A Car Shoppin' We Will Go
We finished off the month of May with a bang around here. Literally. While driving home from the kids' dentist appointment we were rear ended. It was a nasty mess of an accident, involving three cars (and then another accident happened in the traffic backup our accident caused). Fortunately, the driver behind us swerved so we didn't take the full impact directly on the back. Everyone is well-- we were sore for a few days but everyone is feeling mostly back to normal now. Physically anyway. But there are ripples of consequence of one commonplace accident.
Every time we stop-- especially if I have to stop quickly-- the kids in the car now whip around and look behind us, terrified that another car is going to smash into the back of us. I refuse to drive home from the gym on my normal route because that takes me through the poorly designed intersection where the accident happened, and I really don't want a repeat experience. M was going to try to get her driver's license this month, but now we need to sort out the finances and car situation first. Our family was supposed to go to the shelter and choose a new dog this week as a companion for Rue, but that's on hold indefinitely. Our schedule got turned topsy turvy, and what I thought would be my month to de-stress (June is usually my laid back month where I recover from the school year) has now become a month of just as much anxiety as May ever was. The biggest problem, of course, is that our van is totaled, which means that Terence and I have to go car shopping this week.
I loathe car shopping.
And I miss my van already. Yes, I get attached to our cars.
Of course, there are blessings in this situation:
Every time we stop-- especially if I have to stop quickly-- the kids in the car now whip around and look behind us, terrified that another car is going to smash into the back of us. I refuse to drive home from the gym on my normal route because that takes me through the poorly designed intersection where the accident happened, and I really don't want a repeat experience. M was going to try to get her driver's license this month, but now we need to sort out the finances and car situation first. Our family was supposed to go to the shelter and choose a new dog this week as a companion for Rue, but that's on hold indefinitely. Our schedule got turned topsy turvy, and what I thought would be my month to de-stress (June is usually my laid back month where I recover from the school year) has now become a month of just as much anxiety as May ever was. The biggest problem, of course, is that our van is totaled, which means that Terence and I have to go car shopping this week.
I loathe car shopping.
And I miss my van already. Yes, I get attached to our cars.
Of course, there are blessings in this situation:
- We still have two other functioning cars, so even though we don't all fit in one vehicle, we can pretty much get around like we need to.
- The accident didn't happen until school was out, so I don't have to manage school insanity and driving on top of the accident stuff.
- Nobody in our car was really hurt (people were transported to the hospital in both the other cars). And yes, everyone in our van was wearing their seat belts.
- We had comprehensive insurance on the van so we didn't have to wait on anyone else's insurance.
- Neither M nor J was driving. I almost had M drive home from the dentist. There would have been literally nothing she could have done to avoid the same accident, and what a trauma for a student driver.
- Nic was off work so Kristi could borrow his truck to come pick up the kids. K and S had someone to stay with that they trusted when I was still stuck at the accident scene.
- Terence was able to come down right away, even though he was working. He ended up directing traffic, but still, it was a comfort to have my husband there when I was all shook up.
What are start to our summer though, right? You never know what's just around the bend . . .
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