Lemon Trees

It's alright. I'm cool again. Had to spend a couple days on the IR (that's the "injured reserve" to you non-sports fans), but the swelling has gone back down and the itchy, watery, burning sensations in my eye are diminishing. At least as much as they ever do. But hey, I didn't switch to Geico, and I still just saved myself a lot of money.

If I'd gone to the doc, he'd have charged me a fifty dollar co-pay, and then charged the insurance three hundred dollars for sticking a needle in my eye.

****Editor's Note
If I haven't mentioned it to you before, you want NO PART of that whole "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" crap. It's really not worth it. If my blindness is not the direct result of "soap poisoning"(it very well may be), then it is almost surely the fates coming back to bite me for all the times I used the "Cross my heart, mom! Hope to die...." line to get out of trouble I deserved. Needles in the eye hurt. A lot. Trust me. I've had more than a dozen. Whatever punishment a kid is headed for, it is absolutely less painful than a needle to the eye.
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Shortly after this funtastic time playing pin the needle on my bull's eye, the doc would then tell me to come back in a week to "See where we are at". This would cost me another fifty bucks at which point he would say, "Well it's looking better. I know you still can't see very well, but it's getting better. Come back in two weeks."

Another fifty bucks and I'd be told we were almost ready to talk about transplanting the other eye, and to come back in another week. By then I'd be up to 200 dollars in co-pays in just over a month, and it would be about time to go back into rejection again, thus starting the cycle over again.

It's a lot more cost effective to just accept a day or two of misery (which is STILL better than the shots) and not spend a dime.

Who says health care isn't busted? And no; that does not mean I am in favor of the President's health care reform. Shifting the bill collectors from one bunch of crooks (insurance companies) to another (the government) is not a solution. After all, look at what a fantastic job the boys in Washington did when they took retirement programs over! Can't wait to see what they do to health care...

Anyway, two days later, and I'm no worse off than I was on Monday. I just have fewer debts.

And that's probably a good thing, because it's time to register the van again.

Speaking of throwing good money after bad lemons, do you know what's the difference between our car and my eye?

There's two. First difference? We can't survive with out the car. The eye is optional. Second difference? The eye actually works once in a while.

Allow me a moment to use the Internet to register my disgust.

****Editor's Note
You'd think I was in a bad mood this morning, but I'm not. I'm actually laughing my butt off thinking of all the snide, snarky things I can say about what's annoying me. I got my comedy mojo workin' again! It's been awhile. Enjoy!
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If there is a bigger lemon in the car buying universe than the Dodge Caravan, I'm sure I would have bought it. But I bought the Caravan, so that is all you need to know about it's reliability. That two ton chunk of metal represents the single worst decision I have ever made in all my life; and that's coming from a guy who chose to cheer for the Chicago Cubs and who is known for occasionally smashing soda cans against his head.

We purchased the hunk of junk just before Peff was born. Waiting until we had to buy was our first mistake. We knew that with four kids, we could no longer smash into the sedan we were driving. We HAD to have a van. I was still working so we figured that having two cars would be a blessing for us (mistake #2). We looked around for a while, studying prices (a good idea), but mostly looking for the most cost effective purchase price.

My hindsight is twenty-twenty, even if my eyesight isn't; so I know now that I should have spent a little more time researching "cost of ownership" issues (mistake #3).

My dad had bought one of the original Caravans while I was in Taiwan on my mission and he owned it for five years. He had the transmission replaced six times. Yet for some reason, we went to the Dodge dealer anyway (mistake #4). I asked about the transmission issues and the salesman assured me with written reports that the trannie problem had been fixed.

Again with the hindsight, but I now realize that they must have fixed the transmission by stealing parts from the electrical, exhaust, and fuel systems.

We have owned this crap car for almost six years. Due to the um...questionable? service record of the Caravan, we were upside down in it almost before we drove it off the lot. Every year that we have owned it, we have had to make major repairs in order for it to pass safety inspection. The average is about $1,100 a year. This time we got off fairly easy. In order to make lemonade, we need:

Two new tires (I'm not kidding when I say that we change the tires on this car more often than we change the oil. I have literally lost count of the flats, blow outs and too worn to pass inspection tires we have replaced. Ten pairs is not an exaggeration. It's been balanced, aligned, rotated, you name it. The Caravan chews up tires like a big leaguer chews Redman.)

Both front end sway bars replaced (fortunately, not as scary as it initially sounded).

New brake light (at least that's cheap).

The emergency brake repaired

We won't count the fact that the bonehead inspector tried to unroll the passenger side power window which will probably never go back up. I missed feeling the breeze, so I'm not too upset, but the kids keep whining about 40 degree temperatures.

Wussies.

At least that won't cause it to fail inspection.

We got lucky and found a guy who will do the sway bars and the emergency brake for under a hundred bucks and the Boss found a couple of slightly used tires for fifty. The brake light is only about three bucks and I can do that myself (unless its the symptomatic result of some early stage, massive electrical system shut down. Don't laugh, it's entirely plausible. I give it even money odds).

If we throw in the fifty bucks to inspect it and the hundred and twenty five to register it; we're talking about three, three and a quarter to drive for another year. And that's getting off easy? Thank heaven our rainyday fund will be able to cover it (for once).

We finally got the heap of scrap paid off this year, but if you add up all the repair costs we've shot into it, we could have bought a brand new Honda or Toyota for less money and now had much, much more to show for it.

The good news is that when we buy a new car, I will feel no compunction whatsoever about not trading this heap in. They wouldn't give me a dime for it anyway. So I'm gonna park it in the drive way, wake up every morning and beat it with a sledgehammer until I can no longer swing. Then I'm gonna light a different part of it on fire each day just so I can pee on the flames (Sorry mom, it had to be written...too funny to pass up!). All my "fat guy aggression" will get channeled into that "quality" piece of...American engineering.

I can't wait!

PS: Speaking of waiting, I'll try to have more vacation up after Beak gets her kids this afternoon and I'll put up a special Saturday edition post tomorrow to make up for missing yesterday.