PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@steelcity2

Almost two weeks since we found Emily, and I am doing a lot better. Amanda is coping, but still struggling; I think the worst part of this whole thing is that we actually found her body. The actual funeral, held last Monday, was private for immediate family only. The service for friends will be this Monday, and my boss is letting me come into work late so I can go. Amanda's car is out of commission until Monday, so I will be picking her up from work and taking her directly to the service. By the time Emily's service is over, the PT Cruiser should finally be ready!

I still cannot really believe that I actually found a dead body, much less the body of someone I've known for almost two decades! It also does not help that the autopsy results will not be in for a few months, nor does it help that we are still waiting for Amanda's birth mother's autopsy results!

Regardless of what we've seen, without a doubt we have done a very good thing; Emily may not have been found for days if Amanda hadn't had that intuition, and Hannah could have met a tragic end too. Hannah was probably only alone in that condo with Emily's body for 12 to 18 hours. Without a doubt, we saved her life!

 

Ready for the Carlisle Import Nationals!

 

Better to know now, definitely. I should get mine looked at, original rears at 148K

 

Got to Carlisle at about 10am this morning!

 

Symmetry just after hopping on the turnpike to leave Carlisle yesterday…

 

I would like to thank everybody for their support. The private "family only" funeral was on May 12th, but Emily's dad was kind enough to arrange a second memorial gathering at the funeral home for several of her friends. My boss let me have half the day off so I could attend. The fear of waking up at night and finding a dead body in my room have largely subsided, and I have come to terms with Emily's death. What I have not come to terms with is that I actually found a dead body, which is something that I never thought would happen. I've been to six open casket funerals that I can remember between November 2007 and February 2024, obviously all people I knew (my grandpa, my cousin's husband's grandparents, a neighbor, and a former teacher's son). Aside from the aforementioned open casket funerals, I also went to Body Worlds at the Franklin Institute in early 2006. Obviously, those bodies were all heavily preserved and I did not know any of them.

My paternal grandpa (who my cousins and I called "Pop-pop") died in November 2007 at the age of 71, from lung cancer. This was the second funeral I'd been to, and the first open casket; I was 18 years old and probably handled it a lot better than I would have five or ten years earlier. I saw people holding Pop-pop's hand and touching his face, among other things, so curiosity got the best of me and I touched his hand. It felt cold, but it wasn't gross at all.

Pop-pop was diagnosed with lung cancer in either late 2005 or early 2006 if I remember correctly, and they decided to end chemo when they discovered in October 2007 that the cancer had spread to his liver. We knew that he likely wouldn't live to see Thanksgiving, so we decided to have Thanksgiving on the first Saturday in November because that's when all the family could come out. That was on November 3rd, 2007. On the afternoon of November 4th, my parents called me downstairs and my dad told me that Pop-pop had passed away. There were two viewings on Thursday, November 8th (I went to both and stayed the whole time, even though my parents said I didn't have to go at all and one of them would be willing to take me back to the house if I wanted to leave). The actual funeral was on the morning of Friday, November 9th. I ended up being a pallbearer because one of the previously selected pallbearers had something come up and couldn't be there. My grandma didn't want immediate family to be pallbearers, but she relented and let me do it. I helped load Pop-pop's casket into the hearse at the funeral home, and helped unload it at the cemetery. It was one of the greatest honors I've ever had, and if Emily hadn't been cremated, I was going to ask her dad if I could be a pallbearer.

I can still see Pop-pop lying in the casket to this day, but it doesn't bother me. What I'm experiencing with Emily is that I know she obviously passed away and have come to terms with that fact, but I still don't think that I've fully come to terms with that face I saw her dead body. I seriously thought, up until the first responders kicked the door in and turned on the lights, that she was simply unconscious and in some sort of distress. Once the lights came on inside the condo, it still didn't fully register that I was staring at my friend's dead body until the cop came out and told us that she was gone. I knew something was very wrong as soon as the lights were turned on, and this was enhanced when the cop shut the blinds so we couldn't see inside, but it didn't really hit us until the cop came back outside and delivered the news.

Also not helping the situation is the fact that Amanda's birth mother passed sometime around Valentine's Day this year, and we still haven't gotten the autopsy results. We were told that it would be 8 to 12 weeks until the results came back, but it has now been about 13 weeks! Emily's autopsy results won't be back until sometime this summer!

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

On another note, we think that Amanda's birth mother knew she was dying but didn't want to tell anybody. She was a cancer survivor and HIV positive. In either late 2024 or early 2025, Amanda's mother called her while we were at my house and asked to talk to me privately (she didn't have my phone number). I honored her request, and she rather aggressively demanded to know when I was marrying her daughter, because she wasn't getting any healthier or any younger.

FUN FACT: I am still on my dad's health insurance as a result of being autistic and am allowed to remain on it indefinitely; I plan on getting my own insurance eventually, but in the meantime I really need my dad's insurance. Getting married is one of several things that can cause me to lose the insurance, so I'm waiting until I get my shit together. Unfortunately, Amanda's mother didn't fully grasp this concept.

That said, we believe that she either had cancer or full blown AIDS, and that's what ultimately killed her.

 

Marriage is just a word. (to me)
The feeling are either their, or they are not.
The word itself makes no difference.......

Marriage is cheap.
Divorce is expensive....

I say, skip all of it......

 

I lose it when I’m 65, if I end up keeping it. What happens is that I have to apply for SSDI every four years or so, and get rejected, in order to keep my dad’s insurance. Thankfully, I’ve always made too much money to qualify.

 

New stereo for the PT Cruiser!

 

The radio and tape deck work, but the CD player eats CDs, and there is also an electrical shirt somewhere between the ignition and the radio that causes the display to go dark at random. Turning the key backward ever so slightly corrected this problem…

 

We are keeping the old stereo in case we sell the car, so we can keep the new HU…

 

Getting the bezel off wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but unfortunately the brittle old plastics broke apart and I ended up having to haphazardly slap it back together; I found a mint dash bezel in the same color on eBay and ordered it…

 

The Carfax report starts in late September 2001, so a the manufacture date on the original radio makes sense…

 

The screen detaches from the actual head unit…

 

IT LIVES!!!