this is why we garden and hate mechanics

no matter how you look at it groceries are fucking expensive. WTF? all this food i have to eat sure cuts into my drinking fund, and dirt bike fixing fund, camping fund, boating fund, stripper fund, not going to work fund... uugghh. last weeks drunken shopping was over three hundred bucks, yesterdays Costco and Safeway trip cost me another three hundred bucks. that's not including the gas to get there(okay i did buy two thirty six packs of beer, two nice bottles of wine, one syrah and one pinot gris, and a couple of movies.)

i remember the days of only alcohol in the belly. i thought that's why they called it a beer belly!?!?! not a "wow that guy looks like hes been eating and drinking belly."

yeah, yeah... i buy expensive shit... Cornish game hens and ribeye steaks... four or five different types of cheeses(funny eh?) and all kinds of fancy things... no government cheese here dude. and i buy sparkling water by the case, red bulls by the thirty pack and gallons of fresh juices...

we buy the good organic produce and let fruits rot on the counter in the basket at an alarming rate. but all this is to tell you that we garden. we grow the shit out of plants at our house... i don't even know what we are growing this year... hmmm...

three different kinds of lettuce, spinach, bok choy, Scarlett runner beans, raspberries, green onions, garlic, we are going to do corn this year, sunflowers (last year we had some unexpected monsters!), potatoes, watermelons, broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes, broccolini, artichokes... fuck i cant even remember what else...

and not that it even saves us that much money, but they TASTE so much better than every thing else at the store. and its free! well, i guess i did buy the dirt, the seeds, the chicken wire, the screws to hold the boxes together, etc... and factor in my time and those fucking tomatoes now cost about three hundred bucks a piece! damn... that's why they taste so good.

well ive got to go,there is an old dude whose truck broke down in the parking lot here...

bonus story!!!

now I'm back, fucking ancient Nissans. if you are a Nissan manufacturer and you read here, please leave... what a pain in the ass that was....

no crank, just a weak click... load test reveals a strong battery. hmmm, good connections.. .try it again. just one click...

"its a new starter" he says...

lights flash in my head, fucking mechanics... i hate them... what i hate worse is cleaning up after them. so on this older Nissan there is no fucking way in hell that i can get even my small girly hands on the back of this thing without removing the oil filter. well the thing with that is this oil filter is on its side...

do you know what that means? fucking oil all over the starter, there is no room to put a nice piece of cardboard in between so it runs off onto the ground... err, into a drain pan, yeah, a drain pan. guess what else runs right next to the fucking oil filter and starter? yep, you guessed it! the exhaust manifold. they aren't cold, that's for sure....

so i remove the oil filter, get a gander at the starter... napa... garbage, cheap plastic made in Mexico garbage... fuckers. tighten up the battery cable to the starter, double check the mounting bolts are tight, then cinch them down, clean and reconnect the ignition/igniter wire to the solenoid and replace the oil filter, top off his oil and close his hood.

"go ahead and start it Joe."

"what? don't you need to check it?"

"no Joe, go ahead and start it."

he looks at me with this your a crazed fucking lunatic glare and starts his truck. his eyes bug out and head nods as he says something to himself...

"so i don't have any money, but do you smoke?"

"that's okay Joe, if you would have broke down across the street i would have told you to get fucked, but you broke down here so i fixed it for you for free. no worries on the smoke though, thanks."

"well i don't mean cigarettes, you know... smoke... "

" i know what you mean, no thanks. if you have any other problems today call the office and I'll get you out of trouble, but yer good. that starter you had put on is shit, but yer good. wait did you put that on there?"

"no.... a shady tree mechanic did. thanks a lot Zack and we will see you again."

"hopefully not under your fucking truck eh?"

now, i do what i do, when i do it. but not at work. i sure as hell don't want people in this town thinking i do anything other than work at work. i don't walk around with a big sign saying all kinds of shit about myself. i don't volunteer that kind of information to customers of my work place. I'm just a greasy low life to them.... heh, lets keep it that way shall we?

he drives off and am left with the memories of what it means to be a shady tree mechanic. aka backyard mechanic, flat backer, etc... some mechanics just fuck things up for the rest of us....