02/07/2013

Well. I promise I did not mean to stay away so long. Things got so crazy busy and I kinda forgot about OD. And then when a friend mentioned it, I had to go back and read & get caught up. Then the cycle began all over again.

How in the world does a housewife/stay at home Mom get so busy she can’t even write in her diary?

Anyway, things are well. Same old same old. We’ve been here 4+ months now and some days it feels like years. We’ve settled into this small town quite nicely. Although I’m still not liking the whole "lack of shopping" options this town provides, I’m dealing with it. And saving a crap load of money in the process lol.

Well, we are saving money as long as the car cooperates that is. A while back the thermostat went bad in the car. No biggie, usually. Except that the car is only 3 years old. It only had 45K miles on it. Normally a thermostat should last much, much longer. But, it’s just possible we ended up with a bad one straight from the factory. We’ve only changed the one in Hubby’s truck once in the 17 years/89K miles we’ve had it. When I had my S-10 I changed it myself. It really isn’t hard to do, if you know what you are doing.

Since we had the warranty on the car we decided to take it to the dealership. Guess what? A thermostat is considered normal wear and tear (like an oil change, brake pads, filters, etc) so it isn’t covered by the warranty. Ok then. Stupid reasoning but understandable all at the same time. So I calculated in my brain the cost and labor and came up with about $150. HA! Mother effers charged us $369 with $252 of it being labor! I was so pissed. I went on a Southern Redneck Rampage in that service department. How dare you charge $252 for labor? It took roughly an hour to change the thermostat, drain & refill the radiator! The whole process was about as simple as changing the oil in your car!

"Mrs. Sassy, it is a little more complicated than an oil change" the poor guy who had the misfortune to deal with me said.

"Bullshit! I’ve changed a thermostat myself before in a Chevy vehicle. I know what all is involved. I’m assuming you all were thinking I was some weak ass female who didn’t know a thermostat from a spark plug and thought you could take advantage of me!" I said to him as I was giving him one of my famous stare downs.

"No Ma’am! We would never take advantage of you or any of our customers! We pride ourselves on honesty!" was his reply.

"Well you aren’t being very honest today now are you by price gouging me with this ludicrous labor bill! Sir, I just spent the last 19 years married to the military and had to deal with my husband being deployed for a good portion of that. I learned real quick how to recognize people who were trying to take advantage of the fact that my husband was deployed and trying to screw me. There is nothing you can tell me that won’t convince me that you aren’t royally screwing us!" I said as I was looking at the bill in my hand.

(I was pleased that I was pretty darn close to the price of the thermostat and anti-freeze I had figured up in my head)

"Hell, I could have went to Auto Zone and bought the items & changed the part myself and saved myself $252. I’m not blaming you for the warranty coverage not covering that. I honestly didn’t know that the warranty didn’t cover it. But this dealership seriously wants to charge me $252 for the labor? If anything I expected you to screw me in the price of the parts & charge me triple of what you guys paid for them. THAT would be more understandable! Do you not see something wrong with charging that price for labor for basically an oil change?" I said in a much calmer voice.

"Ma’am it was more involved than an oil change. Cars are built differently than they were 20 years ago. Computers in the vehicles make the jobs more labor intense. Once the job was done, your computer had to be reset." he tried to placate me with.

"Hooking up a USB cord is what has caused labor prices to go through the roof? Seriously? I understand computers change things up as far as maintenance goes. But it doesn’t warrant price raping a customer. Show me exactly what the tech did, step by step, that warrants $252 in labor then so that I can understand." I said in my most "snotty princess" voice I could muster.

"Ma’am the work is already done. We can’t go back in & redo everything without having to replace everything again." he replied with while trying to stand just a little bit straighter.

"You know what, fine. Here’s your damn money. I will need your corporate office phone number and write down GM’s while you are at it. By the end of the day, every place I visit today will have been told NOT to bring business to this dealership due to price gouging. I will shout it from the roof tops, plaster it all over Facebook and Twitter, and wherever, however else I can get it out to the public just how unfair this dealership is in it’s labor costs!" I managed to get out as I dug my debit card out of my wallet.

Shit like that frustrates me! Especially when we have been living like paupers so that I could build our savings back up. We spent just about every penny in savings buying this house & getting him started on tools for his job. So I feel naked without it & my anxiety won’t lessen until we are back to where I can feel comfortable. I’ve got 3 house payments saved up. At the time of the thermostat issue I had 2 car payments saved up but ended up using one of those to pay the dealership. Now we are back up to 2 car payments. Once we have 3 in savings I will work on 3 each of all the other bills & then I will start over to build everything up to 6. Once we have 6 of everything saved up, and then have an "emergency car fix/plane ticket to fly home for a funeral/water pipe bursts under the house/etc. fund" then I can breath normally again. Now that we no longer have "job security" with the military, I’m fearful that he could be laid off/fired from his job and I don’t want us to lose everything.

It’s good that we have the money for the little "uh-oh’s" right now. I just hate having to spend it. Especially when we shell out $369 for a car fix and then turn around 2 weeks later and have to replace the front windshield on the same car because some "Mr. Impatient" couldn’t handle being stuck behind a slow 18 wheeler and decided to pass said 18 wheeler only to have a rock fly up & put a quarter size hole in our windshield as we were passing it. *sigh* Thank God he was driving otherwise I’d never hear the end of that!

I still budget us for a little "fun" one weekend a month because we need that for morale purposes. We eat out that weekend, drive to Garden City or whatever. With all the issues the cable company we’ve had since day one with them & this house, we have accumulated quite a few free OnDemand movies. So we have been taking advantage of those on the weekends we don’t go anywhere.

We’ve even gotten into loving not going anywhere on the weekends. The Child has been making so much progress with karate. She has earned her next (gold) belt. She has even bumped it up to going 3 times a week. So between that and Girl Scouts every other week and school she looks forward to not doing anything on the weekends but laying around watching Netflix on the iPad lol.

Next weekend we are going to Hutchinson/Wichita for a karate tournament. She isn’t participating in this one. She wants to go to see what all is involved and how things are done, etc. which I think is very smart of her. Also, it will prepare me (us) for what all is needed and expected for the tournaments and how much money I will have to budget/set aside for the out of town ones. We have decided to splurge and save out $300 of our tax refund & spend the night in Wichita (hotel, gas, food, etc) since it is too exhausting doing it all in one day. We will be joining an old co-worker of Hubby’s for dinner & then visit with my cousin & his wife to see them & deliver Girl Scout Cookies. My cousin Pastor’s a church just outside of Wichita and it has been a few years since I have seen him & his family. I’m looking forward to seeing family. We will end our trip at the base commissary so I can stock up on meats and other items that are so crazy expensive at Walmart (again using tax refund money). Oh, and of course I will splurge in a very unhealthy manner on Starbucks! LOL Hey! One will be free (compliments of Starbucks celebrating my birthday) and then I have a few dollars in gift cards. So I won’t break the bank on Starbucks! lol

I’m going to end this now even though I have so much more to get off my chest. I’ve left reminders for myself in the past & it didn’t work out for me so well because I still ended up forgetting to write about whatever it was I was wanting to write about. Here’s hoping this time actually works! LOL I can dream right? So here is what I am wanting to write about …

• Hubby’s supervisor
• My Dr. appointments
• The house transformation
• My faith in God
• How to know when to let go of people
• Karate pictures
• My mother’s visit

Till next time …