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January 7, 2018 12 Comments

It’s cold outside and I got a new (to me) car. Welcome to 2018!

Last week the weather widget on my phone let me know that it would be -10 degrees outside at midnight with a wind chill of -20. I can’t recall experiencing weather that cold before. These are the days when Indianapolis lets me know I’m truly not in North Carolina anymore. Another clue is that the bottom of my window looks like a refrigerator that needs to be defrosted.

Frost on window

(That frost is hard too, not something that can just be brushed off.)

I opened my door at midnight so I could experience what -10 weather feels like. It’s cold of course, but the air feels painful to breathe, like it’s got tiny needles in it. And your nose hairs freeze almost instantly. Just leaning my bare upper arm on the edge of the door for 10 seconds left me with a burning feeling on my skin. The experience made me grateful to have a warm, dry apartment, even if my heating bill is definitely going to be more than $100 this month and the stinkbugs have migrated inside to enjoy the warmth too.

Other than those 20 seconds when I opened the door, I’ve stayed inside for most of the past week. It’s one of the many perks of working from home. Unexpectedly this cold snap has been good for both my weight and my budget. I haven’t run out in the evening to buy candy because even I don’t think a bag of Kit Kats is worth bundling up in three layers and possibly slipping and sliding down the stairs. My out-of-pocket limit on my health insurance reset on the 1st, and I don’t want another $6600 bill for a broken arm. I try not to be too superstitious, but I get a bit nervous just wearing the same sweatshirt I had on at the time of the accident. And I definitely don’t wear that sweatshirt with the same underwear I had on that night!

Instead of spending money eating out or heading to the grocery to buy food, I’ve been eating whatever is in the cupboards, which has led to some interesting discoveries. For instance, peanut butter with a “best by October 2016” date is still edible! And hiding behind that long-forgotten jar of peanut butter was a honey bottle I’d placed upside-down because there was only a bit of honey left in it. In the year since I forgot about it, the honey had crystalized and became quite a tasty treat. And last night I cooked a feta and spinach chicken recipe I haven’t made in a while because I hate cooking, but not as much as I hate going out in -10 degree weather. This also led me to discover that mayonnaise with a “sell by July 2017” date will not kill you if you bake it in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes!

The only time I bothered to leave my apartment complex this week I did so partly to be sure my car would start. Oh, hey, I got a new car in November! It’s a 2014 Honda Civic. I would take a picture, but that would require me to go outside, which we’ve established is a non-starter. So here’s a picture of it from Cars.com instead:

2014 Honda Civic

I’m surprised by how protective I’ve become of it so quickly, but I love that little car and NO ONE SHOULD LAY A HAND ON IT BUT ME. The nice thing about owning my old crappy car was that I didn’t care if anything bad happened to it, as long as I wasn’t inside it when the bad thing happened. I did love my old 2002 Saturn, but when she stalled out at a traffic light on my way to get it appraised, I knew I was making the right decision to finally replace it. The front seat couldn’t be adjusted forward or backward. The power locks had been possessed by a poltergeist again, so I’d pulled the circuit breaker, which strangely resulted in the driver’s door becoming unlocked whenever I closed the trunk. Oh, and the engine had been leaking a small amount of oil for almost two years. Unfortunately, a pipe leading out of the engine was rusted and would have fallen apart if they tried fixing the leak, which means they would have had to rebuild the top of the engine. That wasn’t worth the money, so I kept a bottle of 5W-30 in the trunk for top-offs and treated the environment horribly for 24 months instead. Sorry, environment! It was a really small, slow leak, if that makes anyone feel better. If it had been bleeding oil, I would have replaced it much sooner. And thankfully Indiana doesn’t do emissions testing like North Carolina does, so that bought me even more time. It was quite a workout scrubbing all the burnt oil stains off the hood before I traded her in.

I got 135,493 miles out of her, but her time was up. I’ve had a lot of fun driving her replacement around. There’s nothing like upgrading your car’s technology by 12 years. The screen displays what songs are playing on my phone via Bluetooth! There’s a backup camera! The car calculates the MPG for me! It’s crazy! Hopefully I will have this car for a long time. I’ve actually contemplated the fact that the next car I buy might be self-driving.

In the “not-so-fun” department, the Greenwood police evidently have nothing better to do than randomly run people’s license plates even though they’re not breaking the law. That’s why I got pulled over a week after my purchase on my way to my Mom’s because my registration did not yet match my plates. The dealership hadn’t sent the paperwork for that yet. Ironically, I was taking the road I was on to avoid a speed trap on Southport Road which I know for a fact two cops patrol, but I got pulled over anyway because I couldn’t avoid a cop pulling up behind me in mall traffic. Thankfully I had the sales paperwork from the dealership in the glove compartment and the cop believed my story. Yay, white privilege! The whole thing was really stressful though, particularly since I hadn’t been pulled over for 15 years (see again, white privilege) and the last time it happened I got my first headache that wouldn’t go away. No new headaches have arisen since this incident, just the one I’ve always had. After that, I became hyper-vigilant of any police cars, like I was playing Grand Theft Auto in real life.

Anyway, I know I didn’t blog much in 2017, and I don’t really regret it. That was a pretty fucked up year for so, so, so many reasons. I only wrote 10 entries and 3 of them consisted of me pleading to keep my health insurance. Hopefully I’ll write more than that this year, and I pray to God I don’t have to write about health insurance again, but I make no guarantees. That said, if the weather stays this cold I’ll have plenty of time to stay in and write!

Happy 2018, everyone!

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Leave a Comment (12) Read more about: car, cold, new year, weather

Jennette Fulda is the author of:

Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn't Go Away

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."

- Lisa Genova, New York Times best-selling author of Still Alice

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Comments

  1. Jessica says

    January 7, 2018 at 2:24 pm

    In June, I traded in my 2002 Toyota Corolla (about 123,000 miles) for a 2014 Honda CRV – We’re Honda 2014 twinsies now! lol

    Reply
  2. KalynsKitchen says

    January 7, 2018 at 5:17 pm

    Looks like a great car! Happy 2018. It can ONLY be better than 2017 for so many reasons, right?

    Reply
  3. Sue B says

    January 8, 2018 at 2:15 am

    I grew up on the side of town you are living in now. Fun and weird to see the names Greenwood and Southport pop up. Stay warm.

    Reply
  4. Pantherle says

    January 8, 2018 at 2:49 am

    Happy to read about you. I missed you. I wish you a much, much better new year 2018.
    Best wishes from Germany.

    Reply
  5. Kate says

    January 8, 2018 at 1:32 pm

    Happy New Year! I’m very hopeful that 2018 will be better than 2017 too. I’m glad you were able to get a new car, I recently upgraded from a 2008 to a 2012 and I get that technology excitement. 🙂

    Reply
  6. Joani says

    January 10, 2018 at 10:50 am

    Happy New Year to you as well! Glad to see you post again, I’ve genuinely missed them.

    Reply
  7. Susan Mc says

    January 14, 2018 at 3:50 pm

    Glad to see you writing again. I really enjoy your posts. Good wishes are sent your way from sunny California for a great 2018. And least you think I’m being snarky about the sunny part…just read in the news about the horrible mud slides we are having close to my house. I’m okay, but so far 18 people have died. It’s a horrible, devastating mess.

    Reply
  8. Merry says

    January 20, 2018 at 12:05 pm

    Congratulations on the new car, though your news makes me feel uneasy. My car has 140k on it, and it’s old enough to buy its own liquor, but I don’t want to say goodbye to it! If only for the entertainment center. It’s very entertaining.

    When people get in my car, they stare at the strange device on the console. “What’s that?”
    Me, “That’s something call a cassette tape player.”
    Them, “Huh? I don’t understand.”

    Well, I find that entertaining anyway. Not sure I could cope with a car that started telling me I was too close to the car next to me (my sister does that, thank you) or that I should stop backing up already (I do have a brother if I need to hear that) or that I’m Taking the Wrong Road Go Back And Start Over (other sister, brother-in-law, cousin, second cousin…)

    Reply
    • Jennette Fulda says

      January 23, 2018 at 7:28 pm

      @Merry – My Saturn had a cassette player as well, and now that I’ve sold it I have no way to play some of the old cassettes I still have. I left the car kit in the car, which I’d used to listen to my MP3 player, since I had no way of using it again.

      Reply
  9. Paula says

    January 22, 2018 at 1:36 pm

    I had a 2000 Civic. It was the best car I ever owned. Sold it to my friend’s daughter in 2013. She is still diving it & loves it as much as I did! I am sure you will love yours too.

    Reply
  10. Shannon says

    January 27, 2018 at 11:47 am

    Can u provide an update on your headache? If anything has helped?

    Reply
    • Jennette Fulda says

      January 29, 2018 at 2:04 pm

      @Shannon – I just posted a blog entry about my headache, just for you! The current status of my headache is under the second subheader “Headache status.” https://www.jennettefulda.com/2018/01/headache-extravaganza-podcast-movie-anniversary/

      Reply

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