People in our house come to me with their car troubles. This is probably inadvisable.

For many years, I have carried out the same maintenance routine every few weeks on the cars in our driveway.

When I say "the cars in our driveway," I mean the cars belonging to whatever combination of people happens to be living with us at the time. Terry and I are at a stage in life when that is ever-changing, with some kids getting older and moving out, others living on campus for college then coming home for the summer, etc.

Anyway, if you live here, I'm going to periodically run through a checklist of basic maintenance items on your car. These are pretty much what you think they would be: I'll check your oil, refill your washer fluid, ensure proper levels of other fluids, and break out the tire gauge to ensure your tires are correctly inflated. If they're not, I'll drive the car to the local BP station and refill them accordingly.

Beyond that, I will buy and replace light bulbs that burn out and do the same for your air filter when needed, but really, that's the extent of my car maintenance knowledge.

The problem is that when something really bad happens, I'm of no help. I will not even attempt to diagnose issues with the electrical system, couldn't tell you how to flush your coolant, and have zero experience with suspension or drive train issues.

So when you come to me with those problems, the only service I can perform is driving your car to our mechanic Randy so he can work on it and avoid having me make things worse.

Cars nowadays also have onboard computers, and I don't know anyone who has the equipment at home to check those codes, so forget the notion of having that check engine light problem diagnosed in our driveway.

Much like houses, cars are now complex systems that are beyond the ability of the untrained to fully understand and fix.

It's just that the problem gets infinitely worse when I'm your in-home mechanic. I've never even changed my own oil, for Pete's sake.