All I Want For Christmas Is...

the money back for my Honda.

Sadly enough, I do not have to rely on fabricated stories as fodder for my blog, since my real life, and in particular my automobiles, gives me plenty of material.  The better to entertain you with, my dears!

Leaving my usual Thursday night Bible study, I get a text from my husband.  This normally indicates that someone is bleeding/there is no food in the house/a dog or cat is sick/car is engulfed in flames or otherwise incapacitated.  In other words, its usually not good news. 

In true R fashion, the message is succinct:  "Car overheating.  Meet me at mechanic".

I arrive 20 minutes later at our usual place, the angel of rescue to my poor hubby.  We drop off the car (with R ignoring my suggestions to leave the keys in the ignition and see what happens) and hope for the best.

The problem is determined to be the water pump, as mentioned in a previous post.  No biggie, right?  Well, apparently the 1994 Honda Civic designers don't want just anybody messing around under the hood.  You practically need an engraved invitation to get into this party.  And according to the bill, the man hours needed to repair the pump are equivalent to the time it took Noah to build the Ark. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, we drive back Saturday to pick up the car.  As I crank the engine, I notice two pretty twinkling lights on the dashboard that I've never seen before.  I figure its still too early in the season for the nice guys at our mechanic's shop to decorate my car for Christmas, so I head back in and ask what's going on.

Back the car goes into the repair bay, and R and I wait for another half hour for an explanation of the pretty lights. The lobby of our mechanic's shop is like an ICU waiting room but with lower-caliber coffee and crappier cable television.  I feel like we spend a large amount of our lives in here, waiting to see if our vehicles will make it through the night. Interestingly, my mother-in-law calls us while we are waiting to see how the car is doing.  She and I are plotting how to trick R into buying me a new car for Christmas when the mechanic reappears.  Apparently the battery terminals are "dirty", which is why the pretty lights came on.  A quick swipe of a shop towel and we are declared fit for the road.

Fast forward to Monday morning.  R decides that the "shimmying" when the car increases in speed is disconcerting, so back to the shop we go.  Mercifully, the timing belt was replaced just a month prior, so I arrive at the mechanic's armed with a warranty which I am not afraid to use.  Easy-peasy.

Tuesday night, R arrives home from work and we decide to have a romantic night out.  This of course means we head to the gym together.  As we're backing out of the driveway, I notice that the pretty twinkling lights have returned.  R says that they "go off after a few seconds" and we're fine.  My eyes fixed on the dashboard, I become increasingly distressed after 5 minutes pass by and we are still lit up like the Enterprise.  R suggests we leave the car overnight at the repair shop for, oh, the FOURTEENTH TIME THIS WEEK so they can "check it out".  I politely disagreed and suggested what I'd like to do with the car. 

Finally, we decide to leave it since R is carpooling to work in the morning.  I feel like I could navigate the 6 minute drive to our mechanic with my eyes closed and hands bound by now.  Wednesday afternoon I call R to investigate the status of the Honda, for which I will soon be signing a DO NOT RESUSCITATE order if this business continues. 

Thankfully, it wasn't any big deal or anything.  Just an ALTERNATOR.  No biggie.  And it's not like they're expensive.  In fact, I was just saying to myself how I felt compelled to throw three hundred dollars toward a hopeless lost cause. Who needs money for little things like Christmas anyway?  I wonder if we can start counting our car repairs as a charitable giving donation, and reap the tax benefits.  After all, my cars practically deserve their own charity foundation by now. 

Commence with the weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Oh, and the best part?  It took Ryan 3 tries to start the car last night so he could pull it into the garage. 

All I want for Christmas is a new freakin' car.