oil change

So I went to Wal-Mart and bought an oil filter, oil, and an air filter for my car, then went to my parents' to get Dad to help me.

Well, we got everything off the top of the air filter, took the new filter out of the box, and... IT'S THE WRONG FILTER. And it's interesting how abnormally large the box is compared to the filter... hmmm. I'm pretty sure someone switched the filter because I checked Wal-Mart's book like 3 times to make sure I had the right filter. So tomorrow I'll have to go back to Wal-Mart to return or exchange it.

On to the oil change. It went well. The drip pan/wind guard thing is obnoxious to take off. It's got a round hole big enough to stick your hand through to take the oil filter out, but it's too far back about 6 inches. So the wind guard thing has to be completely removed. Awesome. So it takes a while. But it was done so that's great.

We played musical cars to switch my car with my mom's and realized that OIL WAS LEAKING EVERYWHERE. Emergency! The O-ring was somehow bigger than it is supposed to be so there was a leak. So we had to take the wind guard back off, take out the oil filter, dig the old O-ring out of the trash and put the old one back on, and put the filter back on. So now my parents have lovely streaks of new oil all over their driveway and the street in front of the house, and I lost a liter of oil in the fix-the-O-ring process. Luckily Dad had an extra liter in the garage. Then Dad cut a flap in the wind guard so hopefully after I'm on my own without Dad helping with the oil changes I won't have to do a bunch of obnoxious work.

Then we had pizza. It's awesome having a dad who has all the tools and knows how to fix a bunch of stuff. It's my mission to replace the air filter solo so I can prove to myself that I really do know some about cars.

Now I'm exhausted, full of pizza, and have to wake up at 6:30 so I have enough time to shower, do yoga, eat my oatmeal and fruit smoothie, and get to church to have fun with the preschoolers. And I use the words "have fun" loosely.