Presence, Security

A Long Goodbye

November 2, 2024
This is a photo of a "check engine" light on a 2005 Toyota Corolla.

Yep. It’s my check engine light. Still shining brightly.

I went to Costco this week and had my tires rotated. I have been driving the 2005 Corolla that I inherited from my parents for years. It had about 75,000 miles on it when I got it. I’m up to nearly 260,000 now. I had every intention of driving that car past the 300,000 mile mark. We’d done it in past years with our 2004 Honda CRV and, a decade earlier, in our 1985 Honda Accord. But the check engine light came on a few weeks ago, a death sentence for cars in California. People in other states can drive cars with that light on forever. It doesn’t always mean that something is seriously wrong. But a car with an illuminated check engine light won’t pass a smog test here, and cars that don’t pass smog tests can’t be registered. 

My registration isn’t due until March of next year, so I still have a few months to enjoy this car. It’s old, I know. It’s battered and has dings. I love it though. I love that I can open the little cubby to the left of the steering wheel and find a yellowed newspaper clipping that showed the call letters of all the local radio stations. My Dad was a big baseball fan and would listen to games on the radio whenever he was out and about. I love that my Mom had granola bars in the glove box, because she had diabetes toward the end of her life, and sometimes needed a quick snack. Is it terrible that I kept one of those bars there? I would never eat it. But it keeps her close in some way.

I wonder how much money to invest in maintenance now. The Costco tire rep said that the tires aren’t wearing evenly, that it might be time for an alignment. I know I’ll also need new brakes soon and an oil change.

It’s a long goodbye.

California has a program where they give you money to buy back a car that won’t smog. You just have to make sure that the car runs long enough to make it to the shop where they take cars in. I hate the thought of driving this car to a place where they would dismantle her. But I could use the money to help buy something different, something with less mileage.

Of course, I could always keep the car and pay to fix the issue. The code reader says that the check engine light indicates a transmission problem, one that would best be remedied by installing a new transmission, which would cost three to four thousand dollars. That would be a lot of money to invest in a car that is already so old, even one that I love so much.

So I will drive it. I will drive it as long as I can, and then I will be grateful that the state will help me, at least a little, with the cost of getting a different car. I will empty the glove box. I will save the yellowed newspaper clipping, the owner’s manual, even the granola bar (maybe the granola bar?). They will have a new home in whatever car I am lucky enough to buy next.

Presence

Weekly Angst Report

October 26, 2024
A tree with yellow, green and orange leaves.

The trees are changing, and they are beautiful. They do not appear to be worried about the election. I wish I could be more like the trees.

I ate an entire Costco-sized bag of Skinny Pop this week. They had it on sale at the Grocery Outlet. I exhibited an enormous amount of self-control and almost didn’t buy one. But then I did.

It didn’t even take an entire week to finish the bag. More like three days, actually.

I also just opened up the bag of Halloween candy that I bought, in case any kiddos venture down my dark road on Halloween night. It’s full of Reese’s miniatures and tiny KitKats. So far, I’ve only eaten one. But I predict I will sample more before the night is over.

I’m not sure why I have been so drawn to snack foods (or what my Mom used to call junk food) this week.

Could it possibly have anything to do with the imminent election? Yes, yes it could. The upcoming election, and my nest which is still empty, and also a radical change to my work life that I am still adjusting to. I gave up my position as the onsite massage therapist at Mercy Center about two months ago. I was blessed to serve there for more than twelve years. I moved my massage practice down the street, less than a mile away, and am renting a lovely space at a local chiropractor’s office. So far, all is well. I am able to do massages for some of the chiropractor’s patients (which is helpful financially) and then can also use the space for folks I’ve worked with before.

Still. It’s a big change, not an easy one.

I am also prone to eat Skinny Pop when my sweet brain travels down worrisome rabbit trails. It dawned on me, just today for some odd reason, that my massage therapy website was not ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. While the vast majority of small business websites fail at this, it doesn’t negate the business owner’s responsibility to follow the law. And if you don’t follow the law? You can get sued, which is happening more and more these days. Seems like there are law firms and individuals who troll the internet looking for sites that fail to meet ADA standards.  Of course, you can hire a company to take care of this for you, but it is not cheap. And to do it myself? It seems complicated.

So until I can figure this out, to ease my worried brain, I did a radical thing. I unpublished my massage website. Just took it off the internet. I know that the chance of someone roaming the internet, looking for ADA noncompliant websites and finding my little site, is miniscule. But once I saw that there was a possibility, because my website wasn’t up to par? The only way to feel at peace was to take the thing down. I’m not even sure how necessary a massage website is for me anymore anyway. The clients who I’ve worked with for years already know how to reach me, and maybe that’s enough for now.

So I feel  better about that. As far as this Ordinary Holy site goes? My research says that “personal blogs that are not used for business purposes are generally not required to be ADA compliant.”  Of course, it would still be a good idea to make the site accessible to folks with disabilities. I get that. There just seems like a lot of coding I’d need to figure out on the backend to make it work.

So that’s my angst report for the day. I finished all the pretzels that I allotted myself (because the Skinny Pop was gone) and then got more. I’m on my third sparkling water of the evening. I moved the portable air cooler and fan back out to the shed. I brought in the space heater.  The weather is changing. It might even rain a little tomorrow. Maybe we finally made it through fire season for the year. But I’m still feeling nervous about a lot of things, including the election. Maybe almost mostly the election. I bet I’m not alone in that.