looking for car repairs

After I got my brakes fixed I was thinking that many people have no idea where to even start to look for a good mechanic or how to find out how much the repairs should cost. I was looking around the web again and found this site. I found it first as Chicago auto repair It is really good about both! Not only do they show you what it should cost for your area but even recommends mechanics to you. You can in put your car year make and model like say you have a 2001 Toyota Corolla and other info and what you need done and it can estimate the work for you.
I say estimate because there are many things that can go into a lot of different things. Just because your need thermostat changed doesn't mean that your hoses are good or you could still need a water pump to fix an over heating problem or you could have a worse problem that the estimator wont catch and requires a mechanic to look at the car and diagnose it. I think that the estimator is pretty accurate though taking into consideration the area you are in and the type of vehicle and the repairs you need. I even put in what work is needed on a car we were just given and it gave me an estimate of what it would cost to fix it properly. I can say that if it was more to fix the car then it was worth I would have made $200 by scraping it!!
I would definitely take some time and go to this site before you go to get your car fixed! I know that if I am in need of a shop to do repairs that I can not do myself or my husband can not do I am going to check them out myself!

Not such a good day

Today has been one of those days you never want to repeat. My husband tells me he is getting tired of me being here a little bit(so he went to his appointment alone) my damn bladder decided to be spastic again this morning and my knee is still killing me. I drove all over creation and back today so Mike could apply for jobs but yet I didn't get to apply for anything again today. Now tomorrow we had a few things to do like social services and social security and to put up some guys soffet on his house and hes giving us a car for it. Well now he has to help move is step sister in the morning so what we need to do gets put on hold again...oh yeah and my rear brakes are out on my car and they were supposed to get fixed today and didn't again and now not tomorrow either. I am so frustrated and now I find that I don't even have a hundred bucks to my name and I still need to get my daughters hair cut she needs new sneakers and and turn her cell back on. I hate money!! I truly believe it to be the root of all evil in this world and that the world would be a much better place with out it! Well my life would be anyway as my husband had said that it was the main reason he had left me to begin with, before all the using crap came out. I am just bugging out today. It has been one of those days where nothing seems to go right and even what does go right is still wrong. I feel like I am being pulled in many different directions all at the same time and yet going no where. I did get the first two parts of my orientation completed and still have one more to go tomorrow and if I keep feeling like this I just might stay up tonight to do it. but I don't think it will be posted until after three am here with the time difference between here and Arizona. Oh well looks like while in pain tonight I am sleeping on the floor again with out the aid of an air mattress cause Mike is sleeping on the couch and doesn't want me to set it up cause he says it is OK with out it. So he is OK but I'm not and that is OK in his mind. I am so tired of waiting for him to get regulated on his meds and not knowing where I stand that I am just ready for it all to be over already of course this is not happening fast enough for me at all. I just want my husband back to the way he is supposed to be and quickly but that just isn't happening. I miss the man that I married, the man that talked to me and could tell me anything, the one who confided all of his craziness to me and knew it would be OK because I love him for all of his faults. I accept him for who he is and who he isn't and who he will never be. The past couple of days one of his "friends" has told him he should stay with me cause he seems happier with me and that our relationship is weird. I tried to explain to him that she thinks it is weird because she has never had unconditional love before and that if she had she would understand more and it wouldn't be weird to her. I do not know this persons whole history, only what she and my husband have told me, nor do I want to I just know that in his sleep last night he was fighting with her and telling her to deal cause I am his wife he loves me and that all she is a friend. I am kinda worried that what he tells me in an unconscious state is never going to be in his awake mind again. This worry has been eating at me for a little while now and it scares me. I love this man so much and he has no clue how I could want to still be with him after all that he has done: lied, stolen, cheated, and caused me pain beyond belief. I try to remember at all times that a lot of what has been said and done is from him being sick and that when it counts he is still the man I love but when there are days like today I just sit and wonder if all the things I have read could be true that I should try to keep going on like nothing is wrong and not push him at all but it is very hard. i want my life back and i would like to know if it will include him or not and right now i just don't know and that really sucks bad!! I am mentally and emotionally drained right now and I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. Friday night we had a spat and he threw his wedding ring at me and said that's it I already told you I don't want to be with you and then he put it back on Saturday before we went to see my daughter and I told him he could take it back off if he wanted after we left her and he hasn't yet so that is a good thing I guess and the other day he said wait till he's more stable on his meds to talk about it but ugh so frustrating I wish he could see what we have and not what his mind is showing him. I miss the man that I am in love with and I know he is still here somewhere! I just hope he finds his way out before it is too late.....

once upon a day..

I am sitting here solemn and unamused. That is the best way to describe the way that I feel right now. My husband and I had an argument on Friday evening that I was bad enough for me to almost have me ready to throw in the towel. I had to have one of my school forms in by 8pm Friday night and it all got screwed up. We at 7:30pm pulled into Friendly's to get dinner. He says i never told him that I had to have the form in that night but I know I told him this when I talked to him at 3:30 that afternoon. Whatever so I throw out in super nasty mode now well if it It was for you you would have made sure that it got done and that made him snap throw his wedding band across the table at me and tell me that its hes not putting up with it anymore. HA the nerve of him! Well I didn't eat I had lost my appetite and I felt bad for his mom who he had picking him up and was with us. I was very upset at this point and when we let I dozed off in the back seat. I never knew that we stopped for gas and as we were leaving the gas station bam we got rear-ended by a kid who asked if we were alright then proceeded to tell us he was sorry he was messing with his radio!! So that takes like an hour with the cops and all. His mom would have just let it go but she has a brand new car with less than 12000 miles on it and I noticed that the back end was out of whack even if it didn't show damage. She takes it weds to get looked at as the back end has a lot of sway in it now that it didn't before. But that is not where I am going with this. I got him to put his wedding band back on Saturday morning told him if he wants to take it off after the weekend with my daughter so be it but he didn't he still has it on and yesterday was talking about working it out. I have spent all day today (Monday) looking for places to live and in this state (NJ) there is NOTHING affordable!! I am stressing out and he went to look at a place earlier and it is big enough for him and one of our dogs. It is just a room for rent but he has to be out of here on Weds and neither one of us have the money to go anywhere. His mom and step dad own their home and it really doesn't cost very much for him to be there with them. I mean really you own your home not like my parents who's landlady lives next door and jacks the rent up every time my daughter stays there for school or I end up needing to stay there too or for whatever reason she jacks it up for. This is the reason i have been bouncing back and forth between my parent, my in laws, and my friends moms house (even though she says she can stay alone she shouldn't be so I try to be there as much as possible) but it is no fun not knowing where I am going to be from day to day or night to night. i am stressing out majorly. Since my van died and we got rid of it there is one car between the two of us and i am trying to look for work. That is really hard to do when you don't have a car and are trying to relocate. I am just so tired of it and then school is like killing me trying to get in and get everything ready to start soon the paper i needed in on Friday just had to be resent so now it will take even longer but at least I got it sent out to them AGAIN. I tried to tell my husband in the beginning of September when he first mentioned moving back to NJ that we could not afford it and he didn't listen and now we are stuck fairly homeless and broke. I am trying to get my life in some semblance of order and not having much luck at it. I am almost at the point of saying why bother and going to be one of the people who take far too much advantage of our welfare system. I mean if they can do it why cant I? No I know that is not the answer but it sure sounds real good right now! i love my husband to death and do not want to loose him but I am not sure how much more I can take. Do I want to work things out? Of course I have not done anything wrong. Do I love him? With out a doubt! Can I keep bouncing all over the place? NO. and that is the plain end of it all right there. I like most normal people need some stability in my life and need to feel secure. He really needs the stability because of his bipolar and and that is the long and short of it all from my point of view. I am desperately seeking work and a living arrangement we can both live with but right now it seems to be so far out of my reach it has me so depressed and ready to give up I don't even want to try anymore. My husband would not even have the money for a place in the ghetto for about two weeks so he is looking at living in his car with one of our dogs for the next two weeks. i think this depresses me the most as i cant even help him. I tried so hard to tell everyone that we couldn't afford to live here and no one wanted to listen to me and now the people who fought me on it are the ones that are giving me hell about it!! I just don't know what to do any more....

a dating site

I was in a very bad place in my life a few weeks ago and I decided that if my husband was not going to be a part of my life I was going to look for some one who wanted to be with me. I started looking at Internet dating sites and I found a few. Some of them were horrible and some of them were OK. Datinghotpoint.com really caught my attention. Unlike many of the other sites this site was easy to use and navigate. It was not one of those long drawn out profile things that take hours to sign up on and then you never find a match anyway.
I signed up and in a few minutes I had a couple of people who were interested in me. I liked that I could see who had been looking at me. I am not a fan of Internet dating. Don't get me wrong I did start talking to my husband on the Internet but our meeting was a complete accident. I am not looking anymore because I do want to work on things with my husband and like I said I joined on a whim but then I was sitting here thinking that just because I wont use the site anymore at this time who's to say that some one else wouldn't? So here it is: Datinghotpoint.com Like I said it is easy to use and none of the craziness of the other sites I went to. Hope it is useful and happy hunting!

looking for insurance

Ugh so I am on the prowl today for new car insurance. What a nightmare!! The rates are so high that I feel like I need to take out a loan just to get a new policy started! Why is it that I have had two claims in the 15 years that I have been driving and neither one was my fault mind you that my rates are through the roof?!?!?! The first one was a girl blowing a stop sign the second was while making a left turn the kid 2 cars behind us decided to try and pass the truck that slowed down behind us and he hit us almost all the way in the driveway of the house we were turning into. I got that fixed and they never fixed my windshield so the dang turkey that flew into my windshield and shattered it doesn't really count at all cause the initial accident covered it . So why am I getting charged these HUGE premiums??
I have been trying to find a site to get quotes from that will either compare them for me or let me compare them all at the same level of coverage and just give me the numbers. Well I found one and it is pretty decent so I decided to write about my car insurance woes. I just moved back from Florida and I could start a policy there for less than half what it is going to cost me here and there isn't even a lapse in coverage. CAR INSURANCE SUCKS!! At least there is a place to easily find quotes!

I have spent the last few days clicking around the web and have run across a lot of cool things....I mean what else can you do when you are waiting for your financial aid to come through and cant find a freaking job and still need a place to live?? So in my various forays into the wonderful world of the web I have stumbled across a whole mass of new places..I have even been searching for things I don't need to see what comes up! I have even signed up for a bunch of sites I will never use! The thing is while the web may be a vast wasteland of things that are of no real use there are something out there that are great, funny, stupid, useless, just for entertainment and they by far get over looked! So if over the next few days, weeks, months, years, or however long I decide to write for I may or may not post some page like stuff with links and what not. Right now I am trying to get in school and may need to make some extra money if I can do that by blogging about some of the sites I go to anyway then hey so be it!! By the way I over slept this morning since I rolled onto my cell and never heard it go off!! I didn't meet the husband this morning for coffee and now I don't get my caffeine kick and I have like 3 cigarettes to get me through till like 7 pm.....so not gonna happen!! Well I will be back later!

my pets

I have a few pets a 4 year old ball python, a one year old set of blue/green pied love birds, a 5 year old Australian cattle dog, and an almost two year old black lab. Yesterday my darling husband grrr lost the leash I had gotten for my black lab, Buddy. So now I am searching for a leash for him. I loved his old leash but I can not seem to find it anywhere! I do not know if it has been discontinued or what!! I checked out shopwiki.com and there it was one of the first ones I found was the exact one I was not able to find anywhere else! Me being me I kept looking for more items for my dogs and found some great grooming items for my boys. My dogs are hard chewers and go through toys like water so I looked up the toys and wow did I find things that seem to made to last!! I have had boda bones for them that they tear apart in less then a day and man I am struggling to feed the humans in my house who can afford to replace puppy toys all the time. I ordered a few toys too. My Australian cattle dog a is a fussy eater and only eats certain food so I looked for food for him as well and found the food I had been ordering at a much lower price then what I had been spending for it!! I then went and looked for new bedding for the boys. I did not order it at this time but I think I have found a new best friend for my animal needs!
I would love to kill my husband for loosing my favorite leash but how can I be so mad at him when he led me to find such a great site? I have looked up many things from them in the last day or two now (not just my animal needs) and think I have found one of the best sites to locate the things I need and want! Not only does it give me items but so much useful information. I cant wait until I need to find something else and go looking for it here. I wish my local stores had something like this that I could look up the things I need and read a comprehensive description compare items and gain useful knowledge that leads me to an informed decision when I purchase items. Now all I have to do is suffer until I get the new leash in!! Boy I hope it gets here soon. I can live with out the other things as I have some but the leash that is my main concern I hate having to tie my dog out on a chain lead attached to a stake in the ground.

Sad day in Manda-Land

Today is a sad sad sad day in my little world. In December I bought a 1998 Ford Windstar minivan that I absolutely love!! We have been having some issues with it: bad EGR valve bad O2 sensor bad IAC and now either the head gaskets or the block went bad. So my poor abused van took its final ride glorious ride to the car graveyard atop a flat bed tow truck! I guess I cant complain too much i only paid $150 for it and it made 4 1/2 trips between Orlando FL and NJ and the junker people gave me $150 for it. So basically the van was free and we drove it over 15 thousand miles in less then ten months so I cant really complain too much i just miss it already :(

life...

Well I was just outside having a smoke with my husband who decided that today he wanted to spend it with me. Not because he had to but because he wanted to. We were outside and talking and he tells me WE need to look for a place. Not him but WE. It took a minute to realize what he was saying. I did realize it and I told him that if this is not the way I am thinking that he needs to tell me so that a year from now he cant come back and say he was using me again and he said OK. I am still leery of this because he is not really regulated on his meds and he is not sleeping right and that makes him think and do things differently then he normally would. I love my husband more than I can ever put into words but that is my issue. He has slipped and said I love you twice since we have been going through this. He still refuses to say it to me unless it is in his sleep. I spent the night with him again last night. He held me in his sleep so tightly that I felt like I could not breathe. He again told me how glad he was that I was here and that he loves me and cant figure out why I would still love him and want to be with him after all that he has done and put me through. The answer to that is because i do love him unconditionally. I always have even before I would admit it to myself i loved him and i will always love him! it will take some time to get over what he has done this time around but he is starting to make real progress in his treatment and he needs to stick with it. I have already told him that he needs to stay on his meds and in treatment and he has to either hold a job or get his disability back and stay on it. We spent yesterday with my (our) daughter at the town fair and he did really well a little groggy from his meds but still he didn't fight with her or me and it was over all very enjoyable. My mom is a little more social with him then I had even hoped for but my dad on the other hand while not speaking to him did not freak on him either. That is good my husband said he never felt so unwelcome in my parents home as he did yesterday and while I fully understand that and it was a little chilly yesterday my father did not tell him to get out or even hint to it. The reason that my father is so angry with him is because I am daddy's little girl and he hurt me so it takes my father a long time to forgive a slight against me and also my parents laid out almost one thousand dollars to get me and my stuff up here from Florida . I can tell that my dad feels like he laid out all this money and has nothing to show for it. i Kind of feel the same way as I could not bring any of my main furniture with me. It kills me that I left behind my bedroom set the most as it was beautiful and homey and I loved it. My living room couches could have been very nice again but they were beat up and needed to be reupholstered so that isn't too much of a loss there but it happens my dining room set was all mismatched so that doesn't bother me too much. Now I just have to start from scratch again and it sucks but I guess in a way I am starting over with my husband so it fits that I m starting over with my belonging too. Wish me luck cause lord knows i need it and if you hear of a job opening let me know....

It is what it is. But what is it???

Ugh well lets see... two weeks ago last night i ended up in the emergency room and had an abscess on my face and then last night I end up in the er again having injured my knee and I'm in pain!! I think I waited too long to go to the emergency room. I went with my husband to his therapy session and was sitting in the waiting room for over an hour. he told me when he walked out of there that I should go tot he hospital because it was so swollen and I said no it isn't that bad and doesn't hurt that much...with in a few hours of getting back to his mothers house my knee blew up!! It was almost 3 times the size of the other one and I said well I think I need the er now. We waited for his mom to come home and she went with us (Michael had already taken his new meds for his bipolar and they make him a little loopy) Well i must say other than the fact that the hospital was FILTHY and I was grossed out at the garbage ( food wrappers, leaves, half used gauze rolls, bandage wrappers) on the floor and the stupid nurse who applied an ace bandage on my knee and it was so loose when I stood up it slid down. UHM HELLO I DON'T THINK THAT THAT CONSTITUTES COMPRESSION!! Well anyway I sprained my knee and have effusion which simply mean too much fluid in the joint. So the combination of standing up and arthritis irritated my knee so that it blew up like a big balloon! but at least they have given me pain killers for it! Oh by the way i love digital x-rays!! They came back so quick! and clear as day! I could read my own x-rays from my room. I do not have as much arthritis in my right knee as i was led to believe! That may be the only thing good that came out of last night well other than getting the first good nights sleep I have had since August 27th, the night before I left Florida for New Jersey and the last night I slept next to my husband before last night. Once I fell asleep last night I was OUT!! Last night I slept so soundly I didn't even wake up to go to the bathroom every two hours like I normally do!! Well because my knee is screwed up I am staying here a second night thankfully there are no stairs here that I would have to climb to go to the bathroom!! Thanks mom!! well more to come soon just needed to vent about the dirty hospital and all.

All alone

OK well here goes.....
I have been having issues with my husband and he has bi-polar disorder so it can be really rough at times. I have had a tough time of it lately as this episode he is in he stole money from me. this is the first time this has ever happened. Normally if there is a such thing when it comes to bi-polar people he just takes off for a while and then gets back on his meds and everything is OK till the next time. Well how can some one you love so much and have built so much of your life and self upon stealing your rent money ever be OK again? I am not sure I can ever feel OK about him with money ever again. I think I have it easier than a lot of people who's loved one has bi-polar because I am never afraid of him he does not rage out like a lot of b-p patients do he just will have no real memory of what he has done when he comes out of it! Worst part is when hes in an episode he may remember bits and pieces of past episodes. This time around he referred to something he said in the last episode and it was something he said that hurt me more than anything else. He decided that this time around he would reinforce what he had said last time by saying that he wasn't in love with me anymore and to further it he says he has just been using me for sex a place to live and his cell bill paid for the last 14 months! I am so hurt by this even though I know that it his disorder talking. Today he went to a counseling session and the woman sent him immediately to the SKIP mental health care facility where he is staying. they made him wait there for 7 hours and then are making him come back tomorrow!! Everyone including him now realizes that he needs to be regulated on his meds again. I am just wondering where I will stand with him when hes on his meds again. He is a wonderful man most of the time and the good still out ways the bad so I am very undecided as what to do. I can say that the good times still far out way the bad and it seems worth trying to keep more good times coming. With the money he tool we were supposed to pay our rent so on Saturday I had to leave NJ and drive to FL to get what I can out of our house. Later this morning I will be leaving FL to return to NJ with some of our stuff. I had spent the last 4 weeks in NJ getting my daughter settled in school. After the first 3 weeks he took off with the rent. Sunday night when I got here in FL I was supposed to have a few friends over for a welcome home and instead it was a big screw you as i came in to find that the rest of our roommates had moved out as well. So I was left with a 4 bedroom house to clean out and pack up by myself. Tonight as I am trying to get some sleep so I can leave tomorrow it hits me that this is the last time I will sleep in this bed and I am alone with the exception of my dogs and that we will never sleep together in this bed again. It is depressing. I have never felt this way before and I am having a hard time deciphering how I fell. I mean I love this man with all of my heart soul and body. He is my best friend and all that I could ever ask for in a husband. OK well except when he has these episodes but then while it is not an excuse it is a reason he acts this way. I miss him terribly and want nothing more than to work things out with him. I feel like a corny movie line when I say he completes me but he does. There has never been another man that can make me feel like the most beautiful woman alive with just a glance from him. After almost seven years the man can still give me butterflies by just holding my hand. With all this good I still don't know how I can trust him with money ever again. I do not want to leave him and loose this wonderful person and if it weren't for the bi-polar I know he would not have ever done it. By the way he has a delusion associated with the money that he paid the landlord and then borrowed the money to come up here from some guy Jeremy in NYC.....there is no Jeremy in NYC that he knows at all and even if there was he hasn't talked to him ever in the seven years we have been together so who in there right mind would "loan" some one they haven't seen in at least seven years that kind of money??? Ugh I am so distraught over this whole mess. Feels a little better to get some of it out but there will be more. For now off to an empty bed with only my tears to console me.