breakdown

My car, which already overheated and broke down once this month, went into the shop again yesterday. That alone is enough to make me laugh or cry since it's got 115 thousand rather hard miles on it and needs to be replaced soon. The longer I keep it to try to save money by not buying a more reliable car, the more I spend. And spend and spend.

After the last breakdown I decided I should start looking into getting another car. I won't say "new" because this implies ambitions which are far, far beyond me. I looked, I have some idea of what degrees of "can't afford" I can live with. I sought out a local bank which does auto loans (mine doesn't), and bookmarked a few pages. But I thought I'd have until at least October to start the process in earnest.

Therefore, it came as a bit of a set back to this plan when a week after diagnosing and replacing a bad thermostat which caused my car to catastrophically overheat, the parking brake light started coming on every time I hit the brake pedal. It started Tuesday morning, while I was on my way to a new GI doctor appointment. I had no choice but to get my car back in ASAP and see what was up or risk breaking down again, this time with no fella to come get me after. I'm without a safety net for the next two weeks since A____'s leaving tomorrow for a two week trip to Italy. So no A___ and no car of A____ to fall back on since his car will be in NYC the entire time (and is a standard anyhow).

I just found out that getting my car in immediately was a very good idea because part of my brake line is rotted. The light coming on was on account of my having barely any brake fluid in my lines. Fuck. Good thing I didn't drive it on the highway, huh?

The mechanic gave me the estimate for how much it's going to cost to patch up the brake line (and that's without dealing with the nearly worn out pads). Of course I always have the option of getting my car back without even the minimal $300+ repair to the line, but in that case the car will only be useful as a large paperweight, lawn ornament, or possibly a sled come winter.

When I got off the phone with the mechanic, I started chuckling, then laughing out loud. Within a moment I realized I was not only laughing but also crying. By the time August is out, I will have dumped about 5 months worth of car payments into a car which I will have to trade in for scraps as soon as possible lest I risk dumping more potential car payments into keeping this monster road-worthy.

I am currently ready to consider suggestions, recommendations, related experiences, and empirically sound advice in pretty much any form. If anyone has any experience in auto loan shopping, car shopping, deciding between bank loans and dealer based financing, etc that they'd like to pass on please do so. I've resigned myself to the fact that although I managed to live the last 15 or so years with minimal debt, that era of my life is over. And with acceptance comes some something like peace. With a somewhat frigid sense of resignation if not actual calm, I decided I will deal with these things as they come. This is life. For now, for just right now, I have to get on with my day. Maybe do some work before I go pick up my car later this afternoon. One more cigarette, I thought, then I'll go get dressed.

While smoking, I checked my email and found a cranky message from my cranky advisor who has forgotten everything about what I'm doing right now. I think I will make her a poster to hang on her wall. I'll update it as necessary. Oh then I'd need to make her another poster to remind her to look at it though.

I started to write back but decided speaking would be better - less opportunity for compounding what was charitably a text based misunderstanding. While I was waiting for the phone tree to let me access her extension, I opened another message in my inbox. This one was from my little brother. In it, he reports that his insurance has cut off his mental health benefits (he's HIV positive, an abuse survivor, and trying to kick a substance addiction) and that our mother was admitted at about 1 AM to a hospital for acute cholecystitis. I strongly suspect the gallbladder disease has a point of origin somewhere outside her gallbladder given that my brother tells me she's been complaining of severe fatigue for nearly a month now and that she drank Jack Daniels like it was water for 20+ years of her life. I certainly don't begrudge the universe the karmic balancing it is exacting on my mother these days but I do think her messes are going to be extremely hard on my little brother since he still lives with the 'rents.

Well, as hard as I tried, I think I have no choice but to acknowledge that I am standing on the doorway of the tea room again. Two weeks without my partner in crime to help me feel better about the shit in life, the start of an ambiguous school year, and family and financial fuckery most assuredly equals some down time for the psyche.