I live in a city with poor public transportation. I've been driving my roommate's car, since we live just a couple blocks from his college campus and he doesn't need it often. But he's graduating and getting a job soon, and will be leaving to get a phd hopefully next year, so I really need to look into getting a car of my own. It's just not going to be feasible to use public transport with my job hours.

The problem is, I know nothing about cars, and I know nothing about car shopping except that there are approximately 14,000 ways you can get screwed. I've tried to read some articles on steps to take for used car shopping, but so much of it is just "research makes and models you're interested in" and I'm like...that's so overwhelming? I don't know at all? What I want? Or what to look for?

???

How do I adult?

I've posted an update to the gofundme. It now includes a picture of Pierre from last night, wearing his cone of shame.

He's been taken to a new clinic that has staff 24 hrs a day. He will need to be there at least 3 days. He's doing well and expected to fully recover, but the new vet bill is going to be even more than the one from yesterday, which we just barely had enough to pay for after rent.

Thank you to everyone who's been signal boosting and/or donating. There have definitely been a few donations from people who we don't know, so we know the sharing is working. It means a lot to us.

My household has 3 cats. One of them, Pierre, the sweetest cat you'll ever meet, became very ill overnight. He's doing OK at the vet right now, but the bills are adding up very quickly. We are over $1,000 just for today and he probably needs to stay overnight somewhere. We are all very low income. We do not have the money. I know a lot of other people don't either. I know the pain of seeing things I'd like to donate money to but not being able to afford it. Even if all you can give is a signal boost to the gofundme campaign, it would be so appreciated.
http://www.gofundme.com/o6g53w

I made a vine to fully encapsulate my feelings on this turn of events. Bad words ahoy. https://vine.co/v/OxExnrOnO1j

It's exceedingly cold here, I'm in the south where it's not usually this cold so nothing is insulated properly, the pipes coming out of the water heater in the garage have burst and are flooding the garage and all the way down the block, and I've been waiting almost an hour for the utility people to come and shut off the water. So how is everyone else doing? Having a good night?

I like Hunter (I can't help it, I have a weakness for morally gray sarcastic shitheads, whatever their race or gender) but I would much prefer Triplett as regular with Hunter as guest star. Theoretically he (Trip) could still be around a lot and even be pretty prominent without being a regular - contracts are weird. Fingers crossed.

So today was supposed to be my day off. Supposed to be.

Yesterday I took a catering order. They needed delivery at 8:15 am. We already had an order to deliver at that time but I accepted it anyway. When I told my boss about it, I said I'd be willing to come in to take one of the 8:15 deliveries if they couldn't find anyone else to.

I normally open the bakery in the morning, so I'm up at 4 most days I work. An 8:15 delivery would have still allowed me to sleep in compared to what I'm used to, and that's really what's most important to me on my days off.

But then the orders kept coming in. Which is great for business. We're currently not actually turning a profit, so I'm happy anytime we're busy and willing to help out - I like being employed, I want us to stay in business. But that meant my manager asked me to come in at 5 this morning to help get everything ready and then take a couple deliveries. It was one of those situations where at that point I didn't feel like I could say no. I was not happy about losing my sleep in morning, but I need the money desperately anyway, so whatever.

Then after my two deliveries, when I was supposed to get to go home, my boss's car broke down. The boss who was taking all the other deliveries. So not only is she out of commission and stuck, she's having a panic attack. I manage to get all the rest of the morning orders out on time, go me. Then, even though boss has gotten back to the restaurant, for some reason her car being broke down means I need to take all the catering orders for lunch too, even though she's just as capable of driving the delivery truck as I am and she was planning on doing all of them before.

So at this point I'm pissed off, but I'm not going to abandon everyone in the middle of a crunch like that, so I suck it up and keep working. And hey, my manager even gave me free food (we normally have to pay half price, but they just kept shoving free stuff at me today). Then boss started panicking about the lunch orders. I had three that needed to go on the truck at the same time. It was a full truck and I needed all the bags to be labeled carefully so I got everything to the right spot. I had almost everything organized and ready to go. I asked her one question. It totally confused her and she proceeded to unpack everything and put it back in a way so that I was confused. And it put me a good 10 minutes behind. Which started to trigger my anxiety disorder (I was actually very proud of how well I handled things up to this point).

I finally got on the road, got to the first place on time. It was a business that does defense stuff, so very heavy security, having to clear gates, etc. I get in and set up no problem, although going through security always twinges my anxiety at least a little. Getting out took forever. There was a long line in front of me and the guy right before me apparently lost something he needed to give to the security guard, so he dug around in his car for 5 fucking minutes before I finally go out of the fucking security check point. At this point I had 5 minutes to make it 5 miles. In lunch rush traffic.

Thankfully I was only 10 minutes late (we usually give a 15 minute delivery window anyway, so that fell within that range), and I made the one after that OK too. And I made it back to work, and everything was fine and I could finally go home. And we even get to keep the delivery fees for our catering orders, so in addition to being on the clock for 7 hrs I got $70 in cash. And I can always use the money.

But I needed the sleep today. I needed the day off. And instead I spent it getting horribly stressed and exhausted. And pretty much the second I got in my car after I clocked out I had a total breakdown and just sobbed for an hr straight. So now I'm exhausted, stressed, have a horrible headache and can't breath because of crying so much, I have to go to two choir rehearsals tonight one of which is guaranteed to stress me out because of the people there (and I cannot miss that rehearsal), I have to open the next three mornings so I don't get a chance to sleep in again until Sunday, and overall I just really kind of want to die right now. Not in a "I'm in danger of self harming" way, more in a "considering getting blind stinking drunk tonight despite having to work at 5:45 in the morning" kind of way.

So I'm pretty much having the worst day ever

Details in reply, anxiety tw, mentioned of money stress

OK, that didn't actually work. Hmm.

ETA: The site still isn't loading even when I disable AVG. It doesn't give the popup warning, but it won't load either.

ETA2: OK, now it's working with AVG turned off. I guess I'll just have to disable AVG when I want to read the site until I figure out what the butt it's doing wrong.

Thanks! I even checked his twitter, I just didn't go back far enough (I see it now).