My little Highlander ... the Phoenix

It's just a little boo-boo after all. Actually, it's not. The actual estimate makes every hair on my head spin in its socket. But my insurance adjustor deemed the value of the car sufficient to warrant repair. I'm gonna have my little car back!

A visit to the chiropractor yesterday has me feeling much better physically, too, so all in all, things are looking a lot brighter than they did 6 days ago. Bad news about my chiropractor's wife's health - she is a lovely woman, exactly my age, beautiful, trim , fit, and apparently healthy until her diagnosis last September - reminds me that stuff is just stuff.

Much as I love my car, it is only a car. Things can be replaced. Paperwork gets done. Taxes get paid. Problems get solved. But the people who mean so much to us along the way are what matter. I have dealt with many people in my life who either never "got" that or lost it along the way. I often make a pledge to myself that I never will. Every now and then something comes along and makes me reaffirm that vow to myself. Stuff is just stuff. Things are just things. While I welcome back my little Highlander, I recognize that this is simply the straightest path to solving this particular situation, and in the end, it doesn't even show up on the scope of "What Really Matters."

My little Highlander ...

Goodbye, little car. I hardly knew you. I've never had a car for such a short period of time.

I just got off the phone with the service station. My car is totalled.

Next step ...

Not amused.

This morning at 6:15, in the dark, on the road to work, I came over a hill to discover a herd of deer standing in the road, maybe 50 feet ahead (but who knows? I'm really bad a estimating distances.) I wasn't going that fast, having just left a 25 mph zone and entered a 40 mph zone, and my anti-lock brakes didn't even have to engage. Just as I realized I wouldn't hit the deer, just as they began to clear off the road, I got hit from behind. HARD. I must have had my foot off the brake, because the car was simply launched forward, and my sole task was to hold the wheel straight and stay on the road.

I traveled maybe 20 yards before I could pull over. I took a quick inventory of my body parts, and started breathing again. I grabbed my cell phone and got out of the car while dialling 911. I walked back to the car that hit me, and that's when the shock hit. The guy had TOTALLED his car - the hood was crumpled back to the windshield, and there was smoke and dust and car parts all over. He confronted me - "Why did you slam on your brakes?" I said "There were deer standing in the street." He said, "Welll, you should have seen them while they were on the side of the road." I didn't counter. They were right in the middle of the street as I crested the hill. I just asked him if he was ok, he said he thought so, and I went back to sit in my truck and practice deep breathing until the cops came.

My poor car. :( I thought I'd head to work, but when I tried to drive away, my car protested loudly. The cops looked it over, and among them decided that if I didn't blow the engine from back pressure caused by the kink in my exhaust system, I'd be lucky. So one of them escorted me home. Forty minutes later my phone calls to my insurance company were done, and ten minutes after that, the wrecker arrived and towed my car to my favorite garage.

I have a Kia mini-van rental. And a pile of paper work a'comin', I'm sure. But I'm ok, and the dogs weren't in the car, thank you God - the tail gate was sufficiently damaged that the crate that was folded up in the back of the car was damaged and my Crowie would have been back there if they'd been with me. I'm sore and stiff, but haven't felt the need to go to the ER for it. Inconvenience and annoyance. Just stuff. My Toyota and my angels protected me today, I think. And now, a dear friend is bringing me dinner - just 'cause. So, while I'm not amused, I'm thankful. Things could have been much worse.

Another log cabin, complete

I finished the blanket for Sally tonight. I'm really very pleased with it. For this blanket, I used softer pastels than I'd used for the first one I made. This isn't my favorite palette, but I'm actually very pleased with the result. I did the same thing this time - using cool colors for one half of the blanket and warm colors on the other side.

I edged it with applied i-cord, which I'd never tried before. I-cord rocks! I love the very finished effect the edging gives the piece, and I'm impressed with how neat it is.

I reversed the cool/warm pattern on the edging, using pink againt the blues and greens, and blue against the pinks and corals. I think it turned out pretty well.


It is, of course, not quite done. The downside of the log cabin technique is its backside (come to think of it, my backside is my downside, too.) This many ends to weave in is not something for the faint of heart. Oh well - this is the least of ways in which my life has required that I prove I am not faint of heart. I should be able to weave in all those ends in time to get the blanket in the mail to Sarah and Larry this weekend, and hopefully, Sally will be able to use it before it's summer and time to put away the wool blankets until next fall.

Welcome, Sally

Welcome to the world, Sally Isabelle.

A nice, long shower ...

I spent the day doing what I generally dislike ... attending a wedding shower ... and I had a great time. My beautiful niece, Genny, hosted the shower for her sister, my other beautiful niece, Alison. It was a really nice affair, held at a catering facility over in Lyndhurst. Though I generally get lost in areas like that, it was easy to find the San Carlo. I got there in plenty of time, and was relaxed and finally, after having lost February to the flu, feeling almost human. Almost. I have to admit, I sort of planted myself at a table, and just sat. I sometimes have to settle for being less than scintillating company.

It was a buffet lunch. The food was fabulous, and - glory! - they put a POT of coffee on each table at the beginning of lunch. I loved this place! For once, I wasn't twitching with caffeine withdrawal waiting for my fix, only to have it arrive in tiny portions (in admittedly lovely little delicate cups) with refills nowhere in sight. And I'm still having dreams about the asparagus that had been sauteed with jalopenos. And the roasted eggplant. Yum!

Ali and Matthew sure hauled in the goods. It took Mark's RAV stuffed to the roof, my Highlander, stuffed to the roof, and Matt's mother's Murano, stuffed to the roof to get the booty back to Mark's.
Once there, though, I'd maxed capacity on my recuperation and I just sank into inertia and stayed till 9:30 or so. We had a nice dinner of heated leftovers from the San Carlo, I enjoyed the unhurried visit with my brother and sister-in-law, and it was great to see so much of both of my beautiful nieces in one day. It's been literally years since I had that singular pleasure. So, yeah, I probably overstayed my welcome, and yeah, I had to sit in a traffic jam on route 80 on the way home while an accident blocked all 3 westbound lanes for the better part of an hour. But I had had a great day. It was a really nice shower. And sometimes, there's just nothing like a nice, long shower.

Alison and Genny - each so different and both so lovely.