Friday, April 18, 2008

Let me just start by saying: we are all fine. We were in a wreck and there was a ginormous hail/thunderstorm last night, but we’re fine.

Now the details. The wreck could have been much worse (and by that I mean that it could have been my fault.) A police officer had a speeder pulled over on the side of the three-lane highway that goes through my town and the driver of the car in front of me slammed on their brakes because OMG! A cop! I had to apply my brakes quickly too, avoiding hitting that car, but the guy behind me hit my car.

We pulled over and were exchanging information when the cop finished with the speeder and approached us. The cop was VERY young; he looked like he had shaved for the first time, oh, yesterday. “Well, I’m guessing y’all had an accident,” were his words. No, Officer, we just thought we’d exchange phone numbers on the side of the road on a very windy day because he’s so cute.

(He was cute, though, which I haven’t mentioned to my husband for obvious reasons. Looked like Orlando Bloom. Alas, he is 21 years old, has a girlfriend who was in his car, I’m married with 2 kids, and—oh yeah, HE HIT MY CAR.)

Anyway, the Orlando lookalike was a nice guy, and the cop didn’t give either one of us a ticket because we completely agreed on what happened and that there was no way to avoid it. (Also because it was probably the cop’s first day on the job.) So that was good.

When we got home there was a message from Orlando saying to call him, he wanted to pay for the (pretty minor) damage to my bumper. So now we have to get an estimate and get the money from him and I don’t know what-all, and all of that is now officially Justin’s job. I love having a husband!

Miss Pink was pretty upset during the aftermath. “We had a wreck! Oh no! I can’t believe we had a wreck! Is our car broken, Mommy? MOMMY! WE HAD A WRECK!” Meanwhile, Mr. Blue was oblivious—sitting in his car seat chewing on his stuffed doggie’s face.

You all know what a drama queen she can be. But as a recovering drama queen myself, I can tell you that to her, the freak-out is entirely justified because it is the WORST THING IN THE WORLD EVER—to her. She just has huge emotions that her little heart doesn’t know how to handle. My job is to stay calm and help her calm down—not by making her shut up, but by showing her that everything’s fine, Mommy will take care of it, she doesn’t have to worry, etc. With her, because she’s so verbal, that means talking her down from the ledge, so to speak. I am so thankful that I am not in the same place I was in five or even three years ago, because I would have been crying right along with her. Now, I was like, “The most important thing is that nobody’s hurt. The second most important thing is that nobody’s hurt.” And I meant it.

4 comments:

  1. SO SO glaad everyone is ok, like you said that is the most important thing. Cars can be fixed, and while medical technology has come a long way, people are not so easy to fix. (I know I may have asked this before, but are you in Dallas? We had a huge storm here last night too.)

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  2. Like you said, hum - I had to turn off some annoying music my daughter had playing on a horrific loop and I've forgotten what you said, but I know it musta been very astute! Yes, astute! Glad you're all ok. Glad you can see that this is what's important. Ya, that's what you said. You're smart!

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  3. Oh, those little fender benders are so scary, because they make you think of what could have happened. I'm glad you're all safe.

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  4. I'm so glad everyone was/is ok!!

    I like what you say about her emotions being too big for her. I was JUST thinking this the other day about Livie. The night of the hailstorm was particularly rough, and I almost blogged about it, but really, the gist of it is, I was proud of how I handled her melt down. I think it's getting easier on me, and part of it is the realization that she just can't handle those emotions on her own.

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