I woke up yesterday to find that my car battery was dead again. Those of you who've been reading my blog regularly know that I had two dead car batteries last summer. My grandmother had to give me money to get the car towed down the street to the Goodyear because I have better chances of winning the lottery than I do getting someone in this neighborhood to give me a jump. Dog feces in my mailbox, condom wrappers in my driveway, even tires in my bushes my neighbors have no problem giving me, but something useful like a jump--forget about it.Of course, I switched to liability only insurance two weeks ago so I won't be reimbursed for the tow. While the tow wasn't on my side, at least the battery was. It was still under warranty so luckily I didn't have to pay for the replacement. That being said, the mechanic did send me home with uncovered recommendations-I needed to refill my coolant and brake fluid.
They should have been easy enough to deal with, right? Yeah, not so much. I just poured coolant in the radiator Friday. For it to be out again that quickly means I either have a leak or yet another air pocket. I figured it was the latter, since I seem to get them every few months, so I called my dad for instructions on how to fix it. After five unanswered calls, I decided to try to fix the air pocket from memory. I think I was doing pretty well at it too until I ran out of coolant and my dad finally called me back. That's when everything went downhill, and this t-shirt from Cafepress's Eclipse store began to describe my motto for the day:
Have you ever met someone who knows so much that he knows nothing at all? That's my dad. The more he told me to pour water in the radiator, the worse it got. Eventually, water and what little coolant was left started gushing out of the thing like Old Faithful. All he could say at that point was, "I don't know what's making it do that, sport. Your going to have to call your nana."Forget "bite me." His comment pissed me off so royally that I wish I had this Tcritc T-shirt on so I could say, "What'chu talkin' about, Jimmy?"
Do you want to know why it pissed me off? Because there was nothing wrong with the car yesterday afternoon other than I needed to put more fluids in it. Today, thanks to the advice of a middle age moron, my radiator is acting like Mount Saint Helen, and my father's answer to his big oops is get my grandmother to give me money. Yeah, because money solves everything. Even if she put money in the bank, I still have to drive the car down the street to have it looked at, and I can't do that with a volcano under the hood. Duh.
After I calmed down and hung up on the Toothless Wonder for the tenth time, I read the book to my car. It says that you can't put only water in a Camaro. You have to use a 50/50 mixture. I decided that was probably the problem. He had me pour so much water in the radiator that I essentially flushed out all the antifreeze that was in there, but try telling the King of All Worldly Knowledge that. He claims that I don't know what I'm talking about even thought I READ IT IN THE BOOK!
If I didn't look like the man, I would swear I was switched at birth.
Then again maybe they do plastic surgery on babies.
Maybe.
So after I changed clothes for the millionth time, I drove to Walmart sans air in the 90-plus degree weather. The car didn't overheat on the way, but I did. I also realized when I got there that, in the chaos of Mount Saint Camaro, I had forgotten to brush my teeth. Hot car. Hot breath. Lovely.
I bought the antifreeze/coolant that my father told me I didn't need and made it back without the car exploding. The ice cream I tried to eat on the way wasn't so lucky. Cue another change of clothes.
When I got home, I got online and began researching the proper way to remove an air pocket from a radiator. On some forum I read that you can crack your engine block from putting cold water in a radiator so now, despite the fact that I have no proof that I have cracked my block, I have convinced myself that I have. When the car cools off in the morning, I'm going to pour in the fluids and drive it around some to see. Let's just hope the only thing I cracked was my head.
Meanwhile, poor Bella, the birthday girl, isn't enjoying her birthday as much as I had hoped that she would. Because of her enlarged heart, I was scared she wouldn't live to see today, but she has. Instead of spending quality time with her new toys and her Mommy, all Bella has gotten to do is sit in the corner and wait on Mommy to get through playing Nancy Drew: Girl Mechanic on her piece of crap car.
I bet if Bella could buy a t-shirt, it would look a lot like this:
Tomorrow can't get here soon enough.
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