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Believing that it is right manly to occasionally perform automobile maintenance oneself, I endeavored yesterday to do so. What? Oh, right, must right manly about attempts to be manly. So, for various and sundry reasons, I cooked up the following plan for a really frustrating day.

Day Before

1. Tell mechanically inclined friend that you’re finally going to take care of that pesky car problem he’s been hinting at for weeks.
2. Go to three auto parts suppliers to acquire: wiper blades, air filter, PCV valve, and fuel filter.
3. After teaching, remember that you don’t know what you’re doing. Go back to auto parts store and buy book on how to fix your 1998 Escort.
4. Read pertinent parts of the manual.
5. Go to bed with a plan in your head, confidence in your soul, and a song in your heart.

The Big Day
NOTE: Setting aside a full day to take care of your car maintenance issues not only provides ample time for the ingredients to simmer, but also allows a wonderful bouquet to develop. Of course, packing all of this into a pressurized morning or afternoon brings its own subtle nicities.

1. Be sure that the high temperature for your work day is not above freezing.
2. Drop off spouse at work and head off to the Mega-Lo-Mart to acquire the jackstands and jack you do not have.
3. Stand for 10 minutes in front of the various choices of jack/jackstands. You don’t want to cheap out on the things holding a ton of car above the cement garage floor with your head in between. Leave with a moderately priced jack and the heavy duty jackstands.
4. Arrive home and arrange your materials.
5. Successfully install air filter and wiper blades. This step builds confidence; the more confidence you have, the more can be crushed, and the higher your frustration yield will be.
6. Consult newly purchased manual and change PCV valve. Notice small hole in the hose leading to the PCV valve. Set aside.
7. Visually locate fuel pump.
8. Try to reach fuel pump and fail. Notice that the path to the fuel pump is crossed many times by rigid, steel tubes not pictured in your manual. (Probably very important parts of the air conditioning system.) Finally succeed in touching fuel pump, even to the point of discovering which way the fuel flows, but be sure that even though you can touch it, you can’t actually get a purchase on the thing anywhere to be able to manipulate it in any way. This step begins the breakdown of confidence into frustration.
9. Believe that perhaps you can reach it better from below the car.
10. Unpack new jack and jackstands. Read instructions.
11. Following procedure in manual, depressurize fuel system and disconnect battery, rendering the car inoperable.
12. Fiddle around for 10 minutes–sweep floor, consult manual, change burned out bulb in shop light, crawl around under car–figuring out where to place the jack so that it lifts the car without pushing the engine through the hood.
13. Surprise yourself by operating the jack successfully. Very important to feel good about your work thus far or else frustration will not have ample confidence upon which to work.
14. Discover that the jackstands are too tall to fit under the car.
15. Double check max. lift height on jack with min height of stands. See that the stands SHOULD fit under the car. But don’t.
16. Your instinct here will be to halt the frustration flow. Go with that instinct. It will help build the frustration pressure. Try various methods of inserting the stands. Stare at the fuel pump. Inspect the heat shields.
17. Finally notice that the box for the jackstands lists SUV’s as the primary use, autos are last. Realize you must return the jackstands.
18. Lower the car, reconnect the battery, repressurize the fuel system. Notice how any joy you might have in completing these tasks is robbed by the impending sense of failure.
19. Eat lunch.
20. Decide that the fuel pump can wait. Gather all applicable receipts. For extra flavor, misplace the receipts.
21. Toddle off to the Mega-Lo-Mart to return the jackstands. Wander aimlessly about the store having your soul sucked out while listening to holiday music and eyeing various ridiculous animals made of lights and baling wire. Purchase “icicle” lights.
22. Enter NAPA Autoparts store and return fuel pump. If you’re recipe is going well, the clerk will take the part from you without asking questions but will give you a look that very clearly says, “Geesh, can’t be a M-A-N can’t change out a silly ol’ fuel pump.”
23. Turn to the PCV problem you put aside earlier. Bring up the part with a hole in it. Show clerk the part on the car. The goal here is to get the manager involved in locating a hard to find part. Self-esteem will build at this moment, which is required for complete frustration extraction.
24. After an impressively long search through the computer and many grunts, manager will tell you the part is not only not available to them (and you) but is probably a “dealer part.”
25. Leave the store with return receipt in hand. Drive down the street to the Ford dealer.
26. Repeat PCV problem steps. Parts guy will tell you that he can get the part but not today. Delaying the completion of the job is very important. Furthermore, he will show you the price of the part, which can only be obtained as part of an assembly. Part will be 5 times more expensive than the PCV valve you replaced.
27. Parts guy will suggest that it’s not worth replacing and hand you the printout with the part number.
28. Mumble something about “I’ll try something at home.
29. Go to hardware store to find power adapter for the icicle lights you just bought.
30. Return home. Spend 20 minutes going through your woefully disorganized garage and tools. Finally locate black electrical tape in the back of some drawer in the house.
31. Wrap tape around PCV hose. Call it done.
32. Go on to porch to install lights you just purchased.
33. Realize that your entire house is clad in aluminum. There isn’t a wood surface to be found. Notice that the light clips you purchased will only sort of work on one side of the area you wanted to string with lights.
34. Having now spent the vast part of the day standing out in the sub-freezing cold not getting anything done, go inside.

At the end of the process, you’ll have a wonderfully heady brew of frustration.