We are on a little road trip and I’ll share snippets when I stumble on wifi along the way.

Usually mid-April in our part of Canada is spring showers and new growth. This year, however, spring is taking its sweet time.

So when we planned an April trip in our camper van from Alberta to Vancouver Island, which I’ve dubbed “The Van to Van”, we had a certain (and fair) expectation regarding the weather and road conditions. *Snow* was not part of the equation.

We plan. God laughs.

Yesterday over morning coffee, as I was planning the zillion things I needed to do before leaving, my husband checked the weather and said, “There’s a crazy storm coming overnight. We need to leave today instead of tomorrow and outrun it.”

Yikes. I was barely going to get out the door at the scheduled time, never mind a day early! But it was either that or stay home for two more days, until the storm passed.

I kicked into high gear and packed, cleaned, plowed through the work on my desk, posted a Bubble Hour episode, dropped off the dog, popped in to see the grandkids, and made some granola bars to take along.

My husband also got busy doing the last of the van prepping, including filling the water tanks.

Minutes before take off, just as I was congratulating myself on calmly adjusting to a schedule change that would normally make me crazed and snappish, piercing blasts of noise rang through our house.

MEEEEPPPP MEEEEEPPPP MEEEPPPP

A recorded (bilingual) voice called “FIRE!!! FUE!!! FIRE!!! FUE!!!

Efffffffff. Seriously?

I dashed throughout the house to find the problem and discovered water pouring from a smoke detector in the basement, which had shorted the system and set it off. Filling the van with water from the hose caused a pipe to burst – there must have been some ice in the line. Efffffff.

There went my calm.

While my heroic husband contained the problem and shut off the water and breaker to the zone, I hauled out the carpet shampooer and sucked a gallon or two of water up from the flooring.

And then…we left.

We drove to the forecasted edge of the storm, three hours west, and spent the night in a parking lot. Scenic.

Nevertheless, we are feeling happy and relaxed and ready for adventure.

I can’t believe I can handle this stuff so easily. None of this would have sat well with me when I was living my life on the edge of insanity. Every blip along the way pushed me into major anxiety and upset.

Now here I am rolling along without a care in the world. At least for today…we’ll, this morning anyway.

We’ll see what happens this afternoon….!