Trying to Get Ready

I need to leave for Texas VERY SOON, but I'm not ready yet. The house isn't ready to sell, I haven't shipped (or boxed up) everything I need to ship to my mom's house, and I'm just keeping up with my online class deadlines.

I should leave for Texas tomorrow. Saturday is a really bad day to head east, because everyone from all over Southern California needs to take the same two freeways (I-5 and I-15) to get to Mexico or the Colorado River, and they do that Friday after work or first thing Saturday morning. I don't want to be on the road with them.

Yesterday and today I had lunch with friends I hadn't seen in a long time, and we caught up with each other. I could have used that time for getting ready or learning medical terminology related to ear-nose-throat parts. But really, being with friends was the best use of my time.

After lunch I picked up a couple pairs of jeans in my new, smaller size (I only had one pair), and now I'm home having a cup of tea and taking a break in between all the phone calls I need to make: Arrange for proctoring my Medical Terminology final exam at a community college in Kalispell (she hasn't called me back, so I left a second message), call the realtor that someone in the know recommended (and avoid the one that everyone else is using, because this person says that realtor is a major pain), call a computer guy to help me with the old computers, call the Toyota service department and make sure they tell me everything I really need to know about towing my Corolla behind the motorhome.

I talked to my mom this morning and went over some of this with her. What I may end up doing, because my sister's schedule is so tight, is pretend I'm taking a 2 or 3 week vacation, and leave the house for when I get back. I'll just go out to Texas and we'll do our Four Corners trip with my sister. Then, when we head back to California to start our West Coast leg of the journey, I can finish taking care of the house.

Sometimes the optimist in me comes face-to-face with the reality of challenges and setbacks, and it isn't always a pretty picture. I may be stubborn, but I try not to be stupid enough to fight for a long time with the way things are. Here's hoping this isn't one of my stupid times...

Update (Friday morning):

I talked to a service advisor yesterday at the Toyota dealer, and he said I absolutely cannot tow an automatic "on all fours" and need to dolly-tow it. He doesn't know why one of the other service advisors would have told me I could tow it, because "everyone knows" the answer is no. Period. The transmission fluid needs to circulate when the drive wheels are turning, and if the engine is off (as it would be when being towed), the transmission fluid doesn't circulate, and you destroy the transmission.

So I went back to the muffler/hitch shop where they custom-fitted my car for towing, told him what the dealer said, and asked, "What are my options?" He mentioned that a company Back East sells an after-market pump that will circulate the transmission fluid while the car is being towed. He said out loud what my gut was saying: "You don't want to dolly-tow it. It's too much of a hassle."

But by this time it was after the East Coast work day, so I'm waiting to hear from the muffler shop today about the pump and how long it will take to get here. I may go ahead and drive to Texas and have the pump sent there and have one of the Texas mechanics install it when I get there.

I've already complained to the Service Manager at the Toyota dealer for the way his advisors were so flippant and/or uninformed with me about the towing questions I had. Granted, towing packages aren't what dealers' service departments do for a living, but they should at least have respect for the kind of money their customers will be spending elsewhere based on the advice the Toyota's supposed-experts give them. The Service Manager said he'll discuss it with his people at their next acronym for a staff meeting, which is the most I can hope for.