I’ve been feeling a bit disconnected the past few days. I think it’s because things have been weird in my real life, and when I’m dealing with real life stuff I sort of shut down until I process it all. Nothing life-shattering has happened, some of it isn’t even bad, just different. For some reason, the more I have to blog about the less I want to blog.

If you follow me on Facebook you probably already know this, but the biggest good thing that happened is I got my first Valentine’s Day gift in I don’t know how long. Ten years, maybe? And it was a biggie. My wonderful husband outdid himself by surprising me with tickets to the ballet. (The link is to a snippet of one of the short modern ballets we saw.) Since we never go to fancy places we had to buy new clothes, but with the snow we ended up having to do it all at the last minute. It was worth the inconvenience, though, as it was the first time we’d been out on a date in no telling how long. Stimulated my need for artistic pursuits, and my need for my husband. He enjoyed it, too.

The biggest bad big thing that happened is…

…my van finally died. I was given this Voyager by my generous mother when I really needed a vehicle 9 years ago. For three or four years now, we’ve thought it was about to die, but it just kept on going. It even started right up on that final, frigid morning, but died before the hubs got two miles from the house. The old girl did her best; she was a good and faithful servant. I’m pretty sure the timing belt broke, and with all the other major repairs needed, it didn’t make sense to spend the money to fix it. Instead, we sold her to a salvage so her organs could save other vans.

The snow really made things difficult for a couple of weeks. We had record low temperatures, but this week it’ll be warm enough to challenge the record high temps. Unsettling, but at least we’re in the good weather phase of the craziness.

Since the van died, I’ve been home without a car for a week. It didn’t take long to get depressed and bored. I miss being able to do my shopping in the daytime, or take a short drive if it’s a beautiful day, and even if I didn’t do those things I’d at least get out to pick up the kids from school–something I was scared to do until a couple of months ago, but now I miss it.

So the snow combined with the no-car thing has given me cabin fever pretty bad. Night before last I made an after-dinner run to the dollar store, and just drove around for a while with the windows down and Rock You Like a Hurricane blaring. The night wind on my face was like salve on my heart.

So like I said, things haven’t been terrible, just different. Lots of little strange things happening on a daily basis. I’m hoping the hubs will take pity on me and not drag his feet getting another vehicle. Then I’ll be able to handle anything.