There's MORE???

Just when I thought my car problems were leveling off, I stumbled upon some new information.

The 187 Suzuki I bought that had 79,000 miles really has $150,000+ miles. How did I find this out? Oh, I bought a carfax report.

I realize I should have done this before, but it didn't occur to me to ask the seller for the VIN before purchase. According to the carfax mechanics records the mileage was at 102,000 back in 1994! Then it mysteriously rolled back to 72,000 in 2001 before being reported as 87,000 in 2008, and then mysteriously rolling back again to 76,000 in 2009. I bought it at 79,000.

I was poking around the other day and noticed that the plastic odometer cover on the dashboard was missing. I called up my mechanic who had inspected the vehicle before I bought it and asked him if i was like that before.

He said that he had noticed it while he was test driving it and thought the miles were innacurate, but he didn't want to dissapoint me by telling me not to buy the car. In other words, had he done the job I HIRED him to do (inspect the car and tell me what was wrong) I wouldn't be in this mess. I wouldn't have bought an '87 Suzuki that couldn't pass a smog and had an innacurate mileage.

And then ANOTHER thing I just realized is the name on the title doesn't match the name the guy told me. So either he gave me an assumed identity to protect himself and he really is the guy on the title, or the vehicle isn't his and he forged someone's name.

But that doesn't even matter. If doesn't matter if the vehicle was stolen. The police can come pick it up tomorrow and junk it for all I care. All I know is, I paid $2,750 for a car I'm not legally allowed to own. I'm not legally allowed to own it because according to the DMV it is classified as a "gross polluter". It's illegal to sell gross polluters. The DMV will NEVER let me put the title in my name. Meaning that it's going to forever remain in the sellers name and then once July comes the registration is going to expire.

I don't care what happens to the seller. Maybe the DMV will go after him for selling a gross polluter. Maybe the police will give him a ticket for expired registration on a vehicle he doesn't care about. Maybe he will be charged with odometer tampering (a felony). All I care about is my $2,750.

What if I never find him? I will forever have thrown away $2,750 and I'll be stuck with a car I can't own. What happens then? Does the DMV buy it back? Do I drop it at a junkyard and it becomes someone's parts car? Or do I just ditch it on the side of the road for it to collect parking tickets in the other guys name?

Come to think of it...if it turns out the guy on the title really is the guy who sold me the car, I might just dump it on the side of the road during street sweeping day...see what happens then. Let those tickets and fines accumulate. Then maybe there will be justice.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Punch Someone...

Today that someone is the guy who sold me my car.

In CA there is this thing called a smog certification. Depending on your zip code your car has to pass smog either every 1 or 2 years, and then every car has to pass a smog when ownership is being transfered (as in a vehicle sale).

When I bought my 'zuki my mechanic was poking around under the hood and fiddling with parts to make sure everything was in good condition. While that was happening I was talking to the seller. I asked him if the car would pass smog. His reply was "yes, it had to in order to even be registered".

Fast forward to Saturday morning I drove down to the mechanic's shop on the corner and had it smogged. It failed. Miserably. HC and CO levels were off the charts and the ignition timing was off. Ignition timing is not a big deal, it's quite easily fixed. More troubling was the HC and CO levels, since they had to run a full emissions diagnostic to find out why. They were closing that day so I had to wait until Monday to bring the car back.

Sometimes it's as simple as a catalytic converter that just needs to be replaced, so I figured I would do the diagnostic and hope it was just a little trivial issue. Well my diagnostic came back today...THE HEAD GASKET IS BLOWN.

So now I'm sitting here wondering a) HOW THE HELL DOES A MECHANIC MISS A BLOWN HEAD GASKET? I saw with my own 2 eyes the chocolate-milk colored coolant/oil mixture in the engine. I know nothing about cars, but even I know it's not good. How the hell does a seasoned mechanic who I brought out to inspect my vehicle miss something that critical? Did I not make it clear enough to him when I said I didn't want any MAJOR issues? A blown gasket is pretting major to me considering it's like a $1,200 repair.

The second thing I'm wondering is b) WHY DID THE SELLER LIE TO ME? Obviously had he said it wasn't going to pass smog I wouldn't have bought it (duuuh), but what he's done now is created a whole lot of heart ache for himself.

See...in the state of CA it is the SELLERS responsibility to get the vehicle to pass smog. Buyers cannot even legally register cars that don't pass smog. The smog technician pulled the DMV records on the car and found out that it had been smogged a day before I bought it...and it had failed. Meaning when Mr. car seller looked me in the eye and told me it passed he was lying...committing fraud...false advertising...however you want to look at it.

So what's going on now?

Oh I'm SUING HIM. Yes....little old me, the shy girl who sits in the back and doesn't say a peep is furious. I am so pissed off right now that I can't even think straight. I've been up for the past 4 hours angrily pacing my apartment unsure of how to conduct myself in such potent rage.

I'm going to talk to JAG tomorrow but the smog tech. gave me all the printouts I would need. According to the CA vehicle code 24007 the sale is null and void because the car didn't pass, meaning I am entitled to a full refund on the vehicle. Basically, Mr. moron who sold me the car is in for a long and painful road.

I WILL be suing him and I WILL be making his waking life a living Hell. And in the meantime I'm going to go down to the shooting lanes and fire several boxes worth of .45's down range.

Lesson to the rest of you random strangers I will meet in life: Don't fuck with me. Especially not while my husband is deployed.

The Talk

Yup. Just had "the talk"with my husband a little while ago. You know, the one you don't really want to have but eventually comes up anyways and you try to change the subject but somehow still get into lassoed into it?

I was talking to my husband today and he was getting kinda angry at me for not being online as much. Which, I admit, is because my job keeps me pretty busy. I guess I have kind of put "communication" on the back burner because I've just been so stressed with other things and my time management skills are so horrible. I just figured the less I heard from over there the less painful it would be to live through the day, so I wasn't getting online as much and wasn't responding to his emails in a very timely manner (although I tried to make it a point to respond sometime that day).

But then he said something really weird. He said "all I do is sit here all day and watch people die."

And that led to "the talk". I tried not to go too deeply into things because I'm certainly in no emotional state right now to handle anything of that caliber, so I tried to keep it phrases like "how does that feel" and "is that good or bad?" or "I see". Then I tried to detour the subject by asking things like "how heavy are those guns cuz they look heavy?" and "how often do you do PT" but I couldn't get around it.

In the end I found out way too much about way too strong of subjects and now I don't even know what to do with that information. How do you respond when your husband tells you hes killed people? Bad people none the less, but still...I'm not possessed with wisdom enough to even know what to FEEL hearing that.

Adventures in 5-Speed...MY FIRST CAR!

Today I bought my very first car. And when I say my first I mean MY first. My parents didn't give it to me as a gift, my husband didn't finance it in his name and "allow" me to drive it.

I went and I took MY money that I made working MY job and I bought MY car. I researched it myself, decided what I wanted, set up a test drive and mechanic inspection, and signed my name on the title. Once the title transfer is complete on Monday it will be the first car I've had that actually has my name on it.

So whats the catch?

Oh that's right...it's a 5 speed manual and up until about 2 hours ago I didn't even know what a "clutch" was. But the car was just too good to pass up! It's a little blue Suzuki Samurai with a soft top, 6" lift and 33 inch wheels (did I mention I love off roading??)

It's always been a dream of mine to have a little off-road capable "project" car. I was putting that dream off for years because 1) I have no mechanical prowess whatsoever 2) most off roaders are manual and I can't drive them.

But the other day I was cruising in the middle of an unpaved Longhorn ranch in Temecula looking for an address for my Census Bureau job and I thought to myself how great it would be to have a tiny little off road jeep to rock crawl with. The truck is nice (nay...it's badass), but it's a city truck. It's what you drive when you want to show off how badass you are without actually getting muddy. Plus, with an $18,000 loan, freshly painted side panel, and monthly trips to the auto detailer, it's not something my husband necessarily appreciates me dragging all over the county, putting on miles and wearing out brakes. It's his truck, that's HIS responsibility.

I decided that you don't learn how to fix cars by not owning one and you certainly don't learn how to drive a stick by avoiding them like the plague. So I took a HUGE risk and bought a 1987 5-speed Suzuki Samurai for $2,700. Only 79,000 miles (dang good for a 23 year old car) and the body is in great shape. The paint is a bit faded and the soft top is torn in some parts, but those are cosmetic and quite easy to fix.

I had to have my mechanic drive it back for me because of my ignorance at manual transmission.

BUT THEN....dun dun dun...Gaile from Deployment (again) came up and taught me how to drive a manual. We started in the parking lot of the LDS church and wound up out on some ranch roads below Pendleton. I only stalled out maybe....50 times ;) I even drove it on the road, with traffic and stop lights and windy turns!

My neighbor is coming over tomorrow to expand on my knowledge a bit, so hopefully by tomorrow I may actually be able to get up a hill without stalling out and rolling back down (*cough*...sorry about that Gaile). Or accidently releasing the clutch before the passengers are fully in the car (sorry about that again). Or without scaring the living daylights out of various homeowners, who I can only imagine were probably thinking "what is the stupid blue jeep doing out in the middle of the road jerking around and making those horrible grinding noises?

I have high hopes for this car. I feel more lift and bigger tires coming on, fresh coat of paint and a new top, roll cage, the works.

But in the meantime, here's a picture. Any suggestions for names are greatly appreciated:

Is this real life?

Yes...so I stole that quote from the "David After Dentist" youtube video. But it rings very true.

I was sitting at the Wendy's on base today eating a frosty and watching the line slowly shrink when I suddenly had an epiphany: is this real life?

Is it?

Like...WTF happened to my life? Here I am sitting in a fast food restaurant on a military base with a husband at war.

A husband at war.

A husband at war.

A husband at war.

That just kept ringing in the back of my mind until I couldn't even recognize my own life.

How did I get in this situation? How did all that time slip by me unnoticed until the moment I realized my husband was at WAR?

It was almost as if I hadn't realized it until that moment. Like he was just on a 12 month vacation somewhere and I was bumbling around at home with tears in my eyes for no reason.

But now everything feels different. My home feels more empty than its ever felt. My life feels more fucked up than its ever felt.

I've joked about how I was "going crazy" but never really felt like it....until now. I really do feel like I'm going crazy, slowly losing my mind. My apartment has completely gone to shit. I feel so unmotivated that sometimes I can't even get out of bed. In fact, if it wasn't for my job I don't think I would even bother waking up.

I wish I could just sleep through the whole next year. Sleep is amazing. You're technically alive, but you're "unconscious" so you don't have to really deal with anything. Amazing.

I've made it halfway through month 4. Meaning if this was a typical Marine deployment, my husband would be coming home in 3 months. That's only 1 boot-camp length. But this isn't a typical deployment. It's a command deployment, meaning it's 12 months.

Meaning I still have 8.5 months left. That's a little less than an entire pregnancy.

Pregnancy..that's another thing that bums me out. My ovaries hate me. My uterus hates me. My husband's sperm hates me.

FML. I need therapy.

Deployment and Infertility

I was reading an article today about the correlation between depression and infertility.

"....Jealousy is probably the most painful, and more so because it's not really a socially acceptable emotion....There's also guilt for depriving spouses and parents of a child, loneliness and often loss of faith. Obsession is also a factor. [There are] many women who say they can't stop thinking about it, that it haunts them even while they're sleeping."

While I appreciate that someone recognizes the correlation, I was dismayed to find that no one has written anything about fertility and deployment. It's one thing to be depressed but be actively trying to concieve. But what about those women who can't do anything about it because their husbands are gone? I have a 0% chance of conception right now.

According to Kaiser, 80% of deployed men fear their deployment will affect their fertility later on, such as exposure to chemical agents, injury, or even death. In 2003 80 soon-to-be deployed servicemembers took the step of actually freezing and preserving sperm/eggs in case something should happen.

So why doesn't the military do anything about this? Why don't they educate their counselors, chaplains, and doctors about the mental health aspect of this? I'm sure I'm not the only spouse whos pregnancy planning was rudely interrupted. Yet the advice I'm being told is "oh just wait until he gets back."

I'm at a loss here. I can take my basal body temperature every single morning. I can pee on as many OPK's as I want, walk the fine balance between BMI and ovulation, take my prenatal vitamins religiously, and track my fertility every day of the week. But it's not going to make a difference. Pregnancy still requires sperm, and hard as I try I'm not going to conjure it up anytime soon.

In fact, it's the "pregnancy planning" that serves to make me more depressed. Every time I pee on an OPK and see the 2 little lines show up signalling ovulation, I write it on my calendar so that I can have a record, but my heart still sinks knowing there goes another one of my finite eggs, wasted on a month without a husband.

Then factor in the crappy communication. When he was here before, whenever I would get in one of my "no baby" funks, my husband was always there to cheer me up, make a joke, and most importantly to "try again" with. That's not the case now. When I get in my little "funks" I have to email him about it, wait a week or 2 for a response, and then cross my fingers that he's actually going to know what to say.

And what if something happens? What if he dies? What if he is injured? What if he sees things that he can't deal with and comes home different? All of those things are going to delay (if not completely terminate) baby-making hopes. And that's what I deal with on a daily basis.

And for the record...if ONE MORE PERSON tells me "it will happen when it happens" or some other ridiculous piece of useless advice ("just relax", "if it was meant to be, it will be", "embrace your baby-making energy", etc), I'm going to throw my fertility book at them. Unless you have some burning bit of knowledge or miracle infertility cure, just save it. I'd rather you say nothing than spout out some feel-good quote from the back of a fortune cookie (whew! Got THAT off my chest).

I've never felt so crazy/insane/depressed/angry in my life.

I turn 21 on Tuesday. Officially the age DH said I should be when we had our first kid.