So apparently my auto insurance won't wipe the accident I had three years ago this month off my record until frickin' May. So I get to endure a 10% surcharge for another six months... and all this for an accident that was a mechanical failure, not even my damn fault.

I think when I take a chunk out of my debt come the New Year, I'm going to be shopping around for insurance. As a single male under 30, I'm going to get screwed no matter what I do, but it would be a huge financial relief to me if I could decrease my monthly payment. Ugh, I hate being an adult.

My car had a couple of things go wrong on it lately. The heater fan stopped working, and bizarrely, the hood latch level fell off at some point in the middle of the night. So today I took it back for routine maintenance and warranty repairs.

To my surprise, they fixed everything, did the routine maintenance, *washed* my car, and waived the $50 deductible. All in all it only cost me $30. This Saturn service committment may be worth its hype after all.

So last night Verizon killed my DSL. Again. When I called the billing office this morning, they told me (essentially) that it was for no good reason. In all honesty, I'm shocked that they got it back up and running without screwing up. Likely it'll go down again sometime this weekend.

I've worked out almost all the kinks on my car donation, which will hopefully prevent the police from showing up and towing it, thus costing me a fortune I can't afford. Hopefully it should be gone by Tuesday. (So what will go wrong? Bets?) I just have to hope my credit union really DOES provide a notary service, or I'm gonna be doing some frantic running before work today.

I need to make a new dental appointment soon. While I'm doing okay overall, I need to have my crown adjusted, and a light layer of material applied to one tooth that has had its enamel worn away. Also, I have learned I need to cut back on the Icebreakers Sours. This sucks. I love them. (But they erode enamel, see problem.)

I'm beat. Life is just grinding me down to a pile of dust.

I will be going out to pick out a new car this weekend, hopefully without any great deal of trouble. What exactly will come of it, I don't know. At this point anything is open... what IS reasonably certain is that my finances are going to take a hit, and that is going to suck.

It's almost half-pointless for me to have a car if I can't afford to go anywhere or do anything.

I need a new job and more money in my life.

Nothing at all.

My car is essentially a lost cause, with a blown gasket. The mechanic says I can drive it maybe up to three miles at a time, presuming I'm willing to get a constant faceful of exhaust fumes. No farther. So I still can get to places such as the store and work, at least till the end of October when my inspection expires. Obviously, with a wrecked muffler and exhaust feeding into the radiator, it's not going to pass. After that I'm going pedestrian.

Unfortunately, with a dental bill of $345 arriving in the mail today, I won't have much in the way of savings to get a new car for ages. I need to see if I can arrange to pay that in installments if at all possible. If not... Well, I'm righteously boned.

Meanwhile, my application for a credit card was rejected, so I have absolutely no fallback resources.

If I needed any proof whatsoever that effort and work mean nothing, this certainly is it. No matter how hard I try, I always end up back here, struggling to scrape together enough money to survive on a daily basis, and failing utterly to keep up with the bills and the necessities of life.

I don't know why I keep trying. I honestly don't. Trying just means failing, and failing is all I'm good at.

So, my car is having problems. I went to the Jiffy Lube on the 30th; had them look at the muffler while they were changing the oil and flushing the radiator. They told me the muffler's broken at the tailpipe.

That would explain the extremely loud engine. And the rattling from the muffler when I go over bumps.

Today my AC quit on me, and my engine began belching steam. I popped the hood once I got to where I park from work...

Evidently Jiffy Lube forgot to plug a hose in. Or something similar. So now I have to take it BACK tomorrow, presuming it survives the trip home, and to Monroeville.

My muffler, of course, is still broken.

Sigh.

This morning, I got up for my damned-early work (7?!), got ready, got in my car, and.... it was making unhappy noises. VERY unhappy noises. And as I rolled down the street and onto the Parkway I realized... my tire had finally given up the ghost.

I drove to work on the rim. I know, not good. I hoped it could be salvaged. It turned out it couldn't be. So there I was, stuck in Monroeville with less than no money to my name (my bank account has nothing left in it, less than nothing, and I have got to get PAID tomorrow or I'm doomed), a disabled vehicle, and I couldn't even put the spare on because the lug nuts were too tight.

Luckily, my mother let me use her credit card to get a new tire put on, so now my vehicle is working, and I'm more in debt to my family than ever. With no real responses to my applications yet, except for one hopeful that I can't schedule because Kaufmann's "schedules made by Thursday" policy is fucking bullshit, I'm not exactly rolling in it. Nor will I be.

Seems that for the third year straight, I won't be having a Christmas. I can't afford presents for anyone, and I don't expect to get any, so why even bother? At least I may not work this year. That's what I did the last two years. Christmas will just be another day off.

Yes, I'm cynical, bitter, cranky, and generally fed up with life. Deal!

So this woman who lives across the street from the house I work at had someone hit-and-run a car over the holidays, and all the evidence points to someone coming out of our driveway. Well, okay, Christmastime, lots of people pulling turns and using driveways to do it, right? She first came trying to blame it on one of the overnights -- said it was a white or silve van, not coincidentally the same color as the van the person she was accosting owns. Trouble for her was, it wasn't there that night at all.

So last night she comes back, and is poking around the car of one of my other staff members. On private property, screwing with private property. Then after she determines that the staff member's car couldn't have been the one responsible, she comes up to the house and tells the girl there that she knew who did it, it was a "green car", and she knew the last four numbers of the license plate, just not in the right order.

So in other words, she's trying to pin it on me now.

Let's think. She's changed her story three times now, from white van to blue car to green car. How do you get the last four numbers of a license plate, out of order, anyway? This is three weeks later, mind you, which means she's seen my car parked in front of the house or in the driveway about twenty times now. And only now she's coming forward, with a changed story, and accusations against me?

I'm worried she'll find some way to make it stick. I got my car used, so it came pre-banged, and there's no record of that so it's just her word against mine. I was there that night, and parked in the driveway. I remember the car, it was hell getting out with it parked where it was! And it's just my luck that I'd get hit with $3000 or whatever totally out of the blue.

In other news, I had the nightmare appointment at work today, driving around a parking garage for 45 minutes looking for a parking space. I'm wrecked, really and truly wrecked!

Bad news: I have a cold. This is totally, completely outrageous to me, as I just HAD a cold not two weeks ago. I have no patience for being sick; absolutely none at all.

The good news: I have a car. A '95 Nissan Altima. It's all right, not as good as my old car, but it will do.

In a little more detail, here's what happened.

I was coming home from work at about 11 o'clock. It was dark, rainy and a hill -- so, naturally, my brakes utterly failed to work. Coming down the hill towards a light, I pressed them and got -- nothing.

I tried to steer between two cars and failed. I hit a car in the right rear corner with the center of my front bumper.

My boss was in the area; she was nice enough to give me a ride home. I ache, I have been aching, but I saw a doctor today and he says I'm just fine. My car is a total loss, unfortunately, which means a two-hour one-way trip by bus to get to work -- up at five, home at seven, for a nice fourteen hour day, and in bed by 11. I expect to go back to work Friday or Monday.

I'm doing okay physically, but I'm fighting a lot of depression, both because of this and other circumstances which are all piling on. I seem to be having a very hard time coping.

But I'm okay, I guess.

Just got in a car accident.

Am okay. Physically anyway.

Well, if not the absolute worst, at least in the top three.

Being sick, I can handle. (Even if it is something pestilent and bizarre that won't go away).

Moving I can handle, even if it is a whole house, with incompetent movers, and all sorts of unexpected problems cropping up...)

Having my car break down -- the car I've had for five weeks, without warning, out of the blue, while at work -- on top of everything else... Well, that's too much to handle.

Wraith's at the dealership (I assume, they never called me) to deal with what I think is an electrical problem. Ideally it will be uncomplicated to fix, however I still won't be able to pick it up until I can prevail on the good graces of tigerphoenix to drive me down there. Assuming it gets fixed any time soon. Assuming they even got it. The way this day is going, I honestly believe both the dealership and the towing company will deny ever having seen it.

Oh yeah, and add in the fact that I haven't been able to get in touch with the one person who could help me feel a little better, give me just a little perspective, make anything worthwhile... God. I'm tired, lonely, absolutely miserable, and for once I'm perfectly justified in being that way. That in itself is a perverse feeling.