Now that my brother is all grown up & making the big bucks (bahaha…that would be funny except that next year at his new job he’ll be making more money than me…so not fair) we’ve had a lot of discussions about budgeting and saving and paying off debt.
And the one thing we keep telling him is how life has a funny way of messing up your best plans and intentions.
In reality it’s about as funny as hitting your funny bone.
Well, turns out life had a little mishap to throw our way yesterday…a car that wouldn’t shift out of park.
Chris had left for an early day of work, I was all dressed up and ready for church, Huxley was chilling in his crate after a brisk walk.
Buckle up, turn the car on, get my tunes going, open the garage door, and shift into…and shift into…and what is going on here. Why can’t I shift out of park?!
I couldn’t call Chris, my Dad didn’t know what the problem could be…so I did what I do best. Googled it, my friend.
Turns out, Google is quite familiar with this problem in the make / year model of my car. Lovely. I also found several helpful strands on things to try. It looked as though there was just one little button I needed to get my finger on, and one little problem. It was under several layers of the console thingy-ma-bob.
No problemo…surely Google can tell me how to disassemble the console.
And so that is how my husband came home to find me with several detachable parts of the console scattered over the dash of the car, a few screws loose (on the CAR, not me!), and his wife trying to pry a large portion of the console off with a flathead screw driver.
(Oh trust me, I wish I had pictrures of this as much as you do!)
I’m not honestly sure what got into me. Trying to save us some money, I guess. And I thought it would be really bad-a of me if I could actually take apart the console and fix the problem.
In the end, Chris reminded me that our insurance will cover towing and that if I were to break something with all that prying it would be…not good, to say the least.
So here’s where we stand…he got up nice and extra early to drive me to the car-pool drop off point today, then he’s calling first thing to see about having the car towed and repaired. If it is what I think it is, then there’s a couple of small, cheap pieces that aren’t working correctly…and yet they will have to replace the entire shifting mechanism. Everything I read online says we’re looking at $400 or so, but I’m holding out for less. 😉
Let’s wrap this up on a happy note, because even in the face of an unexpected expense & car that won’t move there are things to be thankful for. *It decided to break at home, not when we were out running around the night before. *Although it changes our budgeting plans, we should be able to take care of this bill without having to eat sandwiches for a month. *Chris has leave from work to handle this little mishap. *I regularly car-pool, so I have a way to get to work. *We have a mechanic that we trust.
Doesn’t sound so bad after all, right? 😀
KEEP CALM & LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT ME TO COME DO SURGERY ON YOUR CAR!
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