I think this weekend makes it official -- we are now officially white trash.*
This is what the back passenger door of the car I drive the most (a '97 Saturn) now looks like:
The door has had a long history of not latching quite right. Once the Featureless Saint got it closed and locked but good, we simply didn't use that door. The situation degraded last week, when the aformentioned Saint lent the car to a student who needed to make a laundry run. He failed to mention the thing with the door -- and as she was coming back from the laundromat, the door flew open and spilled her clean clothes everywhere. We are all very happy that she hadn't decided to put her toddler on that side. We try to not think about that, in fact.
The latch is now broken for good. I've been driving around with the door held closed by a chunk of that yellow cord that lashed the handle to the front seat. It was distracting -- but not overly dangerous. My commute doesn't even involve a stoplight.
Only on Friday, the husband's cunning fix failed. The rope loosed, the door flew open as I was pulling into a space and the damage could have been very expensive had I not had cat-like reflexes. There was also, I have to be honest, cursing.
So the spouse fixed it but good this time. He levered off the decorative door panel and used Tech Screws** to bolt the thing in place. He briefly toyed with welding it -- but the amount of plastic around the door's frame makes that untenable.
Once you couple that with the driver's side mirror held on with duct tape -- which was totally my fault and not the car's -- and, well, it's a picture.
The engine is great, however. The cosmetics, not so much.
Given that the spouse and I both work in our chosen fields because we love them and not because we'll make lots of cash,*** a new car is not in the offing until we pay off the van we bought when Cory was born. We need to get at least another 18 months out of it, before we put it up on blocks in the front yard. Ah, the glamour.
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* I say this with love, not scorn.
** That's what the name of the screw sounds like. Not sure if that's how it's actually spelled.
*** We're fine and doing better than we'd ever dreamed -- but, still, there's not a lot extra just kicking around. We both, however, have awesome health insurance. So there's that.