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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.