Flat tires update

A quick follow-up to last night's car shenanigans.

The car is fixed. 443 dollars, two new tires and an alignment later, it's like the nothing never was. Funny thing is I just got a bonus at work and although it's not poetic and exactly 443 dollars, it does put a serious dent in it so it proves the adage "easy come easy go" quite nicely.

In any event, it's done. As my father says, "don't get money ahead, because a kid will get sick." Or you'll run your car into a median and trash two tires.

Double flat

I have to be up at 5AM tomorrow but this story must be told - partially because it's too good not to tell and partially because I have to own it in order to stop the negative monologue that is trying like crazy to go at full bore.

The short version is that I went to Hy-Vee tonight to pick up some milk and coffee. I added some Diet Rite Zero to the list as well, then swung by Hy-Vee Gas and got my 8 cent per gallon discount. After that, I headed northbound on Grand Avenue and that's where the fun started.

Somehow, some way, I ended up hitting the median right by the Ames Veterans Memorial and flattened both my driver's side tires. Like most car accidents, looking back on it is like looking through etched glass into a foggy night. I can't, for the life of me, figure out HOW I did it. Clearly, I was driving too close to the median (you think?) but I hit it and the next thing I know, I'm pulled off to the side of the road with two flat tires. I'm lucky I didn't hit a sign, or careen into oncoming traffic. This, of course, makes me sound like someone who routinely drives recklessly which, let me assure you, I am not. The worst part was that I was mere blocks from home, but far enough that I can't make it without doing more serious damage to my car.

So I get my car off Grand Avenue and pull it onto 5th Street. At this point, there's no doubt that I'm going to need a tow. Finally, AAA is worth more than just hotel discounts. They send me a guy from the local Amoco who takes nearly an hour to arrive. He puts the donut on and tows me to CarX which is who does all our car work. Once we get there, I ask him if he can give me a ride home and he either couldn't or wouldn't - I can't figure out which. He said he had another call to go to and acted like driving me a couple miles back home was like driving me from the south side of Chicago to the northern outskirts. WTFE, I walked from CarX. He was kind of a jerk, but a jerk that towed my car so he gets points for that.

It was at about this point that my evil twin really started in on me. He started with the old reliable "stupid" and then moved on to "klutzy" and "absent-minded" and "you just don't pay attention!" For him, it's like the word "accident" doesn't exist. I did it deliberately and because I was an idiot. At other times in my life, this evil twin, who really is a shithead to me, would have won the argument. I would have felt terrible and awful and beat myself up for something that was clearly accidental. Yes, it's a big deal, but no, I didn't do it on purpose and just because I had an accident does NOT make me "stupid." Nice try. Moron.

Anyway, the best part of the story is that I was texting Heidi this whole time. As I started to walk home, she tried to get someone on Twitter to give me a ride home since Anna was already in bed. By the time I noticed this, I was nearly half way home, so I texted her to let her know this. I must not have turned my phone off before I slipped it back in my pocket because the next text I got from her was "??" As it turns out, I had pocket-texted her and as random pocket texts go, this one was a doozy. Of all the possible letter combinations, the text I sent her was "Fu" which made her think I was saying "f*** you." We had a good laugh about that.

So yeah, it sucks. But it could be worse. At least I didn't get hurt. At least I didn't hurt someone else. At least there wasn't any more damage to the car. It probably won't be cheap, but as I always say about money, easy come, easy go. My dad always says you don't want to be the richest guy in the graveyard and at the rate I'm going I'm sure that will be no problem. I did, however, get the great joy of drinking Diet Rite Zero right out of the 2 liter bottle while sitting at the Ames Veterans Memorial. I know - classy.

It'll tumble for her

It all started with the mother of all crashes.

I was sitting at my computer catching up on blogs before heading to the kitchen to start thinking about getting dinner ready when, from the other room, I heard a most horrendous noise. It sounded like items sliding off a shelf. What began as a whisper soon became a roar as it became abundantly clear to me that something had gone seriously awry. I yelled out to Anna "Anna, what's going on?" only to hear her scream out to me for help.

I swear I was there in less than a second and could not believe my eyes. There was the entertainment center, on the floor face down. Everything had fallen out of it and Anna was underneath it crying and not able to move. I managed to lift up the entertainment center (which was the bulk of the weight) and pull her out from under it. After being pulled from the wreckage, she basically had the equivalent of an anxiety attack - talking about how she was afraid she had brain damage and that she was seriously injured. Her ability to walk and form coherent sentences pretty much ruled out brain damage and the fact that she could move pretty much everything made broken bones unlikely. But she was a bundle of nerves and acted like someone who had just had a near-death experience. This would be the point at which I would normally make a glib comment about the drama of being a 9-year-old, especially this one.

The truth is though, that it WAS a pretty big deal. She admitted that she'd been hanging on the entertainment center - something she's been told repeatedly not to do. I think she is unlikely to do it again. As Heidi said, she has a newfound appreciation for physics.

Our first job was calming her down. We got her into the tub and turned on her music and let her soak while we went down to assess the damage and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The contents of the entertainment center included: a not-quite-year-old $800 television, a couple of DVD players, a VCR (yawn!), the Wii, various DVDs, the Roku box, and assorted knick-knacks (the Cher doll being the most cherished.) When we put it all together, we were looking at nearly $2000 worth of electronic equipment that had a very high likelihood of being ruined. I will admit that I was not at my best at this point. Once we hooked the TV back up and ascertained that yes, it still functioned, I started to pull myself back together a little bit.

Piece by piece, we tried out each piece of electronic equipment. My prediction early on was that anything that had a laser would be destroyed. But the DVD player worked, as did the Wii. We didn't even bother hooking the VCR back up - heaven only knows when the last time we used it was. The Roku box, I fear, took a fatal blow. I still can't make that work but fortunately, we have the Wii to allow us to do our Netflix streaming.

All in all, we majorly dodged a bullet on so many levels. Naturally, the most important thing is that Anna was virtually unharmed. She has a scrape on her arm along with a pretty colorful bruise from where she was pinned underneath the entertainment center but otherwise, she is mostly just shaken up. The hardest part was trying to move the entertainment center, thinking that my child had been seriously injured while she cried and said she was sorry and admitted to hanging on the entertainment center. At that point, I didn't give a shit about the electronics, I just wanted her out from under there and safe and unharmed. It shook me up a bit, I must say.

As Heidi and I were reflecting on the evening, we decided that even if everything on there had been broken and Anna would have been safe, it would have been a huge win. It's a cliche yes, but that doesn't mean it's not fucking true. The fact that, in the end, only the Roku box was rendered non-functional is just gravy. Oh, and Cher's microphone is still MIA.

Glinda, however, will never be the same.


And here's a picture of the Humpty Dumpty, put back together again.


Not how I would have scripted the night had I been in charge, but hey, who ever said I got to be in charge?

Now pardon me while I go hug my kid.