car troubles

I wrote this about two or three years ago. Still no heat, plus the tires are soft...

THE TROUBLE WITH BELLS AND WHISTLES

I paid off my van last week, and received the title in the mail. Just after I bought it, I brought it back because it left a big oil stain on my garage floor. I later found out that it tops the Consumer Report's list of used cars to avoid. I didn't care. It had eight seats and it was all we could afford. It had lots of bells and whistles to which I was not accustomed, and was cushy by my standards. Apart from the fact that we had to replace the transmission and a few other minor quirks, it has been a pretty good vehicle.

The trouble with bells and whistles on a vehicle is that they tend to wear out (or break off) long before the car is paid off. I am used to making do, but it is starting to dawn on me that safety should be more of a concern to me and my family. I was driving down the interstate today with my kids to visit my friend Julie. As I mentioned earlier, I have no passenger side mirror. That doesn't pose much of a problem if the rear window is clear, but today it was muddy and I could not see behind me, and the wiper broke two years ago. My solution to this problem was to stay in the left lane and go 80 mph so that I wasn't holding anyone up and I didn't have to merge back into the right lane. I decided I should keep a good eye on the driver's side mirror, but I found that I had to contort myself slightly to see in it. I tried the electronic mirror adjuster. Broken. Has been for months. I remembered that one has to roll down the window to adjust it. I stopped myself just in time, because while the window has no trouble going down, it does not go back up. Going 80 down the highway in March with open windows wouldn't be quite so bad if the heater worked. Well it does work, slightly sometimes. I took it to be fixed in November, but it was going to cost $200 in labor to fix a $17.00 thermostat. I just didn't think that was cost -effective. Humor aside, the experience was somewhat terrifying. I finally was able to pull over and pour a bottle of water over the back window so I could see.

There was one thing that did seem to be in our favor on this trip. The “check engine” light which has been lighting up my dash for a month or two was mysteriously dark. I have had it checked twice, and nothing seemed to be wrong. I knew that if I ignored it long enough it would go away. Another silver lining: At one time I thought the window washer was broken, as the well was full and nothing was coming out. I finally realized that I had been pressing the broken cruise control button thinking it was the window washer. With all my creative musings, I was finding it very hard to come up with a hypothetical excuse if we were to be pulled over for speeding. I was also chiding myself for being a bad mother. I want a new Toyota. All the other preschool mothers have one.