Empowered

A couple things happened recently that have really made me feel better about myself. Just small things that don’t mean crap in the real scheme of living, but I still want to mention them.

First came the little gray car incident. I gave my old (Pontiac) car to my dear friends Kim and Ian as a rather belated Yule present. Partly because I couldn’t bear to totally sever my acquaintance with the old rustbucket, mostly because Kim finally landed a job (after what seemed like years - yay!) and had to bum rides to work every day. In July, just before it (the car) went temporarily comatose, I had put 4 new tires on it, and a new radiator. However since it has well over 210,000 miles on it (that’s 13,305,600,000 inches) I was feeling kinda uneasy** about having it be my main form of transport, so I got a slightly newer one.

**[[Thanks to my daughter, I have suddenly turned into a MOM (!), which means I worry excessively about anything, everything, and things that couldn’t possibly ever happen. So of course I fret about the car breaking down/getting a flat/exploding in the middle of A) the Sahara Desert B) the Mackinaw Bridge C) New Orleans just as the levee breaks; leaving us stranded in the hot sun (or Artic cold) 500 miles from anywhere, with no water, no phone, no fruit snacks, no diapers, you get the picture. When in reality, all I have to do is call a friend or relative and they’ll hustle over to pick us up off the side of the road no matter where we are. And I rarely get over 50 miles from home, or over 15 miles from a WalMart. And have you *seen the inside of my car? A homeless person can live there for weeks! But I digress.....]]

Anyhoo, it was a nice feeling to be able to help out a friend, albeit with the caveat “I know not how long said Pontiac will survive”. So, imagine my distress (and instant guilt feelings) when I got a phone message after work about a week later... “Um, Laura, the car kind of broke down, I was at the credit union when something blew up under the hood....I got a ride home but I thought you’d like to know....” ERK!!!!

Luckily it was a “kidless” evening, meaning that one of the Grandmas was watching Michela so I had planned on doing a little shopping and then going home to enjoy a new book. That makes it a Friday night somewhere in early January. Can’t remember which one but it was before we got all this snow.

So, I called Kim back and zipped to her house to pick her up, figuring why not go take a look? I know a bit about the “magic” under the hood called an engine, there was a chance that I might at least figure it out, if nothing else. I hate not knowing why something is screwed up. I directed Kim en famille search for tools, but all they were able to turn up was a huge screwdriver, a flashlight and a roll of duct tape. As luck would also have it, the dead car was only ¼ mile from my mother in law Patti’s house, so we stopped there to borrow her tools as well. She didn’t have a much better assortment but since mine were all in Gobles, I really didn’t want to drive an extra 50 miles, it was already nighttime.

So we got to the semi-deserted strip mall and wonder of wonders, Kim had had the foresight to park under an outdoor light. Whew! That and the flashlight immediately earned my forgiveness for any so-called “inconvenience” we were about to experience. She said, “water came out from under the hood” and so I had figured that, since a new radiator was installed in the summer AND the car sat for about 5 months after that, a hose had probably broken.

I had her slowly pour water into the radiator, and we finally discovered what we thought was a leak on the main hose at the bottom. If you’ve ever worked inside an engine, you know there isn’t CRAP for room, and lighting ability is spotty at best. Feeling around we could not locate a break but we could definitely see water dripping at the bottom. So, off to WalMart (hehe, less than 5 miles) to buy hose clamps.

We got the hose off (after much cussing of parts obviously designed and built by MEN... who the heck has hands large and strong enough to squeeze one of those blasted metal hose spring-type “clips” together? NOT. And there was no way to fit a pair of pliers in there to do the job....shall I mention that we purchased the old style clamps, the ones tightened with a screwdriver. Hmph.) Could not find a leak in the hose, so I reinstalled it. Hmmmmm. Water still leaking....WTF?

About this time, a dude and his girlfriend pulled up, he said that he worked at Muffler Man and if we couldn’t get it fixed to call him in the morning and he would give us a discounted rate on labor. That was nice, but I was determined to do all we could to avoid having to put $$ into the car, since I felt responsible and I know Kim couldn’t afford it. Not that I could either but I would have if necessary.

Finally, I discovered that water was leaking out of the TOP of the water pump and running down to the hose itself, making it look like the hose had a leak. This was strange, Kim would pour water in, and water would come out *higher up than we put it in. But anyway, I at long last figured out that it was a broken gasket. Or more specifically, a tattered lump of old silicone masquerading as “form-a-gasket”. AHA!

Of course, the gasket could only be removed by an elf standing on his head, as it required a 5/16” crescent wrench at an impossible angle. So, off again to WalMart since Patti’s tool kit was sadly lacking. This time I got a whole set of wrenches and 2 tubes of silicone. We almost gave up after 20 min of wrestling with one stupid bolt (are there ever any *smart ones) but I persevered, thinking of how my Dad would laugh at me for giving up and then be able to do it in under 10 seconds flat. (Side note, my dad’s only tool he carried around was a little teeny pair of pliers, but you would not believe what he could fix with them, i.e. EVERYTHING). I’m sure Dad was watching over my shoulder and I could almost hear him snort every time I dropped the darn wrench into the engine compartment and had to fish it out.

Voila! Got the old gasket off (without dropping particles into the pump itself) and squeezed out a new temporary silicone gasket. Put the water pump back together, and the car was back in business! I did have Kim wait overnight to give the silicone time to set up, but I felt SO good afterwards.
That’s the long part of the story. The rest came up last night. We had a freaking blizzard over last weekend. Literally. I don’t know how much snow we have gotten in the last 5 days but suffice it to say that it is piled in spots up to my a$$ between my house and the barn. More about that later.

It was so cold (-25 wind chill) that my poor tractor would not start on Sunday, and I desperately needed it to plow my driveway, else I was not getting to work on Monday morning. Yes I do have a 4WD pickup, but due to the layout of my driveway, whatever vehicle I’m driving must be parked nearest the road, and therefore in the way of anything else. I try to mostly drive the car as it gets 32mpg, versus the truck at 17. Apparently a 7.3L diesel with 4/10 gears is approximately equal to a 460cu gas engine in fuel consumption, a fact that did not occur to me when I purchased the truck. I’m not totally complaining, since it has more towing power than I’ll *ever need, but it does kind of suck when money is tight. (The last truck was a 5.9L and it got about 19 mpg.)

I bundled up in my Carhartts and went out to start the tractor. RRRRR---RRRR----RRRRR. Just cold enough to have a hard time starting, and also cold enough to inhibit the battery performance.... long story short, dead battery. GRRRRR. Cuss, bitch, moan. Trudge out to barn for battery charger. Praise myself for owning one. Damn, heavy-duty extension cord exactly ONE FOOT TOO SHORT because I parked the &%*^$ tractor too far down the #*&^ driveway. Cuss, bitch, moan. Inside to find household extension cord. Praise myself for owning one. Outside to plug it in. DAMN, it’s not grounded (has 2 holes, need 3)! Cuss, bitch, moan. Inside to find adaptor. Praise myself for owning one. Outside to plug in charger. Try engine. DAMN flooded the &^$#$&% carburetor. CUSS, BITCH, MOAN.

I just couldn’t win. Just about then an angel drove by in his plow truck. He stopped and backed up and offered to plow my entire driveway for $20.

Fast forward 2 days. Now remember that anytime a county plow truck comes by, they scrape the road and dispose of all that excess snow - right back into your driveway! Absolutely free of charge. (Okay not really free since I pay about $700 in taxes every year). So, after a very long day we get home about 10:30pm. Kiddo is whiny and I am tired. I pull up to the driveway and see that the county maniac has already done his evil deed. The biggest problem with that is that every time snow is moved, it compresses and becomes heavy, chunky and similar to granite in atomic mass. So NOW there is an 8 foot long, 12 foot wide glacier between the road and my house. I offered up a little prayer, started well back, and gunned it.

Landed with MOST of the car not in the road. Stuck. Stuck damn good. Stuck well enough that 20 minutes of shoveling did absolutely nothing to free up the car. Cuss, bitch, moan. Try pushing. Cuss, bitch, moan. Trudge into the house to find Mr. Plow Guy’s business card. Cuss, bitch, moan. Mutter under my breath about the futility of owning a tractor that I could not start. Mutter under my breath about the insanity of ever wanting stupid, ungrateful, smelly horses in the first damn place, therefore *forcing me to dwell out in BFE where no rational person would consider locating. Mutter under my breath about men. Mutter under my breath about money. Mutter under my breath about global warming.

As a last gasp before throwing in the towel and calling for help, I wandered over to the tractor and offered up another prayer. Please, Ra, if you’re watching, please don’t let this all be for nothing. IT FIRED RIGHT UP!!!! Okay, now Dad, if *you’re watching, make sure I don’t f^ck this up. I live on a rural country road with very little traffic, so I felt pretty safe in starting the car and leaving it in neutral (of course with the ‘mergency flashers on). Oh, by the way, I do have a motion-detector yard light but it is conveniently blocked by the bulk of the horse trailer in the driveway. So, I got to have all this fun in the dark!

It took quite a while for the hydraulics to warm up enough to lift the plow, enough that I was beginning to worry again. Finally it crept up a centimeter or so, so I felt okay in backing up to the car. Ever so gently, I used the back blade to bump up against the car’s front end, leaning into it and after about 3 slow pushes (and lots of silent entreaties), I got the car out of the snow and into the road. Whoopee! Jubilation! I parked the car in the road with headlights illuminating the end of the driveway. After that it was a simple matter (sort of) to plow out enough space to put the car, repark the tractor and put the car away.

I felt totally empowered. I felt GREAT. I thanked any gods who were watching, my dad for not allowing me to grow up totally stupid, and myself for having the determination to keep going instead of giving up. How many other single moms, any girls for that matter, could have done those things?

I felt the same way a few years back when another dear friend (Cat) got her big ol’ van stuck (and nearly out of gas) in Chip’s dad’s driveway. Cat couldn’t get it out. Chip couldn’t get it out. Rich (the dad, I *think that’s his name) couldn’t get it out. Bless her dear heart, Cat called me in desperation. I jumped into my little Blazer with a gas can, went over and discovered the van stuck butt-first in a snowdrift. I had her attempt to free the van while I watched so I could see what the problem was.

The problem was, the van had no weight in the back end (which was the stuck end) and any time she gunned it, the balding rear wheels could not gain a purchase and would just spin. I could not manage to convey the notion of just “feathering” the gas pedal so I hopped in to give it a try. Cat gratefully exited and cheered me on. I was able to *very lightly nudge the gas and start the van in motion a little teeny bit. Might not sound like it, but it’s a precision effort. Ya gotta know exactly how much and when to gas it, and when to let up. Just a few minutes and the van rolled free! (Had that not worked, the next step would be to get a few bodies into the rear of the van and try again).

Wow, I’ve taken up 3 full pages typing this missive. It’s just a nice feeling to NOT be depressed, if only for a day or so. I hope I’ve entertained you!