Outside of my career I do handyman and lawn/garden work. I started this once my divorce hit in March of 2017 as a way to garner extra income and not live paycheck to paycheck. I started out small, under the table and had no intent on growing it.
Over the years it has grown. Clients, friends and family all throw my name out there and I watch buy/sell/trade sites on Facebook locally for odd end jobs. The Lawn side of things has REALLY grown over the past 2 years and rightfully so. I do amazing work for amazing prices. I go out of my way for those who choose to utilize my services. I’m a Virgo…it’s in my DNA.
I decided I’d like to go unofficially official and start deducting some of this. Come out from underneath the table in a sense. One of my main angst is trying to shove tools and lawn equipment together with nothing more than a truck and trailer. I had things flying everywhere, stacked on top of each other and had to dig anytime I needed something. Let alone, someone asks me to take limbs which I have to throw on top of everything in my truck bed.
So I purchased a 97 Chevy van with 195000 miles on it. I paid $2000 for this which was the very high end of the KBB value on it. VERY high end. It supposedly had no issues and I decided to jump on it. Compared to other vans online in which I could afford…this was a STEAL. So my son and I drove 3 hours from KS to NE to look at this private party van.
It was everything I expected it to be so after a test drive, I bought it and 3 miles from this guys house, the “service engine soon” light came on and started flashing. We stop at Autozone and it comes back a random misfire code, which is what the guy supposedly had fixed. We decide to continue driving as it was driving fine at the time.
I take it into my local dealership upon returning home. They claim a $450 tune up would fix this. It didn’t. They also found a transmission code they could not fix after replacing the part did not clear the code. They put in more work, adjusted timing and it ran great. So I drove it to a job 45 miles away. I hit 43 miles and it died on me…right in the middle of a 2 lane in the city during rush hour traffic. Luckily I was right next to a mechanic shop.
They determine my distributor teeth had been ground down smooth. This is something the other shop would not have caught without dismantling which they did not do. Another $650. I pick it up and not as much start it and notice something is wrong. So they take it back and determine the next day they had 2 spark plug wires swapped. I asked how they did not catch that during the test drive the previous day after the repair and I was told “in our defense we didn’t know how it ran coming in here meaning it wouldn’t start”. Touche…lousy excuse but touche.
I’ve put in way more than the van is even worth at this point and still possibly looking at a transmission. Sometimes we get the lemonade, sometimes we get the lemon. However, I am content with moving forward as I’m too far in it now to balk.
And today we moved forward. My signs I had worked on/tweaked for over a week finally came today and WOW they look gorgeous on it!!! It was nice to experience something positive with it since owning it.
Dreams don’t always go the way we think they’ll go. Visions never look exactly like we think they look. Life will kick you when you start to roll in the grass of happiness.
We ask for lemonade yet only get lemons…but what most fail to see is that we have the lemons now and that means we are half way to lemonade.