A Trip to the Car Repair Shop

I was a nice wife and let my husband use my van while the oldest daughter and I were in Utah this past week (she was a nice daughter and drove her car on the road trip). Sometime while the van was in the hubby's possession the red plastic cover on the right brake light fell off. That's apparently what happens when the temperature is consistently over 110 degrees. The glue it's stuck on with just dries up and stops working. Well, the hubby made some phone calls and our nice mechanic found a replacement for us. You can't just replace the cover, you have to replace the entire brake light unit, so today I drove to Phoenix to the car repair shop to get it fixed. When I got there he asked me to back the van into an small empty space between 2 other cars. I am not the world's greatest backer-uper and I especially don't like to back up with an audience, but I finally managed to get the van in the spot. I sat in the car while he worked on it, since it was a "quick" job and I almost melted, but not quite. When he was finished tinkering,he had me step on the brakes a few times, flip the turn signal off and on (which worked better after I turned the car on), turn on the hazard lights (which he had to come and locate for me), and put the car in reverse. After watching how well I handled the other jobs, I'm surprised he was willing to stand behind me while I put the car in reverse, but he was brave and I didn't run over him. Everything was working well and I wrote him a check and drove away. I decided while I was in the neighborhood I was going to look for a store that use to be close by so I drove around a few corners and then around the same corners again. I found the store, but it was no longer in operation. About this time I realized that the right turn signal sounded like it was running a race when I flipped it on. I have learned, from experience, that this is the sound it makes when it is not functioning properly. I debated for a while if I should just go home or go back to the shop, but I didn't want to drive back to Phoenix again tomorrow so I returned to the shop. First though, I did pull over, turn the signal on and get out and check if it was working. It wasn't. I wondered if the brake light was out as well, but I couldn't figure out a way to check it by myself. I got back to the shop and we went through the check list again - brakes, turn signals, flasher, reverse. Nothing was working. The repairman wiggled some things and pulled on some things and pushed on some things and replaced some bulbs and then we went through the checklist once more - I was finally getting the hang of this. Everything appeared to be working again, and so I left. As I was rolling up the windows and driving away from the shop my oldest daughter called me on my cell phone. As I started talking to her my air conditioner started making this high pitched whistling noise. It was loud enough that the daughter asked me what that noise was. We discussed that it was the AC and she suggested that I turn around and go back to the shop to get it checked out. By now I had turned onto the main road and was stuck in a major traffic jam where all the lanes merged into one. I turned the air conditioner off and turned it back on and the noise stopped. We talked for a few minutes while I crawled along the road and then she hung up. After I got past the construction and sped up the AC started whistling again - LOUD. I was trying to figure out why it only made the noise sometimes when it occurred to me that the sound it was making was quite similar to the sound the window makes when it's not rolled up all the way. I pushed the window control buttons and sure enough the passenger window was down a little bit and that was what was causing the noise. I called the daughter back and told her not to worry about the AC. It was fixed. We both had a good laugh at how dumb I am sometimes. I'm glad I didn't go back to the repair shop and ask for help. I'm pretty sure the mechanic already thinks I'm pretty clueless.

Today I am thankful that

my visiting teaching companion almost always sets up our appointments.
the turn signal stopped working while I was still close to the repair shop.
I have faith in an after-life and that I'm not in a hurry to find out for sure.

One year ago today - Royalty?