I honestly don't know what impression I make here. I suspect most of you see me as some combination of Happy Fun Time Huggle Giver, and Woman Who Constantly Sabotages Her Own Life and Then Whines About It.
Well, sadly, I have to do the later, and 2025 is not going well for me.
I have had several issues with my car, including repairing the undercarriage, replacing the battery, and most recently, replacing the tires, and now it seems I am not done yet, as my check engine light turned on today.
Honestly, it is taking all of my spoons to keep from dissolving into a puddle of self-hate, so hugs and prayers appreciated.
Comments
Computers on the road
Your story reminds me yet again that computers do NOT belong on public roads. Apart from the fact, that in the last 30 or so years, cars have been built to ever shorter pre-programmed obsolescence. Meaning that cars are no longer made to last, but to become unfix-able paperweights after 5 years or 50.000 km, whichever comes first.
That includes replacing steel sheets with aluminum foil, and computer controls that cause cascading catastrophic failures throughout the vehicle after a set amount of time.
I remember how my peers in the late 1990s were “joking” about how you could see the logo of Ouro Fino — a Brazilian beer brand — shining through the lighter paints on the roofs of Volkswagen Gol, Ford Escort and Chevrolet Corsa cars from simply recycling the beer cans. Mainly because a simple knock on the roof would cause a big dent, due to the flimsiness of the material. On the other hand, they were also the cheapest cars available on the Paraguayan market.
What happened to the good old reliable purely mechanical cars of yesteryear that would go on and on and on with just a bit of regular maintenance?
On the other hand, there is also the availability of public transit services that are much cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a private car. Especially if your mobility needs are restricted to your local area. And with the onset of health issues — both mental and physical — retaining a drivers license becomes an ever increasing road safety risk to the general public that is not worth taking.
For the last five plus years I have had less than a handful of occasions where I wished I had a car available, mostly because I am unable to carry or drag some desired shopping home. So I just decided to do without or to do it piecemeal.
An additional benefit of NOT owning a car, is that I cannot be shanghaied into providing “free” taxi services to others [outside my own immediate household]. I have nothing against occasionally helping others, but when they demand that you drop everything on your own schedule whenever the whimsy strikes them, that is definitely crossing a line that should not be crossed.
Please see my replies over on Faux-Borg -er- facebook ...
By the way - the numbers I used 'over there' are the =real numbers= from my credit-cards tracking spreadsheet.
No numbers are "For example ..." or "If you ..." or "About ...dollars".
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The Buddha opens his Four Nobel Truths with:
"[D]ukkha (not being at ease, 'suffering', 'standing unstable'). Dukkha is an innate characteristic of transient existence; nothing is forever, this is painful" {I made slight clean-up edits}
Others claim "dukkha" is difficult to translate. My translation is "Life Sucks".
After some more verbiage, Buddha notes that since the current state of 'right now' is changeable, is always changing, we can change many things, hopefully for the better.
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A century+ ago, first aid for soldiers suffering from 'shell shock' (today we call it PTSD; sometime we can do better today) was "three hots and a cot". That is, three good meals and a night of sleep outside the combat zone. I'll add tea & biscuits or cookies or whatever they are called in our mushed-up English.
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And of course all the Huggles from me that you can grab from the Æther. Delivery is at the Speed of Thought.
At my Humanist group, this morning (Sun/23rd) we had small groups discussion of Community and what it means to us. One of my Communities is right here, the Closet.
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The sad news, is that I think your self assessment is reasonably accurate at the extremes ...
But ... The Totally Excellent To The Max Good News is that you =know it=. This puts you ahead of a lot of other people!
If you plot the the extremes on the X (horizontal) axis of a graph ... you're omitting all the stuff in between - the days that are OK, the days where nothing (expensive) breaks, the days where the laundry gets done (Phht! =My= laundry can look like a Three Day Project from the outside) ...
Then we need to look to the Y-axis - where you write stories, help your Mom, your Daughter, your "Ex" ... the times you go have fun, the time things are just plain mellow; and your extremes simply do not apply.
But the Y-axis has a minus side. For me, it was when I hit the wrong buttons on my micro-wave and completely incinerated a potato. It came out like a piece of crispy black Styrofoam - and set off my =carbon monoxide= detector. "Suicide by potato poison gases"...
And of course, I did this =twice=!
I'm not even gonna think about our Z-axis. That would hurt my brain ...