{"id":55,"date":"2009-09-03T21:16:43","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T02:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=55"},"modified":"2009-09-03T21:16:43","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T02:16:43","slug":"a-truly-empowered-female","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2009\/20090903-55.htm","title":{"rendered":"A Truly Empowered Female"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As my siblings want to take my car out of town tomorrow, I was forced to FINALLY change my oil.  It&#8217;s been on my to-do list for an eon, but has not been accomplished, because, well&#8230;I&#8217;ve never changed my oil before.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I could take it to Wal-mart to have it done, as I always have in the past.  But Wal-mart&#8217;s oil changes have become remarkably expensive; and it seems to me that every woman should know how to change her own oil.<\/p>\n<p>So, sometime near the beginning of the summer, I bought myself five quarts of oil and a new oil filter&#8211;and I&#8217;ve been faithfully writing &#8220;change oil&#8221; on my weekly to-do list every week since.  But I haven&#8217;t gotten it done.<\/p>\n<p>After all, if you&#8217;ve never changed your own oil before, it&#8217;s a daunting process.  You have to have someone else to help you (or else remember enough to have a decent grasp on what you&#8217;re doing it advance.)  Then, if you&#8217;re like me, you have to find a way to get all the appropriate tools (my answer? go to my parents&#8217; house.)  And there&#8217;s the &#8220;changing into grubbies&#8221;  (which I find particularly difficult because I really don&#8217;t own anything grubby&#8211;honest!)<\/p>\n<p>But I couldn&#8217;t let the kiddos take my car to South Dakota for their fancy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifelight.org\/festival\" target=\"_blank\">Christian rock festival<\/a> when the oil hadn&#8217;t been changed in who knows how long.  (I haven&#8217;t changed it since I bought the car in &#8230;was it April?)  So, tonight was it.  It had to be.<\/p>\n<p>Tonight, after all this long lead-up time, I&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>dressed in my painting pants and a t-shirt I rarely wear (sorry Jeremy!)<\/li>\n<li>drove my car up onto what I&#8217;m choosing to call stilts<\/li>\n<li>covered my backside with water (it rained today) while trying to locate my oil filter and drain nut.<\/li>\n<li>borrowed a wrench and some &#8220;rags&#8221; (aka old undershirts) from my dad<\/li>\n<li>almost gave myself a hernia trying to loosen the drain nut. (That thing was on TIGHT!)<\/li>\n<p><img src=\"images\/20090903-1.jpg\" alt=\"Changing my oil\" \/><\/p>\n<li>watched in wonder as an arc of disgustingly dirty oil spurted from my car<\/li>\n<li>fumbled with the oil filter wrench a half a dozen times before I got the filter loosened<\/li>\n<li>dropped the oil filter down my one arm onto the pavement (So sorry for that spill, Dad!)<\/li>\n<p><img src=\"images\/20090903-2.jpg\" alt=\"Changing my oil 2\" \/><\/p>\n<li>fumbled with the oil filter wrench again while replacing the filter<\/li>\n<p><img src=\"images\/20090903-3.jpg\" alt=\"Changing my oil 3\" \/><\/p>\n<li>refilled the oil<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It took almost an hour (yeah, I&#8217;m a slow learner) and caused my sister&#8217;s rolls to raise too high&#8211;and got me just a WEE bit messy&#8211;but I&#8217;ve done it.  I&#8217;ve changed my oil.  I feel like a truly empowered female.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As my siblings want to take my car out of town tomorrow, I was forced to FINALLY change my oil. It&#8217;s been on my to-do list for an eon, but has not been accomplished, because, well&#8230;I&#8217;ve never changed my oil before. Of course, I could take it to Wal-mart to have it done, as I &#8230; <a title=\"A Truly Empowered Female\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2009\/20090903-55.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Truly Empowered Female<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}