What a difference a week makes. I can quit whining about our unseasonal winter for a while.
Don't worry, I've got plenty of other things to whine about.
One of the things I'm not going to whine about is Meat and Tater got home yesterday. He's been watching the forecast from up north since he found out about last Sunday's little snow. They got here just in time for my purposes.
You see, Meat noticed a growing oil stain where I park and mentioned I might want to get it checked out. He wasn't telling me anything, I'd been adding a quart every other day for a couple of weeks.
I took it in and left it figuring something simple because it just wasn't showing any signs, other than slowly bleeding to death, of anything wrong. But three hours after leaving it in the shop, I got the call nobody wants to get.
"Cracked cylinder head, Mr. Ruth, time to take out a second mortgage."
No, the poor person who got the short straw to call me did not tell me it was time to take a second mortgage. But the asking price to fix my beloved car was more than I've paid for 2 different vehicles that carried me over 150,000 miles.
If you've heard buying a new or used car at the dealer these days is tough, try getting one fixed there. I could buy a new engine on the open market for half of what they wanted to patch the hole in my old one.
When the neighbors pulled in yesterday, I was just stepping out of the house. First thing Meat said when he got out of the truck was, "Where's your car?"
I followed them in, telling my story from the beginning. By the time I got to the cracked cylinder head, we were all sitting down. Meat jumped back up.
"Hold it right there SJ." He hurried to the kitchen and returned with three refreshing cold beverages. He thrust one toward me. "You sound thirsty."
I opened the can and took a drink before moving on. "Thanks, wait till you hear just how thirsty I'm gonna be." I finished my tale of woe and Tater looked at me with enough pity to make me feel warm.
"Oh honey, cars make me crazy. What are ya gonna do?"
Before I could respond, Meat said, "Not that" and pulled out his phone. "Let me call my cousin before you do anything stupid. After that, we'll go get your car."
He called his cousin the mechanic who took down the details and said "ya'll go get the car, I'll get back to you. So we did. I paid the diagnostic bill and drove it away. When I pulled up to my house, Meat was getting out of his truck with his cell phone to his ear.
"Oh yeah, he'll go for that. I'll talk at ya..." Meat looked my way as he put the phone back in his pocket. "He can install an engine with a warranty for about $1500 less than they want to fix a cylinder. I'll give you to 3 to say yes."
Yes. What a difference a week makes.