Ugh, it’s been a craptastic week—sad, when you think that it’s only Tuesday, right? I know!

 

It all started yesterday morning. I woke up, put the youngest off to school, sent my oldest off to work. He had to be there by 8:30 for his shift. About nine, Eric and I left the house because we had to go to Skylar’s school for his annual IEP, and we’re not two minutes on the road when The Call comes in.

 

Alex: “… Mom, don’t be mad …”

Me: “Son, how many times have I told you never to start a conversation that way? Because it ALWAYS makes the person on the other end ‘mad’ … So why are you calling? You’re supposed to be working, aren’t you?” (At this point, I’m only mildly worried because he’s pulled that phrase on me before, and he SOUNDS okay, right?)

Alex: “… The truck (Jeep)’s been in an accident.”

Me: “… Again, why are you not at work?!” (since he is obviously okay enough to be calling me, you know …)

Alex: “I am at work. Someone hit the PARKED TRUCK.”

Me: “… … … Wha-a-a-a-a-at …?” (When you say this in your head, drop your voice about three octaves and draw the word out slooooooooooowly …)

Alex: (Big sigh. Really big sigh. Huge sigh.) “Yeah.”

Me: “Send me a picture, can you?”

Alex: “Okay, I’ll send one right now. Gotta go. Gotta talk to the police.”

Here’s the picture he sent me, in case you want to see it. Yes, the Jeep IS on grass (But wasn’t he hit in the parking lot …? Yes. Yes, he was. Let’s move on, shall we?) I laughed. It’s either that or cry.

And here are pics of both vehicles …

 

 

 

So we head up to Krogers parking lot to find out what’s going on. I have to call the school and tell them we’re not going to make it, that we have to go to see what happened with our Jeep. They say it’s fine, we can do the IEP over the phone later. (The only real ‘yay’ in this story, btw …), so we get to Krogers right after the wrecker does. That guy was trying to pull the woman’s car off the hill, and that’s when it hits me: the reason why the picture that Alex sent me shows both vehicles on the grass, and for some stupid reason, I thought when I looked that they’d been moved there, out of the way. Nope. Oh, nope. That’s where they ended up.

 

So I ask the first logical question that occurs to me to the officer: is the other driver okay? He says yes, she’s okay, they took her home. I asked what happened, and the officer tells me that from what the woman said, she was pulling into a parking space and tagged the Jeep. Errr … umm … Okaaaaaay …

 

So in my head, I’m looking around, and I’m doing the math. She was trying to pull into a parking space yet she managed to push a parked Jeep THAT far …? You saw the picture, right? So you know she doesn’t have a big, bad, hulking vehicle … But okay … I asked the next logical question: Was she DRUNK?! No. No, she wasn’t. She’s old. Ahh, old … That immediately brings back memories of conversations a few years ago with Mom when Dad’s health first started to really decline. He had a series of little accidents that ultimately led to his not being able to drive anymore. The state of Florida didn’t take Daddy’s license away, though. My mother did for his own good. So in my head, I’m thinking, ‘The poor lady … She had to have meant to hit the brake and missed or her foot slipped, something like that, and then maybe she just froze and didn’t react properly. It happens, right?‘

 

And my sweet son, for reasons I don’t understand, keeps saying, “She wrecked my truck because she was having a bout of road rage.” And being the terrible mom I am, I told him not to say that, that accidents happen, it was all right. Hell, I even asked her insurance company to let the woman know that we were glad that she wasn’t hurt…

 

While the wrecker is hauling the womans’ smashed up car onto the road, the police man asks Alex where, exactly, he was parked. Alex indicates, and the policeman looks surprised and says he thought he meant to space closest to the access road. Alex said no, he had pulled through to the space nearer to the building (not by much, but you get the idea, right?) This strikes me as strange though I don’t mention it, but the police man told me already that she had said she was trying to pull into a space and just tagged the Jeep. But if she had been trying to pull into that space, she would have hit the back of Alex’s Jeep AND she would have shoved the Jeep in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION … But what do I know? I wasn’t there, so I say nothing.

 

By the time they get the woman’s car moved and look at the Jeep, the guy suggests seeing if it’ll start, seeing if it can be at least driven down off the embankment and onto the road instead of having to drag it. Wouldn’t you know? It started on the first try, it sounds just fine—not a jiggle, not a rattle, not a cough, not a sputter. The wheel that she was jammed up against was knocked crooked, but when the man moved the steering wheel it moved right back, too. Don’t know if there’s anything wrong with the driveshaft or anything, but when the Jeep was driven (yes, driven) down onto the road, the only thing it was doing was losing coolant. But she’d knocked the front bumper off, smashed in the light column on the passenger side, etc … Oh, and did I mention that she had shoved the Jeep into a TREE? So yeah, rear damage, too …

 

So this morning, I get up to take Eric to work at six-thirty, come home, have to take Alex to work at ten so I can then come home and get picked up to be taken to get the rental vehicle (because they can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, of course), and on the way to Krogers, Alex tells me that a number of employees told him at different times that their shifts started about the time that the accident happened, they saw the WHOLE THING, and their stories are all the same. Here it is:

 

The employees are instructed to park in the far right side of the parking lot in the spaces beside the access road (standard width, however wide that is exactly, but it’s not narrow; it’s a two lane road) that goes behind the store for truck deliveries. On the far side of this road is a good … 4 – 6 inch curb—not a gentle curb, either, but a very stark curb that you have to willfully go over, you see? After the curb is grass and a slope, and about … fifteen? Twenty? Feet off the road is a six or seven foot chain-link fence that separates Peace Tree Plaza from a small office building. On the left hand side of the chain-link fence, it runs up into some trees and a slightly wooded area though not nearly enough to be a forest or anything. More like a grove. Yes, all of this is important. Bear with me.

 

So the employees who had arrived just before nine for their shifts and saw this told Alex that they’d first noticed the woman because she was kind of stuck against the cart return (they call it a cart oasis) that was diagonal from the truck in the next parking lane over, which put her car directly in front of the Jeep. She was obviously agitated, rocking her vehicle forward and back to try to get away from the oasis. Finally she got angry and pretty much floored the car to dislodge it, and, yes, she smacked into the front passenger corner of the Jeep. Then the employees have all said that she STOPPED, but within a moment, she got this really weird, angry, hostile look on her face—and floored her car again. So angry that she shoved the Jeep through another parking space, across that access road, up over that six inch curb, up the embankment, over the chain-link fence, and against a tree where it finally stopped, but the police even said when he got there, her tires were STILL spinning, meaning she hadn’t taken her God-forsaken foot off the gas, either. All told, she shoved that Jeep at least 75 feet though probably closer to 100, all because she got mad?!

 

She totaled our Jeep on purpose, because she was mad, because she lost her temper. Like we have the money to deal with this. Like we have the money to have to replace the Jeep that SHOULD have lasted another good 120,000 miles. That Jeep has had two owners before us, and both kept meticulous records of the work they’ve had done on it—EVERYTHING—in the back of the owner’s manual. We’ve been meticulous, too. The interior looked brand new when we bought it five years ago, and it doesn’t look bad now. The next vehicle we bought was supposed to be for me, so I could go back to school, so I could get my degree in English. Can we really tell Alex, sorry, know that was your graduation present, but since it’s totaled and not even your fault, you’re shit out of luck, kiddo …? I can’t do that. So instead, we’re left having to pay out another fifty bucks for the deposit for the rental car because her insurance will pay for the rental but not the deposit—fifty bucks we just don’t frigging have. Dealing with insurance and claims adjusters, but mostly, feeling so angry and upset because, out of all the vehicles she could have hit, she hit OURS.

 

It’s so frustrating. It’s so demoralizing. They’ll never pay us what the truck is worth because they only see the year and the mileage, and they don’t take into consideration things like how well it was maintained. Now we have to go buy something (can’t afford to get something on payments since we’re still paying for the car) and pray that it isn’t a hunk of junk, but you know what the one thing that ticks me off more than anything else is? The first thing Alex asked her when he went outside, the very first thing, “Are you okay?!” That’s what he wanted to know. He wasn’t angry that she’d wrecked his Jeep. He wasn’t cussing her for being careless. He wanted to know if she was all right, and her response? She refused to acknowledge him, she glared at him as though he had done something wrong, didn’t even apologize for wrecking his Jeep—nothing.

 

And what’s the point of my rant? Well, that’s the reason I haven’t posted anything today and not sure when I will post again. Why do I feel like I just keep getting kicked in the teeth, every time we turn around? Our anniversary’s this weekend, and we can’t celebrate it. Twenty years of marriage, and we’re stuck dealing with this crap. I just want to get my head cleared so I can concentrate on writing because that is what truly makes me happy. Hopefully tomorrow or the day after, I’ll have it together enough to be able to get back to it, and I may post the first chapter of Madison’s story just for kicks sometime soon, too.

 

On another note, I’m going to start posting chapters here on the website, so I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates because MediaMiners’ been so touchy of late. I will continue to post there, too, but the blog chapters will post first, likely a day ahead of MediaMiner. I have also created a twitter account that I can post updates on if I get enough people on there to bother. The url for that is https://twitter.com/SuericFanfics if you’re interested. Like I said, I’m only going to use the Twitter if there are enough followers to mess with it as I don’t particularly like the set-up but meh … I’ve gone ahead and posted the chapters of The Fulcrum here, as well. In the next few days, I’ll get around to making a page for indexing them so you don’t have to go hunting. Otherwise, I do let people know on the forum when I’ve posted a chapter, so you can always check there, too.

 

All right, enough of my ramblings. I think I need my own personal Evan so I can cry at him or beat on him and he’ll just laugh at me lol …