Just plane awful! That’s how yesterday’s workday ended. I did a last run to get me barely over the minimum limit line on my earnings for the week, it was that tough a week for me. Then I got back into the car and started it up. Within a moment, the battery indicator light came on. Oh my! Newish alternator is only about six months old. It has got to be the battery! Right? I carry on towards home from Logan, and by the time I am bearing down on Smithfield, there are a lot of lights coming on in the instrument panel. This is not good! I start thinking about limping it home, and if I am going to make it or not when I notice an opening to the left of me in the lane of traffic, and that I am just coming up on OReily’s Auto Parts. I bust the move. I get into the parking spot and go in and the guy inside offers to come test the car for me. I go out to start it and it is stone cold dead. Nothing.
An hour later, I have a new battery installed with a broken positive connection and vise grip pliers holding it on. Now I go ahead and limp it home. Next morning I have the broken battery terminal badly replaced and start the car to find the battery light coming on again. Must be the alternator. But by now I am feeling under the weather and the psoriasis on my hands has split all up and has me feeling a lot worse because of it. So, I rest a bit before going out to tackle the issues. When I am done I get the alternator out by sunset, eat supper with the girls, and they come with me to get the alternator replaced under the lifetime warranty O’reily’s Auto. Exchange done, we come home and eat supper before I go upstairs and work on my Roman Bench in my den. Enough is enough for the day.
It has been a couple of those kinds of days to be sure! I hope tomorrow surprises us with a fast warm up and plenty of warm weather too. For now, I am off to bed to dream of a longer lasting alternator if nothing else. Goodnight!
Early the next morning, before 6:00AM.
The car has had a rough time of it lately. Parts are failing too frequently for me to be able to pay for them before the next one comes up. On top of it, DoorDashing does not pay nearly enough to keep us afloat while all this is going on as well as everything else. Our lives are far too expensive, and we don’t even have a housing cost outside of maintenance and tax. I am honestly depressed. I feel as though I am a part of the greater society that is designed for common people to fail, and that is not where a person who considers himself a part of the homestead movement ought to be. Our direction is in reverse. It needs to change. It absolutely needs to change. I’d cry, but I have no tears for it. I think that is merely a product of my age. If this were me thirty years ago, I’d be running up the bill on tissues and maybe even alcohol. It would not help, obviously.
So what does help? We are at a point where I am struggling to make the money I do. What’s more, to go any further up, I need to make a massive jump in earnings because of what we would then require to cover insurance costs. At this point, I am thinking somewhere in the range of $2K a month for the premiums, and more for copays and deductibles to actually use the insurance. Guess on our family, given common uses, at least another thousand to two. There are additional taxes on that income, so at this point, add another thousand, and we are breaking even to where we are now. So now that is upwards of $8K a month income just to keep us where we are now with government help in lieu of our own insurance. And of course, the government wants us off quicker than quick. I can barely keep milk in the fridge right now, and I get it cheap already by only buying it on Wednesdays from a local market that puts it on sale every Wednesday. Yeah, our current system is designed for mass failure. And there are shameless motherfuckers that are getting filthy rich off it. It needs to collapse.
January 1, I am beginning a photo business, and with any luck will fill gaps in my time with both DoorDashing and some making things to sell. I have candles piling up and I am nearly fully set up to make candle boxes by hand in the den where I put my Roman workbench and modified it for tasks. I may be learning to cut dovetails horizontally if my jury-rigged vise fails. Either way, I need to work this rather than the stupid DoorDashing that I am currently destroying our car with. It’s too much on it, and too much on me. The car gets about 200 miles a day put on it, and I have long periods of focus and movement while driving, in addition to those damned tires vibrating the hell out of me as I go. I go and buy good stout winter tires, and it is effing January and still has not even snowed! What gives?!
I am going to get a nap in now, before I have to get up and work on putting in the new alternator I picked up last night. It’s not that hard to change it out, but my hands are giving me absolute hell right now, and the tools are ice cold and hurt to hold them because of all the cracking and splitting of my skin. Well, if it were easy, anybody could do it.