it's a hard knock life

I tend to be a skeptical person…especially when it comes to situations involving my car. Today I had yet another car problem. Yes, it’s true…not much time passes before something else happens. I’m convinced that I have a magnetic aura surrounding me that causes electronic equipment and machinery to break down. My problem today was my rear brake pads. I’ve known for a few weeks they needed to be replaced. It was obvious from the high pitched squeal that I heard every time I pressed on the brakes. My steering wheel wasn’t moving from side to side when I hit the brakes and I seemed to be stopping smoothly other than the ear piercing noise. So I concluded that the pads were bad but the rotors were still good. I am smart enough to know what rotors are and when they need to be turned.

I took my car in expecting to pay around $90 for rear brake pad replacement. The waiting room was amazing. It was decorated better than my house and had a flat screen HDTV. I even had full control of the buttons (which is my term for the remote control). I was very involved in an episode of The Fabulous Life on VH1 when I was rudely interrupted by the man who was supposed to be fixing my car. He handed me the results of the brake system inspection and summed it all up by saying I needed two new rotors. WHAT? I wasn’t planning on that. I didn’t believe him and was certain it was one of those things they just tell ignorant girls to try and get them to spend more money. So I asked him to show me. He took me out to the car and showed me how they measure the width and said they were worn down so much that they were unable to work on my car without new rotors. Ugh! What’s a girl to do?

I considered going to Auto Zone, buying rotors, going home and googling “rotor replacement” and doing it myself. But, somehow, I thought that could have fatal consequences. In the end I decided to let them do the work and drove away having paid more than double the cost I had anticipated.

There are some things I don’t like about being an adult and car ownership and maintenance are two of those things.