The mystery of the check engine light.

I'm just going to go ahead and start out this post by admitting that I am not the most attentive car owner. You're probably shocked because of the family of mechanics I come from, right? Well, I didn't inherit any of those genes. So now that little fact is established, onto my tale...

The check engine light in my car has been on for awhile. About a month and a half, awhile. For the most part, my car has been running fine, with the slight exception of when I'm idle at a stoplight. After a few seconds, the car starts to shake a little and then the check engine light starts flashing. After I accelerate from the stop light, the car stops shaking and the check engine light stops flashing.

The boyfriend doesn't know much about cars, but he thought that perhaps my oil needed to be changed, along with the filter. Not so sure when that last happened, so I agreed. Had that done last week, and there wasn't a change.

On Saturday, he needed to get a new tire for his truck, so I followed him to the store. While we were out running errands I suggested a stop by Auto Zone so they could run the diagnostics test on my car to see what the problem is since I have to drive to Dallas this weekend. The guy ran the test and I almost kissed him when he informed me that it was a misfire in cylinder 3 which just equated to the spark plugs needing to be replaced. How easy is that! And, I have a wonderful twin brother who knows how to do such a thing and lives in the same city I will be visiting very soon! I was absolutely giddy with this news.

On Sunday I noticed that my car was driving much smoother. The check engine light was still on, but the car wasn't shaking at stop lights and the light wasn't flashing. When I left work on Monday I stopped by the grocery store. When I arrived at the grocery store, my check engine light was on. When I left the grocery store, the check engine light was no longer on and hasn't made an appearance since. How strange is that?

I called the boyfriend to see if he somehow had managed to fix my car without me knowing, but he hadn't. I like to believe that the spark plug fairy paid me a visit and made my car problems go away : ) Here's hoping for safe travels tomorrow as I venture to Dallas for DAR State Conference!