Getting Older - Not Always Sunshine and Butterflies

We're all getting older. It's one of those things that gives us no choice - time proceeds and we walk, run, or stumble alongside it. Some authors equate time with a river, I look at it as more like a wave - sometimes moving faster, sometimes slower. Of course time doesn't actually change, but our perception of its' passage certainly does. Why speak about time? Well, time is measured in many ways and one of those ways are dealing with the items that surround us.

Time is a river ... or is it? An MIT Professor has suggested a
new theory of time. Check out the article here.  

For instance, DH's car. DH's car used to belong to my mother. When she died in the early part of this century, it was one of the things I inherited. At that time it was a car that was around 10-12 years old, and in pretty good shape. I stuffed it full of items I was keeping, shipped a few boxes, and sold everything else. I drove the car to Minnesota and gave the car to DH because his old car wasn't reliable any more. He's been driving Mom's car for the past 15+ years now.

I've never been fond of Mom's car. Of course, I don't like white cars
up here in the Frozen Northlands. To me, a white car looks like
a portable pile of snow. But DH likes it - it runs and it didn't cost him
anything and the heater works. A total win-win. 

Adding up the numbers above, you can see that Mom's car has aged from a sprightly 10+ years old to a creaky 25+ years old. But the car is still reliable, and he only drives it to work and around the general neighborhood, so no long trips in the car. One of the issues with the car was the ignition key would sometimes stick  and it would take some maneuvering of the steering wheel to get the key to release. But on Saturday night, the key wouldn't release at all.

No tow truck was necessary, thank goodness. We had a spare key, so we were
able to lock the doors despite the fact that the key was in the
ignition. It could have been a lot worse. 

Fortunately, the car was still mobile, so first thing Monday morning I phoned my neighborhood auto repair who has done great work for us in the past and asked if they could shoehorn DH's car into their schedule. We could leave it for the day. They said "Bring it on over," so we did. I suspect DH was envisioning all sorts of electrical work, but we got lucky, in a way. Apparently a linkage cable had snapped. The age of the car made getting a new cable for this an impossible dream, but the car would run fine without the cable, DH would just have to make sure to use care when shifting out of park since he would no longer need to have his foot depressing the brake pedal before the shift would operate.

For a change, an auto repair didn't cause a huge hole
in our money supplies. Even better, I don't have to
play chauffeur for days while we try to get the car
repaired. A total win-win.  

Less than $200 and a disconnected circuit and missing cable later, we picked up a repaired car after work lat night. Transportation balance in my household has once again been established. Hallelujah! One less issue for anxiety. I wonder when we'll have to get something similar done on our bodies as we age. We'll just tell the doctors to disconnect the circuit, pull out the useless cable, and oh ... make sure to keep that medical bill less than $200. Happy Tuesday!!!!