I keep driving, thinking to myself: I am so not playing your game right now car! I usually just make a point to avoid looking directly at the light (yes, if you put your hand on the middle left side of your steering wheel you can conveniently "not" to see the bight orange "PLEASE FIX ME" light). Besides, more often than not, the next time we're going for a drive together the light is off again (it's one big game for my car, I'm telling you).
It was the flashing on-and-off that caught my attention. My check engine light doesn't usually flash.
So I get all the way over to the right lane, just in case, and keep driving. We made it home, and we're done. Done for the evening anyway.
Friday morning I decided to head out for work a little earlier than usual. Leaving early on a Friday morning is a bad idea...no one should be going to work early on a Friday in the first place. Plus, when you plan to have "extra" time in your morning, it really just means that you have extra time for something to go wrong. I walk outside and notice that my car windshield is completely frosted over. Now this might not be a huge problem for most people, but most people tend to have working heaters in their vehicles. Heaters that can properly defrost a frozen windshield. My car is special. My sweet spaceship of a car can cool you down like no other...but heat? Not so much. I can't remember if the heat actually ever worked properly. We bought the car in the middle of the summer (which probably means we were justified at the time in not noticing the lack of hot air pouring out of the vents when we tested it....OR it might have actually worked way back then), and then my mom and I drove it cross-country to Pepperdine. This = hot hot hot, windows down, road trip = no need for heat. The following two years at Pepperdine didn't give me many opportunities to really need the heat function in my car either...thanks Malibu. Well now we live in Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Where it's 75 degrees one day, and the next your car is a frozen piece of ice. But on with my story...this wasn't supposed to be a rant!
So I turn on my car to warm up the engine and then go back inside to get a pitcher of luke-warm water to defrost my windshield. Yes, I can hear you cringe. Most people cringe when I tell them that my solution is to dump water on my windshield when it's frosted over. Hey, it works. I get into my car, ready to hit the road. I put it in drive...and she shuts down. I put it in park, try to turn it on again, and no dice. She won't start. I try a few more times and each time she comes to life, but the engine won't turn all the way on.
I finally give up and go inside to wake up my sweet husband. It's the battery, I tell him. I need you to jump my car! We go outside and I show him what my car is doing. It's definitely not the battery, he says, see how it's turning on? Hmm. Good point. Okay, well let's look under the hood. I pull the hood lever....and nothing. I yank it a few more times. Seriously car? Now you're going into lock-down mode and won't even let us look inside? Bah.
We really give up at this point, and Taylor drives me to work.
Surprisingly enough, she turns on for us Saturday morning - well okay, it's not that surprising. It seems my car has quite the sense of humor. After looking into the cost of towing on Friday (when we thought she would never turn on again), we decide to drive her straight to the shop. If she won't turn on ever again, at least she could be somewhere better than stranded in front of the house. And that's where we left her. Poor car. Crazy space-ship, loud loud engine, car. But still poor, sweet car. I'll keep you updated, I have a feeling this is only the beginning.
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