Monthly Vehicle Maintenance

No, that is not technically my car.  It's the housekeeping truck, Whitey, which is ancient and has a number of problems including water in the oil.  Now I know more about it than I've known about any vehicle in my life.

A few days ago, inspired by a handy coworker (see above) and my computer maintenance checklist, for my "thing of the day," I learned how to go through a basic monthly maintenance check on a car with Rucker.

Here's a summary of what we went over and a few things I learned along the way. My notes are in italics.

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Vehicle Maintenance Report
Always check owner's manual before adding fluids to make sure you use the right kind!

Vehicle ______________
Date ________________
Mileage ______________

Oil Level - Check and refill if necessary
Change your oil every 3000 miles or every 3-6 months.  Since front tires take on more wear than back tires, rotate your tires every other oil change.

Coolant - Add more if low
Fill to between min and max line.


Transmission Fluid - Add more if low

Fluid starts red and becomes more brown through time.  Generally you should change the fluid and filter around 100K miles.  Take it into a shop -- transmission fluid is finicky. Always check transmission fluid while car is running.

Power Steering Fluid - Add more if low
The power steering fluid cap looks like a bottle cap (in case it's not well labeled.)  The car will either take ATF or Power Steering Fluid.  Check the owner's manual.


Brake Fluid - Add more if low

Always located near the back on the driver's side.

Wiper Fluid - Add more if low


Belts - Replace if worn, frayed, or glazed
Look for cracks on the ribbed side of the belt where it bends.  Car will often squeak if belts are loose or bed.  Cars have either one or two belts.


Hoses - Replace if bulging or brittle

Make sure to to check the ends of hoses for coolant leaks, etc.

Tires - Add air if low (<32 p="" psi="">           Inspect for damage, bulges, uneven wear
Check driver's door for PSI and tire size.  Look for uneven wear on rear v front tires.  Also check for any signs of dry rot.


Shocks - Inspect for oil leaks and wear

These are vertical, cylindrical parts underneath the car near the tires.

Battery Terminals - Clean if corroded
Batteries generally have approx 5 years of life.  Corrosion looks white and powdery.  Scrape or brush off with a hard metal brush, making sure not to touch metal with a wrench if it's attached to the +/red/"hot" terminal.  Batteries can die because of old age, being run down by leaving lights on etc., or being attached to a bad alternator.  The alternator charges the battery.   If your battery keeps dying and is relatively new, it may be an alternator problem.  Get it checked out.


Wiper Blades- Replace if worn or brittle

Your Money or Your Life

I've been on a bit of a values/purpose/personal finance interest kick lately, which led me to check out a book from the library that my mom recommended to me years ago called Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin.

It's due tomorrow, and I'm a ways from finishing, so here are a few clips before I have to return or renew.

Purpose
I use this word a lot at work.  For educated people working as housekeepers, it's important to always be reevaluating and refocusing on a larger sense of purpose and meaning in the midst of sometimes mundane work.  But it's also a larger tension I've been thinking about lately while trying to sort out my next step.  What do I value?  Why am I here?  What's unique about it?  What are the common threads through my experiences, interests, and skills?  The book suggests looking at three things to start sorting out this notion of purpose:

Passion

The underlying question they pose is "What did you dream about before you stopped dreamining?"        Alongside it is the classic "What would you do if you didn't have to work for money?"  Some people have a very linear concept of this, other people (like me) have more elusive and expansive ideas of it.  Neither is wrong. Nice reminder for me.

Pain

 In looking out into the world, your place of employment, your community, and larger systems in the planet, what breaks your heart?  What makes you sad?  What would you change?  These are the things that may be a part of a larger role you can and do play and taps into different parts of your heart.

What's on hand

This question was the most striking to me.  It's easy to get wrapped up into grandiose ideas of purpose and what an ideal self, career, living situation, etc. might look like.  This brings it to a level that's easier for me to deal with.  I am where I am now.  I live and work with the people I live and work with and have the job and interests I currently have. How am I and how can I live within my own concept of my purpose within that?  What is there in my life right now that makes me feel most alive and thriving?  It opens windows of taking initiative and gratitude for the opportunities today rather than putting pressure and anxiety on searching for a "perfect" situation down the road where I might be best able to live into my "purpose."

For right now, "continually learning, growing, and being a part of positive change while inspiring and encouraging others to do the same" is as close as I have come over the past week to articulating my understanding of my purpose.

Frugal Living
While reading this book, I've gotten into some very interesting conversations with people around mew about personal finance, budgeting, values, and concepts of money.  I grew up in a family that valued living within your means and stewardship, so it's interesting to see how foreign or new some concepts are to some other people.  It's interesting to compare concepts of consumption, value, money, savings, etc. with other people without judgement.

The idea is identifying what is "enough" for you and being content with that.  That consuming beyond that point will not increase personal satisfaction.  That your inner values and outer choices should be aligned.  That it's best to aprovechar every experience, opportunity, and physical possession that you have instead of just accumulating more for the sake of accumulation.

That said, I naturally enjoyed the chapter on frugal living.  Here are some highlights:

One Sure Way to Save Money
"Stop trying to impress other people.  Other people are parobably so busy trying to impress you that they will, at best, not notice your efforts.  At worst, they will resent you for one-upping them."

 Ten Sure Ways to Save Money (a lot of these reminded me of the philosophy behind quilting that I posted about last year while learning to sew...)

• Don't go shopping
• Live within your means
• Take care of what you have 
• Wear it out
• Do it yourself (Can I do this myself?  What would it take to learn how?  Would it be a useful skill to know?)
• Anticipate your needs
• Research value, quality, durability and multiple use ("Don't be a bargain junkie and automatically buy the cheapest item available....Everything that you purchase has its origin in the earth.")
• Get it for less
• Buy it used
• Follow the nine steps of this program (You'll have to check the book out to see if you buy into this step.  Self-promotion always makes me skeptical, but the book has made me think about some good things.) 

Guided Meditations, Job References, and Love Letters

Since my last post, here are some of the things I've been up to

• Writing two job references
• Cleaning out all of the pockets of my coats and all of my purses
• Writing a handful of love letters to send out around the country in honor of Valentine's Day
• Consolidating my address book in Google Drive (and realizing I need to get the addresses of some more of the people I care about in my life)
• Listening to guided meditations on youtube.  Enjoy.

Monthly Computer Maintenance Checklist

My "thing" of the day today was inspired by my job.  Every month we're supposed to go through a series of steps for Monthly Computer Maintenance.  I hadn't done it for the two months of the season but wish I'd started before.

It feels good to simplify, especially when it makes things run more smoothly.  I like maintaining what I have.

I enjoyed the process so much at work that I decided to print out a copy and go through it on my own laptop this afternoon.  In the process, I learned a lot about what programs I actually need and use in my computer's daily operating.  Names like "Silverlight," "Windows Live," and "Bonjour" were all fairly foreign to me before today.

Here are the basic steps, modified from the document I use on my work computer.

• Make sure your current antivirus is up to date and running properly (in my case, AVG)
• Clear your browsing history from all web browsers you use (include Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome)
• Clean out digital files, purging or archiving folders and documents that are no longer relevant or useful including Documents, Music, Photos, Videos, Downloads...
• Get rid of any icons/shortcuts on the desktop that you don't regularly use
• Delete programs that are rarely or never used.  (Start Menu - Control Panel - Programs - Uninstall Programs)
• Empty the recycle bin
• Perform a disk clean up to get rid of old compressed files, temporary files, etc (Start Menu - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup.)  You can safely delete Downloaded program files, Temporary Internet Files, Setup Log Files, and Thumbnails.  Do not delete Office Setup Files.
• Run the Disk Defragmenter to clear disk space on your hard drive. (Start Menu - All Programs -Accessories - System Tools - Disk Defragmenter.)  Select the C Drive and "Defragment Disk."  Even if scans are scheduled more frequently, do this monthly manually.
• Restart your computer

Oil Pulling

Today my task of the day is trying oil pulling.  It's a little less self-explanatory than some of my other tasks (see previous post), so I've decided it's worth a post.

I bought coconut oil at Natural Grocers in town a few weeks ago after hearing from a coworker that it might whiten teeth.  It has been sitting on my refrigerator for close to a month now, and I had yet to figure out a way to use it.  I tried swishing it through my teeth once for a minute but wasn't sure what to think of it.  I occasionally stick a finger in and use it as lip balm.

Until today.

Today I learned about and tried oil pulling.  Oil pulling has its origin in oil gargling, which is a part of Ayurvedic medicine dating back thousands of years.  In 1992, Dr. F. Karach, MD published a book explaining his experience with oil pulling in medicine, and it seems to have been gaining popularity in certain circles since then .  The practice involves swishing oil around in your mouth for up to 20 minutes at a time and then spitting it out as a form of detox.  Supposedly the practice pulls toxins out of the mucus membranes in your mouth and can not only improve oral health and whiten teeth but may help to cure everything from asthma and sinus problems to joint pain and eczema.

Here are two links for more info:
http://healthylivingwithmelissa.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-love-coconut-oillet-me-count-ways.html
http://thebrandwellnesscenter.webs.com/apps/blog/show/5919989-oil-pulling

I'm not completely convinced that I need to incorporate it into my life on a daily basis to be a whole and healthy person, but now that I know the concept of oil pulling,  I'm more likely to regularly involve coconut oil in my life.

And, to be honest, who couldn't use a little more coconut in their life?

One week of doing "a thing"

Paradigm shift.  It's been a little over one week since I started my goal-oriented 30 day plan.  20 pages of a book, 5 minutes of silence, and one "thing" every day.

Focusing on those 3 things every day has given me a new, focused, creative, and more goal-oriented way of looking forward to my time outside of work.   I finished Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw and am nearly half way through Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point after several months of struggling to be consistent in my reading.  I'm finally making some progress on my "to read next" stack of books here at the ranch.

As my work day nears its end, I include my coworkers and hear about their goals looking for an idea of what new task I will complete that evening.  Sitting quietly for 5 minutes feels remarkably different from day to day and has become a way of checking in with my body and mind to get a feel for the state-of-affairs of my being that day.  Sometimes it works better than others, but I think it's always better than not having stopped to notice.

In focusing on choosing, beginning, and completing "a thing" every day, I've noticed that my follow-through on other tasks that I notice in my personal life has started getting better (washing my dishes, making a phone call to family that I'd been thinking about, picking up my house.)  I still procrastinate on plenty things, but I'm more likely to act to complete them rather than dwelling on how much I would like to be getting done.  In conversation, I have at least one fresh thing to talk about every day at a time in the season where some social interactions tend to stagnate or always end up on the same subjects -- usually our opinions of coworkers.  (Not the most life-giving subject.)

And the flexibility of choosing any "thing" to complete that day has led to some interesting conversations and time spent with other people on staff here.  Here are a few of my favorite "things" from the past week:

• Cut, buff, and paint my nails.  (Housekeeping supplies are death for nails.  So is a cold, dry climate.  Making a bed with splitting fingernails is awful.  Buffing helped the problem monumentally.  Plus now my hands are significantly more "guestable" for meals and activities with guests.)

• Teach someone how to skate ski.  (Goals involving other people are tricky since if they change their plans, you can't accomplish your task.  I've found in my committing and better follow-through, people have been more likely to commit and follow through with plans with me.  This day I ended up having a lesson for two gals on my crew.  They both love it now!)

• Remove 5 bags of stuff from my house. (Donate or throw away.  I got on a roll end ended up closer to 6 or 7 bags.)

• Empty my e-mail inbox. (It is now, naturally, filling up again...but responding to 3 messages is much less daunting than sorting through the hundreds that were there before!)

• Memorize the first half of 1 Corinthians 13. (This was at the suggestion of one of my coworkers, it's a chapter from the Bible about love and is rather love-ly.  I didn't realize how long it had been since I memorized something!)

• Teach someone how to knit. (We're going to town together tomorrow to buy knitting supplies.  Not only was it fun to teach something- now that the "training" phase of the season is pretty much done for housekeeping, but I got excited about knitting again.  We talked about art and learning, and she agreed to think of something to teach me something of her choosing sometime soon.)

• Invest in a mid-cap mutual fund. (I'd been thinking about this for a month or two and had done some research, but this day I did some last minute googling, decided on a fund (VGHCX), and went for it.  Along the way I ended up using Morningstar's Instant X-ray to analyze how balanced my investments are and came across some blogs on frugal living and how to save money.  I've noticed in a lot of these "things," I end up looking up related information or socializing with people while doing the task or branching from that task into other related tasks. Choosing "a thing" each day helps give me a way of focusing my energy into a more specific place, and then expanding into other interests or tasks or subjects from that starting point.)

Doing something for 30 days

Yesterday, prompted by my mom and sister, I watched this:



Coming out of the holiday-season-hospitality-funk has left me with more unstructured time but less direction on how to use it, so the timing for sending me this video couldn't have been better!

The idea is to create and delete habits from your life, to choose specific goals and work toward them, to work on one or just a few so that they're attainable.

So naturally I've come up with more than one.  I'd thought about blogging about it daily, but I'm hesitant to add too many things to the "30 day list" at once.


That said, every day for the next 30 days I plan to:
- Sit in silence for 5 minutes
- Read 20 pages of a book
- Do something

"Do something" seems like a little bit of a cop out, since the idea is to accomplish a specific thing.  But here's my thought:  deciding to complete a task or activity and following through (without being compelled by anything but my own will to do so) daily is a habit in and of itself.  Two days ago I went out dancing at a dubstep night and had a great time.  Yesterday I decided to get around to folding a mountain of laundry that I had sitting around and fully make my bed (after sleeping on top of blankets and flat sheets for 4 days.)

Today I'm going to cut, buff, and repaint my nails.  They're splitting from a dry climate and cleaning supplies and the paint is chipped and looks awful.  I've been meaning to do it for over a week.

As a person who naturally imagines, brainstorms, lists, and creates projects, it's easy to get bogged down in the thinking without ever getting around to completing, or sometimes even starting, any of them.  So while folding my laundry might not seem like it needs to be set as a goal, it is "something."  The silence and reading will start today.

Maybe this new goal-completion orientation will lead to more frequent blogging....then again, you never know.  :)

Good night and good luck from snowy CO