The monkey made me do it

Decisions, decisions

Here's the thing.

My car breaks a lot, and every time I have to fix a part of it or spend an evening (as I did recently) freezing my butt off because I have to roll down the windows to get any sort of visibility since the heater/defroster fan thing broke and the rolling down of windows itself is fraught with danger since the passenger's side window squeals with complaint every time it is asked to move, I get a little pissy. And then when the slight bit of heat generated by the still-functioning heater (it's going to break now that I typed that) works its way through the system to get to me, it smells like badness due to some other leak somewhere along the way.

Here is a list of things that are wrong with my car:
*FAN THINGY (I'm angry, I admit it)
*Passenger window is on its last legs
*Key takes forever to open door lock (key is slightly bent due to process)
*Back seat upholstery is ripped up and nasty due to spring malfunction
*Oil leaks
*Something else leaks and makes the warm engine smell BAAAAAD
*Front bumper is askew since my stupid neighbor backed into me a couple years ago
*Trunk interior is covered with primer paint I spilled ages ago and didn't clean up before it dried (the archeologists would have a field day with the random junk glued into the mix - tools, old wedding decorations from a friend's wedding that weekend, random art things)
*Paint spots on other upholstery from my general sloppiness and work on large objects that needed to be transported via my little car
*Shocks are on their last legs
*Car stalls and dies every time I stop too quickly

Here is a list of things I have fixed on it:
*New brake cylinder
*New front axle
*New engine entirely
*New front bumper (accident, happened of course months before the neighbor backed right into the new one)
*New water pump
*New tires (multiple times)
*Couple of visits to the mechanic for the above problems that fixed nothing but managed to still cost me money

It's been broken into twice, wrecked once, is 11 years old and has 183,000+ miles on it. I have driven it to Colorado and back in addition to many smaller road trips, taken it up and across mountain passes, up to snowy trailheads, and flying over potholed logging roads (this may be the reason for the shocks crapping out, now that I think of it). It's limping and tired and I can feel it sigh every time I ask it to do anything (like, say, start). I almost went in for a car loan to replace it last month when the front axle broke, but the more I think about it the more I'm considering keeping it until it unequivocably DIES dies falls apart dead (as opposed to its current state of aggravated whining) and instead using my tiny bit of extra money to get out of the country and get a tan.

This might be because of the recent record rainfall (which I've had to drive through with gloves and hat on, windows open, and sticking my head out every once and a while to make sure I'm still on the right road).

Still, mmmm... tan.

posted by LadyJay @ 5:37 PM