today, casein point. The gentleman lives 22 minutes further east out by the lake. I already live 15 minutes away from town, so he’s that much further out. So if we actually need anything from the store, it’s going to be more than an hour to go get it and come back and start working again.
That’s an hour of time lost if I don’t charge them for it, and that becomes a very expensive repair bill if I do.
It’s an awkward situation. People don’t understand that your time is valuable. They think, well you’re just driving, so I’m not going to pay you for driving. And it’s like… I’m driving to get you taken care of. This is work. This is my time. And it’s going to get billed just like if I were sitting in front of your car working. My time is worth what it’s worth, and that’s what you’re paying for, time and expertise.
That’s one of the cruddy things about living way out in the middle of nowhere. If you want someone to come to your house, you’re going to have to pay extra for it. Otherwise, why on earth would I choose to drive way out in the middle of nowhere, and lose all that work time, just to be paid the same amount, when I can just go a few miles away and to the next job? Not to mention reducing the massive headache of being far away from auto parts and whatnot where every little issue that requires parts or supplies requires also that you drive all the way back into town.
Anyway, people don’t understand how to value themselves a lot of the time, and so they value other people’s time as nearly worthless as well if it doesn’t appear that they’re “working”.
Anyway, so here I am way out in the middle of nowhere, and the gentleman has purchased a starter and wants me to put it on, and doesn’t want any diagnostics done, so I go out there, and he’s purchased the wrong starter.
Lovely.
Middle of nowhere, and he has the wrong starter. Joy. That makes it rather awkward. Again, people often don’t understand the value of your time, so you show up, don’t fix their car because they don’t have the right part, and a la that college student from a few weeks ago who bought the wrong part and felt like I should be the one to have to pay the price for it, you get to either eat it or seem like a jerk for charging them money when they didn’t get their car fixed.
Ugh.
Well, in this case, the gentleman had like three other vehicles in his yard, all broken, but the same make model and generation as the one he needed to put a starter on.
So I got to go over to one of the other junkers, pull the starter off that one, and swap it over to the car he wanted it on.
So I did that, rolling around in the gravel and dirt because all of the cars were in the yard and not on a driveway, got the starter put in, went to start the vehicle, And what would you guess?
Yep, the problem wasn’t the starter all along. My first thought was bad compression when I heard the sound of the engine made…
Yikes.
I was a bit frustrated at this point because the guy, who was really nice old guy who kept telling stories and couldn’t hear very well basically expected me to stay there and figure it out because he didn’t have another car to drive, so I was sort of held hostage because either I got an unhappy customer if I leave them in that predicament or I stay and try and figure out the car.
So I stayed. I was frustrated with myself or even accepting the job, staring in the face exactly the reason why I shouldn’t accept these jobs except under very clear expectations but I’m going to be charging them for all of my time, including drive time, gas, etc., if I have to go get parts and whatnot.
But I didn’t do that this time. I didn’t have that conversation with him. He doesn’t text, so I didn’t send him the standard message that I send my customers who provide their own parts, etc.
Even when I do send that message, it’s still super awkward to charge people for going out there and finding out they have the wrong part.
Anyway, so I was frustrated, but eventually, I diagnosed the car as having super low compression. It was reading only 30 PSI on the two cylinders that I checked, so the engine was toast, or the timing was completely off. One of the two.
Gratefully, this particular gentleman, though he did expect me to stay in work on his car after I had already done everything, and more, than what he’d asked originally, gratefully, he also expected to pay for the extra work. So that, at least, was nice, and at least he had a parts vehicle to take the starter off of instead of having to drive over an hour to get another starter.
From there I went home, went back to the pond, dragged all those poison ivy covered trees into a burn pile, and started them on fire, doing my absolute best to stay out of the way up the smoke so I didn’t kill myself.
Well it was burning, I kept cutting down more and more and more and more trees that were either dead or clustered together so thickly that the trees weren’t healthy.
By the time I was done, I think I had cut down somewhere around 40 trees and quite a number of other saplings as well.
That’s a lot of trees. 🙃
I also cleared out a crap ton of vines, and it’s almost to a point where it’s looking pretty good down there. Of course, it’s still doesn’t fill up with water because they dug too deep, past the red dirt, but one of these days we’ll get red dirt in there and fill the pond with actual water and not just… ashes. 🙃
I didn’t do any of the pondering today that I should have done. I’m gonna do that today, though. The plan is to put the phones on silent and go… breathe… and ponder.
I have to figure something out in this situation that I’ve been in for so many years now that just dominates my everyday. And I need to figure it out soon. I just can’t keep going on like this.
Wish me luck?
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 