The kids and I are hardly going anywhere these days. And it’s summertime. And one of them has his license. And their dad is giving them each $20 every week for allowance. You would think they’d be blowin’ and goin’, right?

Well, if it comes down to using our van (instead of being picked up by friends) they opt to stay home more than go out. The air conditioning is out – again. And let me tell you, that van gets HOT!

And the really horrible thing is that the driver side window cannot be rolled down. Oh it will roll down. But if you do roll it down, it might not roll back up. There is a little plastic tab, inside the door, that holds the window in its track, that is broken off. So when you are the driver, it is so unbelievably miserable in there.

And a lot of times, I’ll be driving them around, and the person in the passenger seat – you know, the one with the window ROLLED DOWN – starts complaining. It is at that point one has to demonstrate the ultimate restraint to not reach over and smack the crap out of them!

My poor Nissan Quest – I really do love her, though. The kids complain about her all the time, but, really, she’s been very good to us over the years. I think she’s a ’97 and we might have gotten her in ’01 or ’02. She’s my third Nissan – I love Nissans. My ‘dream Nissan’ is a four-door Frontier, which I’ll get one day when I don’t have to lug multiple teenagers along with their instruments around.

Funny thing is, though, I’m going to go in and ask for a really old one. They came out with the four-door, or Crew Cab, in around ’99 or ’00 and after a few years – like just 2 or 3, I think, they changed the looks of it so much that I didn’t really like it. Now, who knows, maybe by the time I’m wanting to not be ‘Minivan Mom’ anymore, I’ll be head over heels for some other truck! Whatever it is – it will probably be a Nissan, though!