Car stuff. It's freaking me out. The less time L has here, the more I have to deal with this and the more I want to hide under the couch and not deal with it.

* Mom is slowly ramping up her crazy, as she seems to freaking hate that I am doing something independent of her. She now hates the car and doesn't trust L and is generally doing her best to make me feel paranoid and shitty. I have asked her multiple times, "Are you TRYING to make this harder for me?" That makes her go quiet. For maybe 30 seconds.

* I got three insurance quotes, which is now getting me multiple nags from insurance companies on all sorts of mediums. I am not ready to make a commitment to any of them yet. I'd rather go with the one where I have family connections, which is also the one that most people say is the best (and my shrink says was the only one that would take her after she got into an accident), but that's the one that costs the most and makes me kind of freak the shit out about the cost. I don't want to sit there and do all the math to juggle the pricing, it freaks me out. Which is totally stupid, I know.

* I also attempted to accompany L to get the smog check on the car, twice. The first time, we woke up godawful early and she brought me along before I had to go to work. One of the few weird quirks of the car is that the engine light is on almost all of the time (due to oxygen sensors in that model being off, says the mechanic), but you can pretty much ignore it as long as it's not blinking, so who cares. EXCEPT DURING A SMOG CHECK, where this is a giant problem. Since the light problem just started within the last year, this is new for the smog thing. After disabling the light, the mechanic told L that she needed to drive it around for about 40 miles and then bring it back and then he could do the smog check. So L took me to work, then drove it up the freeway and back, then asked if I wanted to skip out of work to go back for the check. After getting permission (thankfully it was a low-demand-for-me day when it came to people and shifts to work and crap like that), I got picked up again....and then the car STILL wasn't doing its thing right, or whatever. L asked him how far she'd have to drive it and he said honestly, he didn't know, it could be 3 more miles for all he knows. He did give her some doohickey that would go off when she'd driven enough miles, so we drove to the rock shop in Vacaville and back....and that still didn't set the thing off. At that point, L gave up and dropped me back off at work, figuring that since she is going to the Bay Area this weekend, that *has* to set the thing off, right? Eventually?

L wasn't having the most fun day, between the smog check and going to the dentist and finding out that she has last-minute cavities to deal with as well as trying to otherwise leave town. Lovely.

I did get some questions answered while I was at the shop, and this is also the guy that I rented the car from to go to Redding. I actually like him, so I plan on keeping him as a mechanic. And from what L's told me, he's treated her very well, so that's fine by me. Buuuuut....I should probably ask more stuff, which I was waiting to do until after the smog check was done because I don't know squat about this sort of thing. I don't know if I'll get to that or not.

Mostly I just feel very scared at making this financial commitment, and obviously I have to indenture myself to at least one of these insurance companies uh, pretty fucking soon. The finances are wigging me out, and making me wish that my mother were sane enough on this topic that she'd help me. Except, well, obviously not. Or Elsa, but since I am apparently persona non grata with all of that crowd, I figure her offer saying that I could call her was not actually meant sincerely--or at least it would make life easier on her if I did not.

Argh. I keep looking for ways to stall around here so I don't have to think about this-- I dabble in a bit of it for the day and then freak out. It makes me actually enjoy that I am overloaded all day long at work right now so that I have the "excuse" of being too busy to really work on this during work hours. This is actually true and not an excuse, but still.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry