Monday, February 4, 2008

clean your car, change your life

my car has been filthy; inside and out. but as with most things, i worry more about what other people will see. therefore when the very infrequent compulsion overcomes me, i will usually wash the exterior so it does not look quite so "matte". not to mention it's just so much bloody work fiddling about with those oversized and akward vaccuums that cant seem to suck up anything bigger (or smaller) than a tic tac. however, this has been the season for expensive new make-up, using moisturizer (somewhat daily), and nice knickers (or at least ones with no holes in them). that, and the crumbs and other unidentifiable funk around the central console were really starting to irritate me. i also needed new wipers and windscreen squirt.

in the: non-codependent-boring-chores-are-always-more-fun-when-you-have-company way, i invited a friend to wash her filthy, crumby car too. really i needed "back up" to venture into testoserone hell (pep boys) to purchase my wipers. fortunately the 'deer in headlights of an oncoming locomotive on fire' drew a very patient and grandfatherly salesman to orient us to the wiper aisle; i encouraged him not to leave us, perhaps "abandon" was the word i actually used. at the checkout he offered to install them for me (was it that obvious?). i declined, informing him that i needed to be wiper self sufficient, but if he heard excessive weeping and swearing from the car park, to send out reinforcements.

after several minutes of struggling (and swearing) we wrestled the wipers off. another several minutes of more swearing and struggling ensued in order to attach the new ones. wiper mission accomplished was punctuated by some animated high fiving. after that, replenishing the wiper fluid was child's play; but we still high fived ourselves. while this may not be a great feat for many, the fact that i spend about as much time futzing with my car as i do poking around in my left ventricle with a scalpel marks this as an achievement.*



*although perhaps not an entirely successful achievement as the wipers were tested in a downpour that looked like vaseline had been dumped on the windscreen during the work commute today. one of the wipers popped off.

2 comments:

mansuetude said...

i was walking down the street in the rain and that wiper popped me in the eye!!!

I was feeling the possibility of self sufficiency, then ...it all wiped away. : O
thanks!

Anonymous said...

Your car was NOT filthy, chica, but it is cleaner than clean now!!!

A