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Miscellaneous

My Kingdom for a Car

Last week my car got a brand new strut. I’m not entirely sure what a strut is, except that it holds the wheel on. I know this, because when they put my car on the hydraulic lift to find out what the troublesome noise was, the wheel fell off, because the strut was broken. Did you know a strut cost $300? I didn’t.

Yesterday my car got a brand new alternator. Unfortunately it didn’t tell me it needed a brand new alternator last week, when it was already at the shop. It waited until I was in the left lane of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills during morning rush hour traffic. Did you know it’s against the law here to stall your car in the middle of traffic? I didn’t. Fortunately the very nice police officer didn’t give me a ticket, even though she was apparently well within her rights; instead she just used her official police pickup truck to push me to the side street, away from the angry shouts of my fellow morning commuters. The new alternator cost $140. On the bright side, I got to spend almost two hours knitting and chatting with Patty, my mechanic’s office manager, who it turns out also knits. Last week I told her all about the cool knitting stores she was missing out on by only going to Joann’s. Yesterday she showed me the $300 worth of yarn she bought over the weekend at Stitches from the Heart. She’s got $140 to go before she equals what I spent on my car.

I’ve now added a new task to my morning routine—begging my car not to break down today. So far it’s working.

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