yesterday was what yesterday was. i've told and retold and vented and revented and so there's no real point but the motion of the thing, the garish description of the thing. all the frills of melodrama and frustration must be put aside.
because there's nothing else.
yesterday, monday, the start of the week has put me off balance and its both annoying and interesting in one great and hoary ball of yuck.
it was only supposed to be a three hour tour but it ended up being a stranded sort of a day from about half of two in the afternoon til about ten to nine in the evening.
j and dan and i and j's mum made a trip from here to there, there being buena park, in order to retrieve the family car that had burnt itslef out with a broken radiator. well, cracked is probably a more accurate way to say it. a cracked radiator.
so we set off to meet a man who said he could install a new radiator for cheap, for dirt cheap. he was a friend of a friend.
he certainly meant well, i can tell you that much. he meant well and he didn't give it up. even with sore hands and grime and hunger and an overbearing sense of self-doubt, he didn't give up.
no indeed. he kept going on, saying all he needed was one more clamp or a pair of plyers or at least a 10mm nut or a smoke break. and then when darkness or blindness took over he just needed a flashlight, small and cheap, he said. and then when twenty minutes later the flashlight had nothing more to give he said we'd need to buy another.
i was not angry at him, mind you. he was trying, he was doing the best he could save one crucial, vital, gut-wrenching thing. he never said, "i can't do this. i'm in over my head. you'll need to bring this to someone else. i'm tired and hungry and sore and i can't see"
and really, that would've been golden. he would have, in my book, not been a quitter at all. he would have been a man who understood that part of trying, of really trying is telling it like it is.
i suppose he felt obligated and the pressure was on to finish something he had started. but i'm really not entirely sure that that was the best way to go. that the principle of the thing was more important than what was actually good for the car and for all of us.
and as expected the car overheated again. more problems were created in the attempt and the promise of a solution, and a cheap one at that.
and i don't know what i am supposed to have learned from it all. the one thing that comes to mind is that
spending money is not always bad
spending money is not always unwise or an evil thing, especially when it concerns things like the proper running of a car which itself is like a travelling bomb. that is not to say that spending over a thousand dollars on repairing something means that the best quality of workmanship is an absolute guarantee. it isn't, it very often isn't the mark of quality. but dammit there must be a middle ground somewhere! there must be a second opinion.. there must be options in the world.. right?
overwhelming, overwhelming, overcoming.. right, yes. i know.
and in the same vein or maybe conversely, the notion of d.i.y (do it yourself, the battle cry of punks across the board) is not always so reliable or important or appropriate. unless of course you really DO know what it is that you're doing or know someone who does.
i know nothing about cars. they still amaze and frustrate and intimidate me.
and so i really do hope things turn out ok, decent, livable for the j family car. i also hope there really isn't someone out there putting nails and screws in my tires on purpose. because if there is. i will have to hunt them down and curse them with the kind of diabetes that makes them lose their toes.. gah! that's sickening and it sickens me that i may have cursed someone out there already. because it means i want to hurt the ones i want to heal.. what?!
maybe i'll make more sense of it later on. right now its back to work.
on the upside the group least likely, that's j and dan and i had good times and talks and new lights shone over a greasily miserable, red-eyed, coolant green world.
in the air: jack lemmon in a movie on amc, the teevee from the next room and a doorbell.
2:05 p.m. - 2003-11-25
Recent entries:
oday.html">the 3 month countdown begins - 05 May 2018
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newlife.html">begin at the beginning. - 10 April 2008
moody.html">a blanket for a bad mood under the sun. - 25 March 2007
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