I Am Woman, Hear Me...Google!

My family is mechanically illiterate. Yeah, we know how to change our oil and our tires and maybe replace a battery or an air filter. But that is about as much as we do. So having never tackled my headlight or the windshield wipers before, I was tempted to rely on someone else. It would be easy enough to let Jiffy Lube fix everything up, but you know how much they charge for simple repairs. I was sure if I mentioned it to one of several of my friends, they would volunteer to help. But for some reason, I wanted to do this one myself.

The old windshield wipers came off easy enough, it's torn blade flapping in the wind, but I was seriously confused by the diagram on the packaging of the new one. After quite some time trying to figure out what the teeny diagram was referring too, I finally just tossed the instructions and eyeballed the parts and the screws they had given to me. I pulled something back, pushed something through, shoved something on (and then realized that I needed to redo the past two steps and push the something through in the other direction), and then, voila! It looked right! All I had to do swas screw it back on and for the first time in almost a year I had a complete driver's side wiper! Here's the not-so-complex-looking part that took me a while to figure out. :-)

It only took me a few minutes to replicate the process on the passenger's side, and suddenly I had two beautiful, windshield wipers which actually WIPE the windshield when I turn them on! Aren't they shiny and pretty?

The headlight was more challenging. I popped the hood and found how to pull the light out of the casing quickly enough. But then I couldn't figure out how to unplug it from the wiring! The most frustrating thing was that I wasn't sure if this was a brain-issue or a brawn-issue. When I thought I just needed to pull harder, I broke some pieces of plastic off of an attached part, so that made me afraid to pull. I ended up running inside to google the parts to see if I could learn anything more. Google confirmed my prior suspicions that I was doing what I needed to do, I just needed to pull harder. I tugged and pulled, and yanked at that part, but I wasn't budging. I was starting to get frustrated. I hated the idea of admitting defeat and taking my car to a friend's house to ask them to pull since I wasn't strong enough. I'm a single woman! I have to be able to handle these things on my own! This is not that difficult! Finally I muttered a plea for help, "Lord, please. Help me get this thing off!" I thought that I had been pulling as hard as I could before, but now I really was. (I'm sure my neighbors were laughing at me doubled over the headlight of my car, foot on the bumper and grunting as I pulled with all my might!). And then, with a beatiful POP, the old lamp came out! "Thank you, Lord!" And to my delight, after plugging the new one in, the light worked!

Here's a picture of the offending piece! The green arrows point to broken pieces of plastic that fell below.

I can't wait to drive at night while it's raining! I'll be able to see! :-) The final result is below, which I captured for you despite the odd looks from my neighbors as I finally stopped fighting my car and then began to photograph it! Isn't she a beaut, though?