The car was sitting at a funny angle, part of it is much lower than the rest. And this discovery kept us from enjoying an evening in the sun playing catch, to doing battle with a car.
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Mind you, neither have small cars. I drive a Jeep, my husband drives a Yukon. You may think my Jeep is small in comparison, but that Jeep weighs much more than you think it does. No, this will not be a slam dunk project.
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Hang up: How to get spare tire off of vehicle. Gizmos and gadgets doesn't even begin to describe the difficulty we had. We saw how the tire was attached, we just needed to figure out how to unattach it. To the owner's manual!
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I don't know if it's a gender thing where women are more apt to seek help before men. i.e. directions, instructions, assistance, etc. But I will decide to ask someone for help, or look at the owner's manual way before my husband is even able to conceive the notion of doing so.
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When he declares my third party help is cheating, I tell him I'm saving us an hour.
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Let's face it. Time is money, and when you don't have a job that pays, time is all you have, and I would really rather be doing something fun, than search a store, fight with a tire, drive in circles, or stand around.
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I began reading the instruction manual, then quickly handed it off to my husband who was in the fight of his life, with a car and tire.
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I stood around, then laid around, then crawled around in a crab walk, and then when the tire was finally released from the clutches of the car, I was put to work.
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By work, I mean reading the instructions. I give myself props for reminding him to loosen bolts before jacking the car up, and telling him where to put the jack, after the first attempt didn't raise the car as high as we wanted.
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Better late than never.
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As Chris (privacy out the window) placed the spare onto the car, I gave him encouragement, something simple like good job, now do this (because the instructions say so).
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A woman from another apartment walked by and exclaimed "Are you teaching him how to change a tire!?" She was in total disbelief. I think more so over the size of the tire needed for the vehicle, which is much larger than her little old Mazda.
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Uhh, in the sense that I'm reading, and he's rolling around on the asphalt actually doing the lifting, sure, I'm teaching him?
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Seriously, this like most things, was a joint project. Could he have done it without me? Definitely. could I have done it without him? Because I can read instructions, and my pride of being independent I would have done it. There may or may not have been, but definitely would be a call or two to my father.
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I did get a nice laugh out of the manual. On every page there was a CAUTION box. Make sure the bolts are tight, make sure the tire is on correctly, make sure no one is laying under the car when it's resting on the jack, make sure you don't do something stupid, like the previous person that is now making us tell everyone else not to do the same stupid thing in these bright yellow CAUTION boxes.
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I would read a step, and read the caution box to Chris. Mind you, we are now going on a full hour of changing a tire, something NASCAR pitcrews are able to do in .0001 seconds for all four tires. Chris would answer with the not so subtle "no, sh!t"
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It's nice to know I did not marry one of those idiots the CAUTION boxes were designed for.
