Annual expectations.

You know how there's those things that you can anticipate happening every year right around the same time?

Holidays,

taxes, 

birthdays,

the end of summer,

FREEZING COLD winters in Logan...

Generally speaking, 

these are culturally appropriate things to anticipate.

Your car refusing to cooperate is not. 

(Except maybe this is more common than I would like to believe..?)

Every year right around this time, 

our car chooses to throw in the towel.

Year 1:  4 tires in need of replacement. 

(but it was probably 8, since my car rocks, too.)

Year 2: Broken fuel pump

along with about 50 other mandatory repairs

Year 3: Dead battery. 

Like... 'won't even begin to turn over' kind of dead.

Sweet.

And the fact that over the last few days the high in weather has been something like 3 degrees, it's not really helping our case. Especially when it was NEGATIVE ELEVEN yesterday morning as my husband begged me to come out and help him try to push the car into the garage. You can imagine the excitement spilling from my every pore as I tried to keep warm with a sweater and those little one-size-fits-all gloves that never saved anyone's fingers from frostbite. ever!

Needless to say, we didn't get the car into the garage (or else this event would not be deemed worthy of blogging about...) and there it sat, parked halfway into the street for the remainder of the day.

Knowing that we couldn't do much with a dead car stuck at the end of the driveway, this morning the husband decided to venture out into the arctic wasteland to replace the battery. This was really fun, since it required blow drying the frozen car jack until it was useable and then removing one of the car tires in order to switch out the dead battery for another hopefully not dead one. 

(Which was also dead.)

I got some pictures in case you were wondering what it looks like 

to experience this level of excitement.

After some colorful murmurings, we decided to try, 

yet again, 

to get the car into the garage...

except this time I decided that we should 

go at it with a running head start.

(This is one of those times when a husband 

shouldn't let the wife make all the decisions...)

You can imagine what the woman wearing a dress 

standing at the end of the street thought, 

because she came to help us.

From the end of the street.

Wearing a dress.

(Why does this type of thing seem to be a trend?)

Luckily, she really was helpful,

and we now have a car in the garage! 

It's not working, but hey... 

that's one step further than we were yesterday...

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and use 

that blow dryer to thaw my hands and face....