2023-06-20 — Bugs Galore

It’s crazy how quickly time flies.

I say that a lot.

Haven’t been doing very well lately. I started making what I felt like I was progress turning the corner, but then I slipped back.

It was nice having an actual 2-day weekend. It’s just… Come Monday morning, I just struggled massively even thinking about going out to work on cars again.

I can’t even really remember what I did on Saturday and Sunday. I rented my mini excavator to one of my neighbors, and I went to help another one with his AC in his tractor.

I know I spent a bunch of time cleaning the driveway, finally getting all the crap off the driveway so that it looks at least a halfway decent.

I helped my mom get the little trellises or whatever they’re called set up for the tomato plants.

I spent a pretty good amount of time working on cleaning up and clearing my crap out of the garage. That’s a massive project.

But i made progress.

That was all weekend stuff.

Monday, though I loathed the thought of going into work, I finally got myself going much later in the day. Part of my issue is that I haven’t been getting to bed at a good hour, so I think I didn’t even get to sleep until like 3:30 in the morning or something, so I was already exhausted in the midst of the loathing.

Cognitively, I know I’m lucky. I’m lucky to have work. I’m lucky to make a good living.

I just don’t have any solid foundation of what I’m even living for anymore.

I mean, I get it in my head. I can point to everything that’s worth living for. I can point all the things that I should even be excited for, but I’m just so darn emotionally spent that nearly everything is overwhelming.

But I’m still going. And despite the struggles that I continue to have, believe it or not, I am still making progress toward a better path.

I did three cars on Monday. One of them was a 2006 Pontiac vibe that wouldn’t start, it turned out that all that was wrong was just bad cable connections. Well I was there, the gentleman’s mother asked me to help her with her vehicle as well, so I found that she had a totally drained down battery, and she also had a flat tire that I plugged. I wasn’t able to fully stop the leak, but I was able to at least get it to a place where it could be filled with air and driven to it tire shop.

It was a pretty bad cut.

The third car was a 2013 Toyota Camry that they had left the AutoZone. It needed an alternator, so I slapped one in, and I called it a day. Three cars. I met my goal of $500, before expenses, for the day.

I guess I haven’t mentioned that. I’m only working 5 days a week now instead of 6:00, and my goal is to do the equivalent of 5 billable hours a day during those 5 days.

I reached that go on Monday, and I also did on Tuesday.

Tuesday I ended up doing four cars. The first car was going back to that Toyota 4Runner that had warped rotors, or suspected warped rotors. I bought a dial indicator gauge so I could measure the run out on the rotors, and sure enough, they were warped. That’s the first time I’ve had to do a warranty replacement on brake pads and rotors, that I can remember, and the six and a half years that I’ve been doing this.

Gosh, six and a half years. Never saw that coming when I started cleaning cars 7 years ago.

Toyotas are some of the easiest vehicles to do front brakes on. The trucks and SUVs, anyway. Super super easy. Fabulous design, but I didn’t do these brakes originally, and realized that Malaki had accidentally put the pads in incorrectly. Seeing that some stuff was done incorrectly, I was concerned but there might have been other things done in correctly as well, so it took a little while to go through everything to figure out and make sure that nothing else was wrong.

Anyway, it took three times longer to do the job, more like five times longer to count my first visit, but whatever. It was very frustrating, but I finally got done, so that one was off to list. It had been a stressor for a while, but it’s done now.

The second car was a 2009 Toyota Camry that turned out to have a seized motor. The customer had accidentally left the oil get too low, and it was completely seized up.

😬

I almost did that to myself only a week ago, so… 😅

The third car was a 2004 Toyota 4Runner that she said was making a grinding sound. I thought maybe it would be a wheel bearing or something, and sure enough, when I went out there, it did turn out to be a wheel bearing.

My system said it was three and a half hour job, so I left to get the part, stop another job that’s been waiting for me for over a week now, I think, got that one fixed (It was a 2001 Chevy 2500 pickup truck changing issues. I found that it had a little bit of resistance on the fusible link wire between the alternator and the junction split box.

It also had parasitic draws in multiple circuits on the car, including the radio circuit and the body control module. So I installed a quick disconnect, as fixing those parasitic draws would likely be quite expensive, and it’s an older truck.

I had to manufacture a bolt that would work to install the quick disconnect on the battery, using my grinder to cut a bolt in multiple places in order to have it be the right length. I shaved off probably 2/3 of the threads, but I got it to work perfectly.

Anyway, that one was in Fayetteville, so I headed back up to Springdale back to the Toyota 4Runner job, and then I spent until probably 10:30 at night getting that one done.

Gratefully, I was able to get it done relatively quickly compared to what the book said it was going to be, and I build my customer accordingly, Knocking off over $100, I think from my original quote. Think it was $140 less. She was happy about that, especially since she’s been in a tight financial situation.

Bring it up getting home about 11:30, at which time I ate dinner and submitted my sales tax stuff to the state of Arkansas because it was the deadline.

So that’s a little bit of a catch up for what’s been going on the last 5 days or so. 🙂

A couple of other things to note, for whatever reason, this has been the worst year for bugs since I’ve been in Arkansas. I have no explanation. I’ve been dealing with more tics than I ever have seen, and in our actual regular yard, not just in the woods. That’s super weird, honestly.

I’ve got a whole bunch of tick bites all over my body, and that’s crappy because tick bites on me can last months, the itch I mean.

I also got stung by a bee, gratefully just a honey bee, so I had a very small initial reaction, and only one day of itchy foot, that I can remember. Maybe two days.

We’ve also had a major influx in the number of brown recluse spiders in the house itself, not just the garage. My mom has seen a couple in her room, and I think I might have gotten bitten by one. I’m not sure, but I woke up one morning to this really crazy prickly pain in both legs that started to advance up toward my torso.

Then the next night or so, as I was sitting down again in my recliner and pulling the blanket over me, I felt something touched my arm. I knew that it couldn’t have been my blanket, and I didn’t know what it was, but my first thought was brown recluse.

It’s like turn the flashlight on on my phone, since my room was dark, and I started looking to my right and left as I thought the recliner. After a handful of seconds, I spotted a large brown recluse spider that I had apparently accidentally partially smashed. It was still alive, and tucked behind myself phone on the armrest of the recliner.

It’s been a trip this last week. 🙃

Love and hugs. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen