Despite temperatures above "average" it's still freezing at night, which means here it is, 9am and I'm trying to walk a wildly happy coyote-dog to the humongo-truck over ice. She's pulling like crazy because she wants to be sure she goes with me and isn't left at home, I'm skidding and sliding in my rubber boots, yanking on her and telling her to chill out so that she doesn't pull me right off my feet and down onto the ice. It's a near thing. But luck was with me and I managed to get her into the truck without mishap. It could have gone wrong so easily. If a squirrel had suddenly popped its cunning little head around a tree it Sofie would have given a giant surge of frustrated-squirrel-kill-lust and I would have been on my ass.
I already put all my instruments in the car, plus my shower bag,(someday I'll have to tell you about living in a cabin with no running water) and I'm now taking a "sanity moment" at the computer before I get behind the wheel of what has to be the world's longest truck (extended cab, extended bed, extended hood, extended bumpers, extended glovebox...) and drive the fifteen miles into Fairbanks over dirt, ice, snow, and asphalt.
I'm teaching ten or eleven students today, no breaks unless someone doesn't show up for a lesson, the lessons are all 45 minutes long. It's a long, long day. I'll be eating beef jerky and whatever else I can get to keep me going.
I'll be honest with you here, I'm depressed. We have fourteen hours of daylight, and I'm depressed. Most Alaskans save their depression for the darkness of winter, but for some reason this is hitting me now, right when I should be, by all accounts, giddy with warm temperatures (after all, it's NOT 40 below).
I miss my truck, my real truck. The one Born Again Transmission ruined. Reports to the BBB have been made. But I still really miss my truck.
Let me just express how it felt to take my nice truck to those assholes and have it returned as an unrunnable hulk:
I feel raped. I feel kicked in the nuts and castrated. I feel like I woke up in a nightmare and found the nightmare wasn't a nightmare, but reality. Heeeeere's Freddy!
My truck was my one special space, my living space, the sacred area where I spent hours thinking, singing, praying, crying, watching the astounding aurora (while stopped by the side of a dirt road near the Tanana River), glorying in the eye-hurting blue skies, waiting for a mama moos and calf to move off the road...this space has been desecrated. It's gone, destroyed, defiled. It was my own room, one that I chose to share with the occaisonal rider, but it was the only room I had utter control over. It was MINE. It was private. It was MINE. It was my ONLY private space, in the physical world.
And now I have nothing.
I went out yesterday to find a new truck, but my heart wasn't in it. At the Toyota dealership they had only one truck that was used that had manual transmission, and they want too much for it and won't bargain with me on price until I am "qualified" to pay the full price. So far I've been refused by three lenders (because they are asking too much for the truck, is why). There is one more lender to hear from, but I'm not hopeful.
At good old UnAffordable Used Cars (they are good folks, I just like to call them that because their prices are high) there was only one Toyota truck, it was a 98 and had 77,000 miles on it. That's too many miles, but I drove it anyway. It was clear that this truck had been driven way too hard all of its life, and was all worn out mechanically. I passed. Besides, they wanted $14,000 for it. I think it was worth about half that, if you had it inspected mechanically. I passed on that one. It was just trouble waiting to be driven off the lot.
The Humongomobile is using a quart of oil every few days because the valve-cover gasket needs to be replaced. Maybe I'll surprise my guy and do that myself this weekend just to be nice to him.
I don't have enough money to buy a truck outright. That leaves out getting something out of the paper. If I buy a truck I must have a warranty. I'm not going to go through what happened to me last week ever again, I'm going to make sure of that. So I have to buy from a dealer of some sort, a truck that is new enough that it either comes with warranty or is new enough that I can buy warranty for it.
It looks like I'm going to have to buy a truck without a warranty again, even so. Money is power and I don't have enough of either, yet.
I'm depressed. And now I'm going to go to work.
