Car Woes

First things first: I want to thank those of you who commented and wished Care Bear a happy birthday! She had a wonderful day and has more celebration to come. She is one of 3 apples of my eye and I plan on printing that post out and the comments for her to read one day when she can read (which could be next month.) :-)
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I have had several cars in my life since I turned 16 and was able to drive. The first car that I ever got posession of was my dad's 1980 Plymouth Champ. Shortly after I got my license, my dad's company moved within blocks of our home and he consented to walking to work to give me the priviledge of driving a mile to school. The sacrifices a parent makes for their children. We all know how that is. I drove that car my entire senior year of high school and daily packed as many of my friends in it as I could to drive to various fast food places for lunch. Of course, when I went to college, I was not given permission to take that car with me because by that time my brother had gotten his drivers license and in their minds, it was only fair that he got to use that car to drive to school every day. Within months of my brother taking posession of the car, you would never have known that for 14 or 15 years that car was kept in pristine condition and never had a dent in it. They should have known that is how it would be considering how he took care of his shoes and his bikes....but I digress.

The second car I ever had was given to me by my grandparents on my dad's side. In my freshman year of college, my grandparents purchased a brand new sleek, silver Saturn and gave to me their old, red station wagon to putz around in at college. I was grateful; don't get me wrong, but I would have rather had the Saturn at that stage in my life. Saturns were pretty new at that time, and as a newly minted college freshman, I would have much rather buzzed around in a cool looking silver car rather than stutter and snort around in an old grandma looking station wagon. But I didn't complain. At least I had wheels. That car is what helped me out with my first "job" in college. I was hired by a young mom to take her kids to school every morning and pick them up from school every afternoon. That was it. I believe the job paid $40 a week. Not a huge chunk of change, but enough to let me leave campus now and then to escape the cafeteria and get a whopper, or go to a movie on the weekend. Gas prices weren't what they are now. In fact, I believe I recall that back then, in Oklahoma, gas was a whoppin' $.83 a gallon. Remember those days?

The following year, I ended up going to a different school in Kansas to room with my BFF (best friend forever for those who don't know the lingo!). I took the beast with me there as well. It drove me back and forth every day to my job working as a file clerk at a doctor's office. The car served me well that year (with the exception of the hatch back coming down on my head one day and leaving a pretty good gash in my head because the hatch wouldn't stay up!)

The summer after my sophomore year in college, I ended up going to Remuda Ranch,** which is an in-patient treatment center for women suffering from eating disorders. (I was suffering from anorexia at that time in my life....I referenced it in a post awhile back). By that time, the beast was no longer working for me, and I couldn't really take a car with me to the treatment center anyway. But by the end of my stay at the Ranch, they powers that be there decided that I would benefit greatly from the new "half way house" they had established near Phoenix. At this facility, you still go to therapy sessions, still work with a nutritionist and still have the support of the treatment they give, but you are also able to either get a job, or take classes in order to re-acclimate to the "real world". Well, in order to do this, I needed yet another car. At this point, I had not yet ever purchased a car. Cars were given to me to use or to have, but I had never had to make payments or pick out a car. I had gotten a job at a Wal-Mart photo center in a suburb of Phoenix and it was quite a ways away, so walking would not do.....especially in the stifling heat of Arizona mid-summer. Have you ever been to Arizona? Scratch that....have you ever been to Arizona in the middle of the summer? We're talking 105 degrees at 11:00 p.m. Yeah, I wasn't walking anywhere. My grandparents (the ones who gave me the station wagon), agreed to purchase the car for me and I would make payments to them rather than to a bank or a lender. Pretty sweet deal, eh? Problem: As I said, I had never at that point purchased a car. I didn't know the first thing about purchasing a car, about wheelin' and dealin' and about making sure I wasn't getting cheated by the sneaky car dealers who would love to take advantage of a blonde, 20 year old, 1st time car purchaser. My dad wasn't there to help me; I didn't have a boyfriend to help me....I was at the car dealer with another of my eating disordered compadres trying to sort through this whole thing by myself. I ended up buying a '92 Geo Metro for what I thought was a pretty good deal. A day after buying the car, I realized that the air conditioner did.not.work. And that did not work for me. I might as well have been walking in the heat. Of course, my attempt at contacting the dealer and politely asking him to fix my air conditioner were thwarted because "you bought the car 'as is'....no warranty." Translated: "You're screwed."

After getting the car back home and landing my first "real job" (here at the University), I was driving my car to work one day when the engine literally fell out from under my car on my way to work. Yep. The car was toast. Burnt toast, I tell ya! That evening my mom took me to a local dealer who was having a steal of a deal on brand new Toyota cars for lease. My parents agreed to put the down payment down for the car, and I made the monthly payments. The car was beautiful. Brand new; pretty green color; perfect condition. It drove like a dream. I had that car for about two years, I believe, when late one night when my car was parked on the side of the road, a drunk beyond words moron drove right into my gorgeous car and dragged it into the next door neighbors lawn. Right on!!! It was totalled. No fixing it. The next Monday at the car rental place, guess who I saw also renting a car because she totalled her vehicle. Yep. The drunk beyond words moron. I was so mad. Worse than that, she got a prettier rental car than I did. Tell me how that is fair.

The settlement I received from her insurance company wasn't as much as I was hoping for and I wanted to just buy a car rather than financing one. After a long day of car shopping with my dad, I ended up with a very large and very "grandma looking" Buick LeSabre. Back to the grandma cars, folks. I wasn't thrilled, but choices are limited when looking for a used car on the amount of money I had to work with. At least, once again, I had wheels after two weeks of driving a rental around.

That car lasted me about 4 years until last year when everything started going wrong with it. We had that car in the shop more than it was out of the shop. I was forced for several months to *gulp* brave the bus to work. Yeah. The bus, people. Not that there is anything wrong with the bus. It's a great way to save money, save gas, save the ozone, etc. etc. etc....but it can be pretty daunting for a person who has never had to do it. Oh, the people you see on the bus....maybe one of these days I'll do a post on that. The last time we took that car into the shop, we were told it was going to cost $700 to repair and we said "FORGET IT". We had put more money into fixing that car than we had when we originally purchased it, practically. We didn't know what we were going to do. We didn't have any money to put a down payment on a car, and after years of not having to make car payments, we weren't budgeted to do so. We were in a pickle. A giant DILL pickle.

Cue the grandparents: Those same grandparents (who gave me my first car, who purchased my first car), once again came to the rescue. My grandma and grandpa had recently quit driving their car. It was sitting useless in the parking lot of their retirement home. They turned the title over to me and sold it to me for a dollar. (The Saturn that they had purchased when I was in college that I was jealous of at the time). Best dollar I ever spent.

However....*cue the violins*, I have had this car for 9 months now....and last night, right before we were getting ready to take Care Bear to her all important birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's, the car died. Dead as a doornail. *sigh*. We think, we HOPE, that it may just be a dead battery. But with our luck, it's probably the transmission or something else ridiculously expensive to fix that we do not have the money to fix right now. Whoa is me. Back to the bus. Back to the double stroller and pushing 70 lbs of stroller and growing girls in front of me to get around town. Back to the stone ages.

You had no clue you were going to read a book about my car woes today did you? Well, that is my life today as I know it. My so called life.

**If you have anyone you know who has an eating disorder and they want to get help, I highly recommend Remuda Ranch. This place changed my life.