Friday, March 18, 2011
I got out of bed just before 0730 to drive Matt to work because his car broke down on us on Tuesday. He went to turn my car on and it wouldn't start. We turned the key a few more times, the lights and radio came on but that was it. We were both at our wits end with car issues by this time. Matt ended up walking to work as I walked upstairs to go back to sleep for a few hours. I was barely awake anyway, and I was supposed to volunteer at the Bazaar at 1130. I felt so awful and now I didn't have a car; I knew I wouldn't want to walk to the bus stop and take the shuttle over to Patch, so I emailed the lady who was in charge of the volunteers and told her I wasn't going to make it. My throat hurt so much and I barely had a voice when I woke back up at 1000. Now I was glad I had cancelled my volunteering for the day even though I felt bad for doing so.
Our friend Gio called me and asked if I wanted him to try to jump start my car. His fiancé Kate and I had been messaging back and forth on Facebook about going to the Bazaar and I wrote her to tell her I wouldn't be able to meet her because of my car issues so she had contacted Gio to try to help. He came over and we tried to jump the car but it wouldn't work, I was so frustrated, I just wanted to cry. He suggested I take the battery into have it tested and if it turned out to be dead, said I could just buy a new one. I was hoping this would fix it, but I still wasn't feeling well enough to actually think about it so I told Gio I would call Matt and ask him what he wanted me to do.
As Gio drove away my neighbors, James and Tonya drove up and they offered to drive me to the car care center on base to have my battery checked. We made a plan to meet back up at 1300 so they could eat breakfast and I could take a shower. I went back up stairs and called Matt who just told me to "figure it out." I was not happy with his answer and even though I really wanted to just go back to bed, I started looking for video's on You Tube and Google about how to remove a car battery and other self-help ideas about why my car wasn't starting.
During my search I learned how to remove corrosion from the battery posts, and how to replace the actual car battery. I was feeling pretty confident that I could tackle this on my own but there was still one small problem. I needed tools. Tools that were locked inside of Matt's broken vehicle. The broken vehicle that only he had the key to...at his office. I was hoping my neighbor had tools that I could borrow and if not I was prepared to walk to the exchange and buy a 10 mm wrench to remove the battery, I wasn't going to be defeated today.
After all that research and worry, my neighbor knocked on my door and told me he would remove the battery for me. At this point I was about to cry, my emotions were such a mess and being sick was definitely not helping. After the car care center told me the battery was completely dead, we drove to A.T.U. (it's like an Advance Auto Parts or Auto Zone) to buy a new one which cost me about $150 but I didn't care, I just wanted my car to run again.
We stopped by Matt's office and picked him up before heading home. He was still in his cammies as he put the new battery in my car and accidently caught it on fire. I'm not kidding! I don't know what it is with us and fire but one of these days we are going to burn something to the ground. He had touched the socket wrench on both the positive and negative terminals and there were giant sparks which shot out and one must have landed on the paper tag which was on the battery, that is what actually caught on fire. The wrench was extremely hot for several minutes afterwards and Matt's fingers were a little burnt.
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| Thankfully we didn't need to call the FD |
After the car started up I almost didn't want to turn it off, but Matt needed to take a shower and change clothes so we could go pick up his car parts that we had ordered from the Volkswagen Wagon dealership. While we were there he ordered some more parts that would arrive in the morning. As we were pulling out of the parking lot I asked him if he minded if we stopped by the bazaar for a little while. After the day I just had, I really wanted to do something fun.
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| My car, happy again! |
We shopped for about an hour, I had some delicious Dutch hot chocolate, and then we headed over to the Hendlhouse to end the night by enjoying dinner with our neighbors, The Deals and their three children. What a day!
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| Hendlhouse Chicken & Pommes |
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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