It’s all a blur. I don’t really have any event markers to go back and remember the days with like I would while I’m on vacation traveling from place to place. That’s one of the reasons why I like vacations. 🙃 It’s pretty easy to go back and remember.
Anyway, without remembering specific things that happened on specific days, I can at least give some overall generalities of what had been going on.
Been spending a lot of time preparing for the trip by cleaning up and cleaning out. Neither my mother nor I want to come back from a month-long trip, which, though likely quite wonderful, will certainly have us rather exhausted by the time we get home, and the last thing we want after a wonderful trip when we get home is to be visually assaulted by all the clutter and disorganization of our bedrooms, the rest of the house, the garage, the driveway, etc.
So, we’ve been spending lots and lots and lots and lots of time spring cleaning, so to speak.
My bedroom has been my first priority, finally getting everything organized in bins and tubs and on shelves. But everything else is still a pre-vacation priority. I don’t know how much is going to be possible. Things like this always take so much longer than hoped, but we’re going to give it a go, and we’re going to get as much done as we can possibly get done.
With a hoped for departure time of evening on Sunday, we’ve been in high gear sorting, organizing, and cleaning.
After everything I’ve done this week, I finally feel like I have an organized bedroom. It’s taken more than 7 years to get to this point 😅, and this is the longest I’ve ever lived in any single location without moving 🤯, But now I’m finally organized.
🥳
I mowed most of the lawn, missing just some little parts by the garden and the backyard. I spent a good while helping Thomas with his explorer sport track. I diagnosed it as needing a radiator and a thermostat housing the other day, and I helped Thomas with it the other day, getting the radiator out. Then on Saturday, I believe it was anyway, I spend a while putting the radiator in for him. It went relatively well, but when all was said and done, the transmission cooler line wouldn’t click in to the new radiator properly.
🙄
I went online trying to find the transmission cooler line for it, but I couldn’t find it. I’ll have to keep looking.
What else… I’ve still been struggling with what to do with the Dodge Dart. The more I think about it, the less likely it seems to me that I’m the one who caused the issues with it. After spending a good long time riding out the chronology as well as I can remember it, it just makes the most sense to me that it kind of blown head gasket that just got worse and worse by running the engine.
I still have my doubts, of course, because I’m always paranoid but I might have caused an issue, so I might just do what one of my sister’s recommended: I want to do non-profit philanthropic type things for the rest of my life, so here’s a good opportunity to help these people. So what I’m thinking I might do is I might just buy the car from them as is as though it were a fully functioning car without major issues.
Then maybe I’ll just sell it as is as a parts car or something. I’ll certainly lose quite a bit of money, but it will be a big help for them, I think. And that’s what I’m trying to do, right? And that’ll solve the problem either way. If it actually was my fault, then I’m taking responsibility. If it wasn’t my fault, then I’m lifting the world. 😊
So I’ll get that figured out probably when I get back from my trip.
The other issue, which cropped up today, was that stupid GMC Yukon transmission dipstick tube nightmare. It was an absolute pain in the butt the other day, and then I made it even worse.
Ugh.
I spaced taking the dipstick itself out of the dipstick tube before I went to pop the dipstick tube out of the transmission, which meant I bent the dipstick and had the dipstick tube wedged against the tranny with the bent dipstick tube in it.
Then even more stupidly, though I probably shouldn’t judge myself too harshly because it’s not something you just know… I crawled out from underneath the Yukon and went to pull the dipstick out, but because it was wedged against the side of the dipstick tube and the hole the dipstick tube goes into, it just scraped against the metal enough to create a few little metal shavings.
Lovely.
The odds that I got a bunch of metal shavings inside the tranny are probably pretty small, but you know me, if there is a possibility, then I’m going to worry about it. 😅
Anyway, I spent I don’t even know how long at the car trying to figure everything out. I managed to get the dipstick tube back in so I could get the dipstick itself out, and there were some metal shavings on it that I wiped off. Then, being worried about metal shavings, I got the dipstick tube off, and I got my vacuum and went and vacuumed as best I could around the dipstick tube hole, hoping to suck any potential metal shavings out.
On the bright side, they need a transmission flush anyway, because they’re transmission fluid is no longer the nice red color but more like a brownish red… Or maybe even just brown. 😬
I also noticed that the poor underside of the vehicle is rusted crazy badly.
Always have your vehicles inspected before you buy them. Just… do it.
The other crappy thing that came up about trying to get that dipstick tube job done, was that I badly strained the muscles/ ligament/tendons/whatever in my right thumb. It’s the same kind of injury that I have to my left thumb that I never talk about I guess, but it’s been a nagging injury for probably, gosh, 15 or 20 years maybe? That one only ever flares up when I put pressure on my thumb a certain way, and then it can be sore for days or whatever. I don’t even really pay much attention to it other than it can be annoying at times.
The result is that I can’t squeeze anything with either of my thumbs right now, nor can I use my right arm much at all, which makes all of the cleaning and organizing and packing and lifting and everything that I have to do right now to get ready for our trip out west… Challenging. 🙃
Anyway, so my poor little body is a broken little body, but we already knew all that. I just keep adding new issues to deal with quicker than the old issues get healed. 😅
One more reminder of the importance of switching professions before my body is completely shot.
Funny, the things you don’t think about when you’re younger. And then you get older, and your body lets you know not just how hard you are on it in the present, but how hard you were on it in years long passed.
But there you go. It’s life. It keeps going. There are ups and downs. The last several years have been mostly down, but I’m holding out hope that despite my worsening health, perhaps I’ve got some up years coming.
And the reality of that is that it’s more of a choice than it isn’t.
So… onward we go.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 