About three, three and a half weeks ago, I decided that me and 2016 needed some time off so I put in for a week off of which I will have nearly completed by the time you read this — in case you care about such minutiae.

At any rate, me and 2016 have been going through a rocky period and quite frankly I think I want to see other years. I even thought about calling up 2001 to see what she’s doing these days and maybe if she wants to get a cup of coffee.

I don’t know, I just needed some time off to think about some things. I saw that 2017 was looking at me earlier. Who knows, right?

Just send that drink over to her and tell her it’s from me.

At any rate, I took the time off to get away from the stress for a while. To sit at home and watch horrible TV and play video games — yes I play video games. I am a 41-year-old nerd so let’s just roll past this.

It was supposed to be a week completely free of stress, with nothing else to really do aside from assorted projects around the house that I haven’t been able to get to.

Stress free.

You see I keep saying this because both you and I know that 2016 is going to show up at my door and complain that I haven’t called her and claim I’ve been cheating on her with another year.

Early Tuesday morning was really, really cold and my girlfriend’s car, the ever plucky Sunfire, refused to start. You know what? It’s old, it deserves the right to not start in really, really cold weather if it doesn’t want to. So I fired up the Focus and drove her to work and then returned at around 11 a.m. to pick her up for lunch.

Good day really.

And then the Focus threw a fit. The RPM’s climbed and it struggled to find gear. It was very disconcerting and so we hobbled our way to Southmain Auto. I’m not a car guy, but I know when the transmission acts up and I also know that to replace said transmission I need to win the lottery so yeah, I was worried.

They did take a look despite a small, hand-drawn sign on their calendar that said, “Full.” At any rate, they don’t really do transmission work so they sent me to the Tranny Shop with a code to tell them about, which still meant very little to me except that this was becoming nerve-wracking.

I’ve dealt with car issues before, but I’ve always been able to afford them with very little long-term impact to the budget that is pencil thin. This, however, is a different animal.

They took my car out and began trying to figure out what the terrible grinding sound might be. On the way back it suddenly hit him what it might be and then after explaining it as best he could to a car-dummy while at the same time giving me about the best news I had received up until that point.

Turns out, which Holiday Ford confirmed, that there is a recall for this specific problem. The mechanic from Ford that rode with me, confirmed as much, saying he thought that was indeed probably the issue.

Now, this column will go to press before I find out the end of this. I’m trying to stay positive, but I’m leery. The year 2016 just hasn’t offered much for me to be optimistic about.

So yeah, I think I’m going to see if 2017 wants to go for a drink. We’re all just being smothered by a 2016.