Tag: oil

Thursday’s Theme Music – Waiting

Ashland, Oregon — Thursday, March 12, 2026.

Spring is on the way in the U.S.

It shows here. We started at 34 when I rolled out of bed but with blue skies and sunshine, we’ve jumped fast to 50 F, hurtling toward the mid 60s. Best way to put it, with the daffs and tulips blooming and plum tree blossoms enriching the landscape, it’s a beautiful springish day.

Mom and my sisters are quiet, as is my house. In fact, while many things are going on in politics and world news, I feel like I’m waiting for the multiple systems to react — and maybe crash.

So I feed the cat, read the news. My wife and I think and talk as I sip coffee. All the while, I keep an eye on the headlines and digital stream and check my text and messaging systems.

Time was also spent looking at what the state has been up to. The Oregon legislative session ended. Our rep, Pam Marsh, put out a summary of the work done, a welcome reassurance that some government remains grounded, pragmatic, and functional.

Today’s music reflects that sense of waiting. The Neurons are playing “The Promised Land” by Bruce Springsteen in my morning mental music stream. I hum along with the thought of what was promised and what’s been delivered. This is not just in my life as an adult, but what was held out to us as children. Growing up in the television age, we were often sold impressions about stable, white families with Dad going to work and the children going to school and getting into minor mischief. Mom stayed home and cooked in her skirt or dress, wearing high heels as she vacuumed, did the laundry, cooked. Some shows — like “Hazel” — featured more prosperity, and a maid.

More realistic shows came along, such as “The Jeffersons” and “All in the Family”, but our beliefs were hardened by then. Yet, it didn’t often work out as television claimed it would.

Anyway, here I am, waiting.

Hope you have a great day and all that means to you. Peace and grace on you.

Cheers

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The Miracle Focus

Cars can surprise me. The Miracle Focus did. Gather ’round, o’ peers of the ‘net, and let me share the short tale.

We have two cars. One car ‘belongs’ to my wife, with the connotations attached that this is the car that she primary drives, and that I slip behind the wheel once in a while. This is a 2003 Ford Focus that we bought new that year. It was replacing the Nissan 200 that was my wife’s car then. Rear-ended, they declared the Nissan totaled.

Saying the Focus is my wife’s car implies the other car, the 2015 Mazda CX-5, is my car. That’s not true. My car was a 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1. I traded it in on the CX-5 at her behest in 2014. The Focus was then going to be traded in on a new sports car for me.

She reneged on the deal.

All that is beside the point, and just lengthens the story without adding to the plot, as did this sentence. The Focus has 105,000 miles on it, not bad for a fifteen-year-old vehicle. My wife drives it around town.

I take care of the maintenance.

I don’t do a good job.

Trying to make up for that, I took the Focus to an Oil Stop to have it’s oil changed, its fluids checked, air put in the tires, and so on. I did that last year, too, actually in January of 2017. It was supposed to be returned for maintenance somewhere in May of 2017.

That didn’t happen.

The maintenance this year, August, 2018, was well-overdue. I wasn’t too worried because no warning lights had come on, and only twenty-five hundred miles had been added since the last oil change.

When I took it into the same Oil-Stop as last year, they wiped out the dipstick and showed it to me. “It’s a little overfull,” the tech said.

That was surprising. I didn’t add oil to the car. No one else had, either. Oil Stop was the last place where anyone had added oil. As is their custom, once they changed the oil filter and put new oil in last year, they’d showed the dipstick to me to prove it was full. Now, a year later, it was overfull.

I was impressed. This car not only wasn’t using oil, but was apparently creating it.

That’s why it’s the miracle Focus.

That, plus I think it’ll be a miracle if my wife ever really does let me get rid of it.

Not that I’m bitter or anything. That would be petty. I’m just saying…

You know.

 

 

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