Hey there, 5:18 AM, haven't seen you for a couple of weeks, and I have loved ignoring you this last month. I've actually been up since 4 AM 'cause sick, pitiful child after a mid-nighttime bathroom break and "Will you pleeassseee tuck me back in?" (insert pitiful voice, which doesn't coincidentally, have a particularly suited font style). At what age will they stop requesting our assistance in pulling sheets back up over their tired bodies? Of course, I do it because I love her and all, but there was that tiny niggling thought that, yet again, I'm just getting out of my extremely warm and fluffy cocoon in order to walk across the cold floor to your room so that I can pull the sheets up, which are not even all twisted. I believe at some point that my children will be able to perform this task on their own...maybe? (Lest I sound like a callous fool, this happens any and all times that my children leave their bed in the middle of the night, certainly not just when they're feeling badly. I certainly don't begrudge them the request when they're all pitiful. But just because they woke up at 3 AM and felt like they needed to come see us to let us know that they're awake? C'mon. You have the sheet situation well in hand, my darlings.) Blogging seemed like a good idea after doomsday visions of an ill child wouldn't stop cycling through my noggin.
Nothing wakes me up for the day more than crouching in the super bright light (does the bathroom get brighter in the pre-dawn hours?) on the cold bathroom floor while tying my child's hair back. If there's nothing else I learned when the Elder was a 2-year old and going through her first bout with a stomach bug (on Christmas Day, mind you), it was that vomit is decidedly difficult to get out of a little girl's long, thick hair in the middle of the night when the last thing your kid (or you) wants to do is go through a full-on, hair-washing bath. Fortunately, this time around, it's only been phlemy coughing that just sounds awfully wretchy and makes the boy exclaim "Get off my bed! Go to the bathroom!" And even more fortunately, she's asleep again.
And so, I write. Today's story is wildly different from the first 2 chunky paragraphs of woe. Today's story is just wild, in fact. It involves me, high heels, and my car-that-thinks-its-a-Tesla. Here we go.
When I'm getting dressed on days that I teach, I essentially go through the same couple of options in my mind to decide what to wear.
1. Can I wear black, grey, or any combination thereof? I will then happily proceed to my favorite clothing colors when/if I have not already worn them for the last two classes. They are my happy colors.
2. Is it a high heel kind of day? I dig the occasional high heel, folks. They make me feel confident and in charge. You can't hide in them, especially when you're approaching the class and everyone hears your "ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk" cadence in the frigid, tile hallways. Some days, I dig that vibe. Some days, I need that vibe. And rarely do they make my feet hurt, so bring on the power trip, right?
Well. Yesterday was a high heel kind of day. And, it turned out to be a highest-heel-I-have-in-my-closet kind of day. They're not towering, or anything, but they decidedly high (for me). This is significant as my story has a brief moment of running in it. So just to complete the visual later, I'll point out that I feel as if my hands flap awkwardly at my side when I run in high heels.
On Tuesdays & Thursdays this semester, I have a pretty tight teaching schedule, and yesterday being Tuesday and all, I was in my normal find-some-food-quickly-and-head-back-out-the-door-to-your-next-class mode. My babysitter was hanging out with the Younger, who was finishing up her lunch, and all was well. As I backed out of the garage, I remembered that I wanted to grab my San Pellegrino (because much like I ask myself "Is it a high heel kind of day?" I often try to justify an "Is it a San Pellegrino kind of day?"), which we are now able to just store in the garage-turned-refrigerator. I had just turned a new podcast on, and I remember a) being fully in my driveway (i.e. completely out of my garage), b) hitting pause on the podcast, and c) putting the car in park so I could walk back in the garage to grab my delightful beverage quickly. Can you see where I'm going with this? One of these things didn't happen.
C - I didn't put the car in park, apparently. For as I turned around, San Pellegrino in hand, what to my alarmed eyes should appear but a rolling, driverless car, heading straight for my house. Here's where my hand-flapping-high-heeled sprint happened. Fortunately, I caught up to my car; unfortunately, I didn't catch it in time. Fortunately, a shelving unit in the back of the garage prevented some seriously embarrassing wreckage of both my car and my house; unfortunately, the shelving unit is now a shattered mess. Fortunately, my car sustained almost ZERO damage (a few scuffs and a tiny, half-inchish size scratch/ding after full on crashing into the shelving unit/house, which is (formerly) where we kept the boy's (HEAVY) toolbox (top shelf!), circular saw (top shelf!), tire/air pump (top shelf!), and other various metal/sharp-edged/heavy tool items; unfortunately, 1 piece of sidewalk chalk (alas, bottom shelf), bit the dust (Literally. Have you ever stepped on or crashed into a piece of sidewalk chalk? Dust.) FOLKS. I don't know how this happened because not only did I/my super sneaky silent automobile (well played, Prius, well played) crash into this whole thing, but the entire shelf and all it's gnarly, car-denting/scratching contents come down on my hood, but there was virtually no damage, even after I panicked, and immediately put the dumb thing in reverse and backed up, causing another din and more metal-scraping-metal clattering.
And like any rational person, I put the thing in PARK, ran inside the house and said "Don't worry! That was just me hitting the house!" (to which my sitter looked at me and said "Yeah, we thought it was you."), and then backed out and shut the garage door on the whole mess before going to class. Oh, nope, actually, I took a screwdriver out of my windshield wiper blades first. Then, I went to class. As one would.
This resulted in a shaky-hands-from-the-adrenaline-rush situation, which led me to tell my class about my unfortunate situation, which then led them to fess up their worst driving moments: running into a stop sign, a hit & run without a license, and getting a car stuck in the woods, to name a few.
In the past 6 months, we have spent $2,000 to get both of our cars repainted after a certain sick child rode her bike with metal handlebars through our cars, scratching down the lengths of both of them and $1,000 to fix a bumper situation after the boy was rear ended. So this, of all things, is running through my mind in that hand-flapping, frantic dash to the brake: PLEASE, I can't afford to fix more scratches on the car!!! And by the grace of some guardian angel with a sense of humor, we won't have to. R.I.P. plastic shelving unit from college. You were my pantry in my first apartment and our tool shelf. You took one from the team and absorbed the force of the impact. We can never repay you, but yet we will replace you.
1 comment:
Ah, yes, the stick shift NOT in park in the driveway. This is a story I know well. You know how sloped my driveway is? And how busy the road is? One day I 'put the car in park' in the driveway and ran inside the kitchen to grab that important item I'd forgotten. As Joseph and I stood at the window above the kitchen sink looking out at the car it began to move. It rolled out the driveway and across the road, backwards, where it came to rest not so gently with the tailpipe in the embankment on the other side of the road at the sidewalk. I bent the tailpipe and dented the gas tank. Luckily it didn't get smashed by an oncoming vehicle, just by pure dumb luck. But that was super scary to watch. I was in the doghouse for quite awhile after that!
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