Oh god, now it's time to talk about my flooded car. Appropriately, the prompt for today has dubbed this day Cat Herder's Day. Though I actually think herding cats is pretty easy. Step 1: open can of cat food where you want the cats to go. Step 2: wait as cats bum-rush you for food. Step 3: put food down and close the door while they're distracted. Easy-peasy. Car flooding, on the other hand....

Anyway: on Saturday morning Mom dragged me into "her guy," Mike, who works at Goodyear, which is open on weekends. I am down with that. Anyway, I told him what the problem was and he was all, "I know what it is without even looking at it." The explanation was something along the lines of "leaves got into something and clogged it," combined with "your coolant must be having issues." Sometimes I wish it was socially acceptable to whip out some kind of recording device when people talk so that I can actually get this stuff DOWN, because trying to remember it afterwards just makes everything sound off and stupid. While he was at it, Mom was all, "her engine light is always on and her mechanic there told her not to worry about it unless it starts blinking." Which is what L told me and what the mechanic said. I sure as hell can't recap the explanation of that, but it boiled down to "the electrical system is a little dicey in this model." So he'd take a look at that as well. I eventually asked for an oil change while he was at it (and ah, Mom is paying for it, sigh--at least she gets some kind of deal there) because I had hit the mileage point of change while driving down here.

Sunday's verdict was:
(a) He has no idea what is causing the leak. NO idea. The leaves and coolant thing? Was not it. He also did the run-the-hose-on-the-car trick and didn't find a leak.

(b) On the other hand, he has totally fixed the engine light thing. He said the thermostat was having issues (which explains why it takes 5-ish minutes to defrost the car, anyway--I thought that was just a winter, car-sitting-outdoors thing). The thermostat was below the threshold temperature, and thus it wasn't heating up the coolant. So far the engine light has yet to pop back on, so yes, that appears to be fixed. After years of my local guy saying.... I DON'T EVEN KNOW ANY MORE. Maybe Mom was right about him. Argh.

(c) After picking up the car, Mom wanted to run the hose again, and well....while she did that, I found the leak. Mom figured out it was probably leaking somewhere along the lines of the rear view mirror. L knocked the back of it off when she owned it at some point and I made a car cozy for it. Mom, of course, is bothered by anything being less than 100% perfect, and asked back when the sunroof was being fixed how much it would cost to get another back put on. "A few hundred bucks...we'd have to order it off ebay...." so even she forgot about that one. Except now that might be the leak. Either that or the weather stripping keeled over. She had me drive it back down there and showed this to the car guys and they were all, "yeah, that might be it...." Note the "might." I asked about the weather stripping--replacing it, messing with it, something-- and they kinda blew that off and said, "Cover it with duck tape and see if that works." So we went to the hardware store across the street and covered it in duck tape before I went home, but... I can tell you from looking at the car in the rain this morning that nope, that did not work and it's flooding yet again. And will continue to flood because it's gonna rain all week.

I'm not even going to try bailing out the water until the weekend because what's the point of trying now? Though I did ask if I had to worry about mold and having a bunch of industrial cleaners working on the car to dry it out in the same way that they did my apartment twice ad he pretty much shrugged at that and said "I just blow a fan at it." Not that I have that option at the moment either given that I have no access to a garage. I've been debating getting an extension cord and stretching it from my place to the street, but that's probably not going to work very well if I try...and there's no point in trying it if there's no way to stop the leak now. I guess I just have to let the car puddle all winter.

I just don't even know what to think, say, or do about this. On the one hand, I'm genuinely impressed at the engine light being fixed (I haven't tested the defroster yet, probably will tonight) and him replacing the oil for half of what I've paid here. On the other hand.... Mom was all, "They didn't even think to bother to check to look at that thing when they checked it." Uh, yeah. And nobody seems to know if the entire mirror needs replacing or just the weather stripping or both...WTF? Either way, I'm fucked and don't know what the hell to do or who to go to, since I'm not feeling super trustful of anyone these days.

I was so nervous and freaking out all day Sunday night (since I am broke, and oh yeah, they're having issues with the payroll so I may not even get paid on time this week), that once I finally got home and got the few things I needed to get done done, I seriously cuddled up on the couch with a bottle of wine and got drunk and watched South Park. It was the most relaxed I've been in....awhile.

Fuck my life.

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