When I drive my car, I tend to be focused on where I’m going and what I’m working at when I get there, and the solitude on the road can ease my brain at times.
On Tuesday, Feb. 6, when I finally got a chance to head to Iowa City to go see a movie on the Academy Awards list (Poor Things, now down to two in the best picture race I have not seen this year), I was slightly perturbed as I was driving that every few miles when I hit some minor bumps in the road, an audible squeak was coming from what I determined was my front passenger tire, disrupting my thoughts in the car.
What could that possibly be? I’d made trips to two speech tournaments this winter already and had no issues, weathered some significant snowstorms and brutal cold with only a slight brake slippage in the brutal cold. But this is the first I was hearing this rhythmic chirping from my car Tippy-Toe. (thusly named for dd squeaks she sometimes develops and being a necessary sidekick for me to do my job). 
That issue nagged at me throughout the movie I watched, because now I was worried about the same drive home on a squeaky wheel.
And my anxious brain is such that the entire drive home and every squeak was like a crescendoing “oh my God, we’re going to die!”
Called in to Bud’s the next day, and the soonest they could see me was Wednesday, Feb. 14. Which gives my brain a whole other week to scrutinize every time I hit a bump and like Chicken Little think the entire wheel is going to fall off, even when it’s more apparent that the issue is only exacerbated when making a right hand turn, and we’re traveling no more than 25 mies per hour in town. We’ll survive.
And of course, the brain tries diagnosing what it is and settles on pricy, pricy options. Possibly that whole control arm and bushings are shot. They would produce similar symptoms to what I’m experiencing, according to a late night YouTube video with a similar rhythmic chirp.
Of course, it was a whole range of repairs brought to my attention – yes, those bushings and sway bars needed to be replaced on the one wheel, it wasn’t my imagination that wheel was having issues – but also a serpentine belt and four new tires but primarily to replace the one that the mechanic said “we’re worried this one is going to blow-out on you because it’s already separating.”
Tippy-Toe decided the repairs weren’t enough and wanted to spend an extra day in the shop, so she threw off her serpentine belt Thursday afternoon when I was supposed to have her back. So, yet one more night of anxious brain. 
Hell of a Valentine’s Day present, though, repairing something ailing your car…
But also, great piece of mind to finally have it fixed.
Until the next thing goes wrong with it.