The Annual Summer Car Rant

So I typed this a couple of weeks ago and it appears I never hit publish so here it is a couple of weeks late...You know you've been waiting for it (yeah right!), but summer just wouldn't be summer if I didn't complain about my car. I really hope this doesn't become an annual summer thing, but after the past couple of summers, it appears that it may be.  Here we go... I still haven't managed to marry a mechanic or become best friends with one so my car rants continue. This time it was brakes, something I can't remember the name of, and a headlight. My brakes were making weird noises so I took them in to get checked out only to find that I needed new ones (not surprising and since it's been quite some time since I've gotten new brakes, I'm willing to accept this except that I had my brakes checked elsewhere a few weeks ago and they said they were fine; if they're so fine, why are they making weird nosies?). Well, of course you can't just get your brakes fixed, they have to find something else wrong. I believe it was called some sort of stabilizer and as the gentlemen on the phone said when he called me, it was what was causing the "crunching noise" when I "turned the car." So yes, by all means deplete my bank account I mean go ahead and fix that too. Several hours later and over five hundred dollars poorer I had my car back with fewer noises. I didn't have the heart (or the wallet) to ask them to fix my a.c, which is blowing lukewarm air even at the highest setting. I'll make it through the heat before I spend more money on my car right now. So fast forward to that Tuesday night...as I'm driving home from trivia, I see blue lights behind me. I pull over and wait for the police car to pass by me, only he doesn't! He parks behind me, for what seems like a LONG time (though in reality I imagine it wasn't more than 5-10 minutes). Here's what was going through my (paranoid) brain during that time: "I was going the speed limit, I wasn't drinking and driving, I didn't hit anything, and I did not run a red light/stop sign, etc." In other words I had no idea why he pulled me over. "I must have done something wrong. Did I swerve somewhere? Did I only think I was going the speed limit? It's late on a Tuesday evening, does he think I'm drunk? He must and he's going to make me take a sobriety test and I'm so NERVOUS I'm not going to pass (side note, I'm not sure how this all works, but I think they give you a breathalyzer before they make you walk the line like on tv, right?). I can't always walk a straight line when I'm sober, I'm that klutzy. OMG, what do I do? What if someone drives by that knows me? What are they going to think? They're going to think I'm a criminal. They're going to think I'm a drunk. Should I keep my blinker on right now? Was I supposed to turn off my car? Is my radio too loud? Is it acceptable to leave a radio on when a police officer pulls you over and is sitting in his car? Am I going to get arrested? Should I have my license and registration out and ready to hand over or wait 'til he asks for it? What is taking so long?" Let me stop right there and say I have been pulled over once before, when my blinker was out. I was nervous, but it was daytime and I was leaving work to head to a dance rehersal so I was so worried about being late, that I didn't have time to freak out, plus that police officer came over fairly quickly so my brain didn't have enough time to react. I've also been in a car when other people have been pulled over for speeding, outdated inspection stickers, etc, but never alone at night. Well, I must say the police officer came over and was very nice. I think he sensed I was nervous. Anyway, the reason he pulled me over? My headlight was out. He did not arrest me (I imagine you knew that), he did not yell at me, and he did not make me demonstrate my klutziness. He asked for my license, told me which light it was, and I think he may have even told me to have a good night. I hope I was polite to him. The only things I remember saying are I just had work done on my car (why I say these things is beyond me, he probably didn't care that I just had work done on my car), which light is it (why did I ask that? I could have just checked when I got home, he probably thought I was nuts for not noticing) and thank you. I do believe I was still shaking when I got home, but eventually calmed down enough to check my voicemail to find a message from my friend Kate (who was also at trivia) telling me, it looked like my headlight was out and I might want to get that checked so I didn't get pulled over. If only, I'd known 10 min sooner. Anyway, I went to the mechanic the next day and can you believe it cost me over $60 for a headlight? Correction, the bulb was $19, but the labor caused it go to up to over $60. Really?! Is it that hard/time-consuming to change a headlight? I mean, maybe it is, I've never done it, but when my neighbor fixed my burned out tailight for me, he spent under 15 min on it and wouldn't take any money. And when I had to get that blinker light fixed that I mentioned earlier, that mechanic did it for $10 (granted I get that a blinker light is going to cost less than a headlight, but still...). Okay, there's the annual summer car rant. And by the way, I do love my significant other, but I swear if a darn good mechanic were to propose to me right now, I may give it some serious consideration. :-p