Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me

After spending the last four years completely consumed with the house, the rest our life has been demanding some attention. Apparently, it was tired of being ignored. So I've had a lot on my mind lately, but not much of it has involved the house. Unless you count gardening, I haven't done anything besides the laundry and dishes. While tending the garden offers a Zen like satisfaction and the home grown tomatoes and peppers are wonderful, they don't make much of a post.

The search for new car is officially over because I can't afford anything that runs. Hell, I've even seen wrecked, non-running cars that I can't afford. The price of gasoline isn't the only thing going up these days. My solution to the car problem is having our old Saturn's engine and transmission replaced. While this is not cheap, it is cheaper than buying something used. If things go well, the rebuilt car ought to give me roughly two years of service before any major maintenance or repairs are required. This is based on putting roughly 40,000 a year on the car.

My father-in-law, the used car dealer, thinks this is a horrible idea since the car "is worn smooth fucking out." To my mind, if the engine and transmission have been replaced, that should pretty well take care of that, no? He suggested that I buy a 2001 Honda Civic with "some front-end and hail damage." Since the money we have from selling the VW wouldn't cover the purchase price for this fine automobile, he suggested that we charge the difference on our credit card. My only response to that is no fucking way.

No one else has expressed much enthusiasm for this solution besides Scarlet. The last time opinions aligned this way, we moved a house. That didn't turn out so great, but in spite of all the portents otherwise, I'm hoping for a better out come. Really, our finances don't offer any other options.

My little sister is putting our home improvement efforts to shame. She is on the verge of finishing all the remodeling and renovation work on her house in under a year. Of course a house is never really finished, but the only major work left is painting the living room, installing some baseboards and trim, painting and installing new cabinet doors in the kitchen, and the bathroom (needs sheetrock, paint, and to have the toilet and sink reinstalled since it was completely retiled). I did have the opportunity to shine as a Home Improvement Superhero, but that tale will have to wait to be told. Maybe next week?

Despite everything we've had going on lately, I've managed to fit in a lot of extracurricular reading. At least once a year, I go on a manic reading spree. Apparently, that time has come. I've knocked out Beauvoirs' The Mandarins and She Came to Stay, Camus' The Stranger, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, and O'Brian's The Fortune of War. I started A Clockwork Orange this week, and I am thinking about rereading Conrad's The Heart of Darkness if I can find my copy of it. Some other possible future reads are more O'Brian, Andrew Green's The Story of A Marriage, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Beauvoir's The Second Sex, The Lucifer Effect (forgot the author's name), and Pullman's His Dark Materials series. More possible re-reads are Orwell's Animal Farm and Selected Essays, and Machiavelli's The Prince. I don't know if I'll make it all of the way through that list, but if I do, does anyone any suggestions?

No major house related activates are planned for the weekend. I'm hoping we might go and pick some white peaches this weekend and gorge ourselves. Since last year's crop was destroyed by a freak freeze, it's been two years since we've had some fresh-picked goodness. I can't wait.

Troubles and Respite (Part 1)

The last few weeks have been very busy.

First off, I sold off my VW Beetle. It had been in the shop for the last five or six weeks. Actually, it's been in two different shops during that time. I got it out of the first shop, and it ran for three days somewhere in the middle these six weeks. Then it broke down again. I dropped it off at another shop since shop number one obviously didn't fix the problem. During that short period that it ran, I decided to buy a new used-car. I was driving the VW to the dealer for a trade-in estimate when it crapped-out. Lovely. A definite deal-breaker. In hindsight, it is almost funny. Actually, if it was someone else's life, it would be.

The most recent update I had from shop number two was that they were still trying to figure out what was wrong with the car's electrical system. One of the car's fuse boxes had melted, so they had to replace it before they could start looking for the real problem. That's right, a melted fuse box was, "symptomatic and not the real problem with the car." Anything that causes your fuse box to melt is not good and most likely very expensive.

I don't know much of anything about cars, but I do know that every time the Beetle goes in for some work, I'm probably looking at $1000 shop bill. I was terrified as to what the "real problem" might be and how much that would cost.

Then, I received a miraculous phone call. A man called and said that he'd like to buy the car as-is and he'd pick up the shop bill. After several phone calls and talking to the mechanic, we came to an agreement. I sold the car and a great deal of worry. He got the title and a car that would have been shot and sent to the glue factory if it were a horse.

I'm still looking for a replacement car. My father-in-law has been kind enough to loan me one of his cars until I find something. Before I go any further, let me preface this by saying that I am in no way complaining about my loaner. It's free and it runs. I have no complaints. This is particularly true if you compare it to some of the other fine cars that I've borrowed from my father-in-law over the years. When you consider that no less than fifty-percent of them have exploded, the fact that it runs is fantastic. Okay, I have to admit, the whole exploding car thing is a bit of hyperbole. Only the engines did. And they didn't some much as explode as melt, lock-up, and squirt oil everywhere. And smoke.

My current ride is 2003 Cavalier. For those you who might not be familiar with this fine driving machine, it's Chevrolet's version of a compact-sedan something like a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic except that it's made out of plastic and pressed tin.

While the Cavalier is condom like in that it should be bought new, used once, and thrown away, it is not a car that will get you laid. In fact, if any of you have a teenage boy with a driver's license and you do not what to become a grandparent in the immediate future, buy them this car. With an engine that revs like a farting zipper and trails a cloud of noxious gray-white smoke, this car will impress the ladies.

This particular Cavalier leaks or burns (or both) roughly a quart of oil a day. With the correct combination of deceleration while in gear followed by aggressive acceleration, this car lays down an impressive smoke screen like one of those cute little World War Two destroyers trying to screen the aircraft carrier from a Kamikaze attack.


Gideon has named the car Stinky-Pete.

While I've never been too concerned about my car's appearance, it's been hard learning to live with Stinky-Pete. I feel guilty that every time I drive this car, a huge swath of the Amazon Rainforest dies and global temperatures creep up a degree or two. I find myself deliberately avoiding high traffic pedestrian areas because it's embarrassing to pull away from an intersection when you get a green light, and all the poor people collapse, writhe, and die in the crosswalk.

In addition to this car drama, we've been doing what we can to survive the recession. I know that technically this economic downturn has not been named a recession by very authoritative sounding bean-counters since we haven't had two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, but, if Warren Buffett says he thinks it's a recession, I'll believe him. He a lot smarter than me and more successful than the average bean-counter, so I figure he'd know.

The best thing that has happened in the last few weeks is that we've acquired two new renters both by the name of Anna. If we find one more, I think that it will officially qualify as a collection. We helped one Anna move in since she was an acquaintance of my wife. That went pretty well minus the fact she lived in a pseudo-ghetto and she nearly got us into a fight with someone who was probably a Latino drug-dealer and/or gang member on accident.

My other attempts to find extra money have not been nearly as successful. Selling artwork and miscellaneous junk on eBay used to be a great source of beer money in times past. Now, not much of anything is selling. I've gone so far as to look for a second job, but there isn't much out there. I'm hoping that my cost-of-living-adjustment for the next year, plus the two renters, plus cutting back on a bunch of crap will keep us afloat. I think it will, but I still don't feel good about things. I've been granted a respite but not a solution.

Stagflation

Chaos, murder, mayhem, raging infernos of insanity, ugly babies, plagues, pestilence, and woe unto all.

Okay, nothing that bad has been going on here. Really. But, we have had some problems we've been working through. Pretty much everything goes back to the joys of stagflation and the dubious pleasure of clinging to the lower rungs of the middle class ladder. We have fixed rate mortgages (yes, plural) so a balloning mortgage payment isn't an issue for us. However, when the price of gasoline, groceries, and electricity increase by roughly 25% and your income doesn't, you have a big, expensive problem on your hands. Add your car breaking down (again), and you now have a very big, interesting, expensive problem.

We have some possible solutions in the works, but things are still up in the air. I should have something to actually post about it later in the week. Wish me luck.

And, we have actually completed some landscaping and plumbing for a change. Pictures and more to come.

Troubles

The last few weeks we've had some troubles.

The VW broke down again which is pretty well normal at this point. According to our mechanic, the dealer screwed up the wiring when they rewired the car a year ago. He told us to "never let those people touch this car again, ever." Fine with me. Our mechanic fixed the wiring but now the timing or fuel injection is off. Whatever. If we ever get it running, we're selling it. Anyone want a 1998 TDI VW Beetle? If so, let me know so I can go and buy a 1972 VW Beetle. At least those run and the parts are cheap.

Really, the car breaking down wasn't nearly as traumatic as the coffee pot dying. There are few things I hold utterly sacred in life. Coffee is one of them. Without it, my peace of mind is ruined. Without half a pot of it after dinner, no home improvement projects or anything else is accomplished. Sure, a strong pot of tea with cream and sugar is tasty, but it just doesn't have that spastic, eye-popping kick that coffee does. It's like comparing alcohol-free beer to scotch.

And, the cordless phone died. I may do a whole post on phone line trouble shooting, so I'll save all of my moronic antics for latter.

Volkswagen, Du Kanst Mich Mal!

It was a day drifting between last summer flush and cool fall. The sunny, early afternoon was comfortable in the trees' shade, they lined the lane. I climbed into the yellow convertible parked at the curb. It was a classic design, providence and origin unknown. The long, sleek hood was too big to hold anything less than a V8. The engine started with a whisper and purred. I had to smile. I eased the car away from the curb and raced down the road. The old wooded neighborhood vanished, the road masked the lakefront, southbound to downtown. I glided through traffic, rocketing past everyone. I never shifted out of second gear. I ruled as a god among the shoddy, weak plebs of the road.

Imagine my disappointment in wakening to a much different world.

Even though one gallon of diesel will get you 56 miles down the road, I hate this car, our 1998 VW Beetle. Apparently, I am not the only one either.

As long-suffering reads will already know, this car has cost us quite a bit of money over the last eight or nine months. It got a $2500 check-up for Christmas and another $400 of electrical work after leaving me stranded during an ice storm. Then, we had another $1000 of work done this summer.

The current problem with pimple sized bit of over-engineered, four-wheeled dung is the battery won't stay charged if you don't drive it every day. There are two possible explanations for this.

One is that this is one of the endemic problems that plague the newer Volkswagens. There is so much passive-electronic crap in this car that they vampire all the juice off the battery when it's not running. Volkswagen installs solar panels that charge the battery via the cigarette lighter while they are shipped from the factory to the dealership. Prior to this, the cars were arriving at the dealers' with dead batteries. Nice.

The second possible problem is that we may have a short in the new electrical system, another endemic problem with the new VW's. Steve, our good mechanic, said that we ought to take the car back to the dealer and make them fix it. This sounds reasonable at first, but, since this nut-sucking bunch of monkeys has yet to fix the car to my satisfaction, why would they start now? Besides which, they probably won't make it right for free to and they'd keep the car for a week or more while they fucked it up in some utterly novel way. Volkswagen, du kanst mich mal am Arsh lechen!

Oh. Since we've already pissed away a small fortune on this car this year, I don't have any money to really do much about this at the moment. I'm guessing I'll have to dig out my trickle-charger and just plug the little bitch up over the weekend so it'll start come the work week.

Do you remember my much lauded Saturn, the one I retired after it lost a cylinder at 287,000 miles? It still starts the first time after sitting in the driveway for over a month. I used it to jump my "good car," the VW, yesterday morning. Again.

Anyhow, the question is what exactly we'll do with this piece of maggot eaten shit.

Fiscal Olymipcs or Sodomy by Another Name

I have to say that I’ve missed you all. Sure, I’ve been lurking around Houseblogs for the last couple of weeks, but I haven’t been spending a lot of quality time with you.

Things have been chaotic and complicated of late. The last week and a half has been hell.

We closed on the Devil Queen’s mortgage. It is a nice feeling, but it certainly hasn’t been the cure-all that I hoped it would be. In addition to all the drama that went along with this particular transaction, we’ve had some other problems too.

For one, all three of our cars are broken and in the shop. The Dodge’s motor is burned away. The coolant line was nicked and the radiator drained before we knew what happened. I’m not sure what is wrong with the Saturn. Two weeks ago it started burning a lot of oil. Now it sounds like a lawn mower and doesn’t have as much power. I think it lost a cylinder. I suppose that could happen after 286,300 miles, right? And, the VW Beetle still has some issue. Little things like the missing rear windshield and possible damage to the cooling system.

With me working in Little Rock and the wife up in NW Arkansas, this just wasn’t going to work for us. Charlie loaned Scarlet his car for three weeks while we tried to work out this mess. He was willing to loan the car more or less indefinitely, but neither Scarlet nor I felt comfortable with this. There is something innately sad about being this dependent on parents and grandparents as your 31st birthday lurks just over the horizon. None of our cars are going to be out of the shop anytime soon, so we did the one thing we sworn we’d never do in our lifetime. On the same day we closed on the Devil Queen, we bought a brand new car.

You may wonder how we could afford a new car. On the surface, it doesn’t look like we should be able to make this purchase. I mean, I thought it was a long shot, but what the hell.

It took some determined juggling. First, the dealer offered a $1000 rebate you could use as a down payment. That helped a lot. We are also the beneficiaries of a strange paradox: we have really good credit even though our finances are in shambles. This meant we could finance the car for a long enough time to work the payment into our budget. And, to sweeten the deal, my genius wife found us a new insurance company. She saved enough money on our premium to nearly pay for the car's monthly payment.

Now, we’re trying to sell off some of the houses we’ve been accumulating over the years. We’re hoping to meet with a real estate agent tomorrow to list Mr. Blue, our first house. Our renter is moving out this summer and we’d just like to be rid of the damn thing. Once this is accomplished, we’re going to be doing some more financial olympics until we get everything to fall into place. This includes paying off credit cards, refinancing loans, and making sure that we make more than we spend on a consistent basis. Not working on the Devil Queen day and night has really helped with this. I was looking over our books for the last couple of years, and we were consistently spending no less than $1000 a month of the Devil Queen. During a couple of peak months, we were spending an averaging $5000-$6000 per month. Nice.

In addition to all of this, we had to clean out our storage room. I think I may have mentioned this already. July 1st was our deadline. I tried to clean it out myself, but it just wasn’t going to happen for me. Even if I had gotten all the bloody boxes out myself, I can’t move the wardrobe, the dresser, and rest of my furniture. So, as has been my penchant of late, I hired a couple of professional movers to finish this project for me. I’m glad it’s over with but there is a downside. All the crap we had in storage filled the bay-window room and spilled out into the hallway. I honestly have no idea what 75% of this stuff is and looking at it just pisses me off. I see a bonfire in my future.

I’m not sure what else has been going on lately. Taking sick cats to the vet, dealing with appraisers, bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, and others. It’ll certainly wear you out.

Anyhow, I hope that explains my long absence.

Life: Moving From One Disaster to the Next Until You Die

I was hoping to give you some juicy house posts, but I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to me bitch and moan a bit today. If that isn't on your agenda for the day, move on to something worthy of your time. Believe me, I understand.

Something Scarlet and I have been talking about is the "it's all the Devil Queen's fault" excuse. Basically, whenever something goes wrong, we (mostly me) have gotten into the habit of blaming the house. Usually, something goes wrong, we don't have the money or time to make things right, and it's the house's fault since we've spent all our money and time on it. And, to an extent, this is true. But, is it really the Queen's fault? Somewhere along the way, we instigated this whole stupid project. We're the one's who decided to spend our money on this, right? So, is it the house's fault or ours?

Anyhow, two of our three cars are dead. My wife borrowed her step-father's truck to go to work, and it died this morning. So, she's driving her grandfather's truck. Because of our transportation troubles, she's been missing meetings and interviews which is very bad if you're a reporter. Fortunately, her employer hasn't complained about it. Yet.

We still haven't heard from the bank or the appraiser so we haven't tied up all the loose ends on the house. God, I love fiscal limbo. Sweet.

We're going to have to buy a new used car this weekend, because we really need it. And, it sucks being thirty and having to borrow your parents and grandparents cars all the time. It makes you feel like your all of 16 again.

And, as it is, we may not be able to take the sailing lessons we've been looking forward to for months because we may not be able to physically get there and we need to go car shopping.

So, the real question is, if we can't blame the house for everything, does that mean we're incompetent, cursed, or both?

I'm going for both.

Being an adult sucks.

Oh, and did I mention that our mini-storage has given us until the end of the month to clean out our "storage room."? I say storage room in quotes because we're actually renting a small two bedroom house adjacent to the facility for our stuff. He offered it to us last year because he didn't have a renter and all the big units were full. Now, apparently he would like to rent it out again. He's offered us a large unit for our stuff, but if I'm going to have to move all that shit anyhow, I might as well ought to move it to the Devil Queen, throw it away, or give it to Goodwill.

Having been rushing against the bank deadline for so long, I'm really irritated to have yet another deadline to meet so soon. If we could have had to the end of July, it would have been much better for us.

And, I'm still waiting for something else to go wrong. It's like a scent on the wind, I can just tell that this storm hasn't passed yet.

Trivia and Miscellaneous

Sorry, I was working on a fabulous post on rim locks when the computer ate it. I don't have it in me to write it again at the moment, so you get this crappy post instead. Progress on the Queen and everything else has been slow this week. I've been fighting off a mild cold, and my butt has been dragging all week.

Maryam, here is the picture of that clock you requested. I'm still not exactly sure where they found it. I'm guessing a local discount or outlet shop. Or, Hobby Lobby?

And, here is a little piece of car trivia too. How much does a replacement rear windshield for a 1998 VW Beetle cost? New: $800, used/salvaged $300, for my father-in-law: $150. See, we try to stay on his good side for a reason. Downside, the windshield in question is in Fayetteville. Upside, my wife was able to go down and pick it up after work. The fact that it wouldn't fit in her car, priceless. I don't know what Plan B is yet, but I suspect that it involves a truck and a very long drive.

Smokin'

Having a father-in-law in the car business has its ups and downs. Ups? When your car breaks down, you have quick access to a car trailer and loaner car. Downside? Most of the those loaners are in nearly as bad of shape as the car you just left at the shop.

I can't remember if I mentioned this, but the dealer did not completely fix my wife's Beetle. It starts and runs with a dash full of new electronics, but it has some other serious issues.

Service Manager: "Do you go off-roading in this car?"

Me: "What!? No. Why?"

Service Manager: "Have you been in a wreck?"

Me: "No."

Service Manager: "Huh. It looks like something hit the underside of the radiator. It broke the core support (WTF is that?) and shoved the radiator and the two cooling fans into the engine. They all need to be replaced."

Me: "INTO THE ENGINE?!"

Service Manager: "Yeah. They're all pressed together."

Me: "How much is that going to cost?"

Service Manager: [long pause, a calculator clicks ominously in the background] "Umm. Gotta add that up . . . With parts and labor, it'll be $2300."

Me: "$2300?! The car runs right?"

Service Manager: "Yeah."

Me: "Don't do anything else to it, I'll pick it up today."

That afternoon I picked the thrice-cursed car up and drove it to a mechanic in Atkins. The mechanic does a lot of work for my father-in-law. He can fix the VW for about 1/3 of the cost of the dealer, so I was suppose to drop it off and pick up a truck he'd just fixed. Sounds easy, but it wasn't. The truck wasn't finished.

Mechanic: "Come and take a look a the truck."

We walk over to the red truck. It looks fine but there is something black and twisted laying on the ground next to it.

Mechanic: "See." He points at the contorted, melted mess. "I knew the gas tank had caught fire when he brought it in, but I didn't know how bad it was." He kicks it and something, hopefully non-flammable, sloshes inside it. "It's a lot worse than I expected. All the wiring is burned away and I'll have to replace a few other things too. It won't be ready for a couple of days."

So, the situation is I've left a VW without a cooling system at the mechanic's shop, and I am driving a Saturn with 3 gears to work while I wait on a burned up loaner. Sweet.

I had to laugh. It was one of those sublime moments when everything is so implausibly awful that it is the only thing you can let yourself do.