About a month ago, my car started warning me that I was low on coolant, dinging and flashing a light every time I came to a hill.

The warnings stopped as soon as I leveled out so I found them easy to ignore, especially since the car didn't appear to be overheating.

Fortunately, this story doesn't end with me and two children on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck. The happy ending is me miraculously doing something about the problem before it got worse.

With so many demands on my attention, I too often let car problems reach a crisis point before I pay attention. I mean, really, who needs a mechanic when you can just roll up the windows and crank up the radio to get rid of the ominous noises coming from the engine?

If I can ignore that, there's no way I'm paying attention to a blinking light.

As long as the kids are happy, my job is secure and I can remember where my car is parked, life is good.

If the kids and I take care of business and still have time to take an evening stroll to the store for banana popsicles, life is great.

It might not be practical, but sometimes cooling off with a popsicle seems more important than finding the time to cool off my car engine.

During the week, my life is structured around drop-off time at my son's elementary school and pickup time at my daughter's daycare.

If I can carve out the time to sit on a bench and chat with my son long enough for my daughter's popsicle to melt down her arm and drip onto her thigh, I'm happy, even when I've forgotten the wipes and know that I'll have to schlep my sticky child uphill a half-mile to get home.

You'd think we'd find this kind of time on the weekends, but when a normal Saturday is bookended by my son's morning writing class and evening fencing lesson, weekends are usually more hectic than weekdays.

Vacations and holidays are no better. We spent Memorial Day weekend on a four-day blitz through Los Angeles. Kamehameha Day weekend included a marathon 10th birthday celebration for my son.

Somewhere in between stuffing ourselves silly and playing Mario Party 7, our birthday festivities included a screening of "Cars," which led to that "Life is a Highway" song getting stuck in my head.

Worse things could have happened.

My daughter singing it while I was driving reminded me that I needed coolant.

Better late than never, and certainly worth celebrating with popsicles.

After all, my car didn't break down. To me, that means life is great.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.