First the good news: Uncle Rodney has been located. Good thing they put his name as part of the caption because otherwise none of us would have recognized him (well, okay, his sisters maybe, but otherwise no). So, that’s one worry off the list.

Now the not so good news:

So this issue I’ve been vague about, the owed money, it came in yesterday: wohoo! Finally the matter can be dropped and maybe things can return to normal. But why is this bad news, Jennifer? Well, I went to the bank at lunch to deposit the much needed funds and on the way back I had a little bit of trouble. Wow, that’s an understatement.

So I’m tooling along a one-way street that I routinely take to avoid all of the lights and traffic on the main N/S thoroughfare and I come up to one of the many intersections where the cross-street has the stop sign. Then I notice that the little green Honda coming up to the intersection seems to have no intention of stopping. In that instance I realized two very important things:
1) I don’t have enough room or time to stop, and
2) If I do slam onto the brakes we’re either going to collide corners or worse, she’ll hit my driver’s side door.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I floored it. Now, Cher (my little blue Prism) may be a piece of crap in many respects, but she definitely does not lack in the get-up-and-go respect, and for a split-second I thought I’d actually made it–then the world spun. Well, actually, I spun, 180 degrees counter-clockwise while still going forward. I do not remember hearing any brakes squeal other than my own, and when I looked later (with the sheriff’s deputy and again on the way to the Hertz office) I saw no skid marks where there should have been from her car–plenty from my little trip around the world, but none from her.

So, shaken and stirred and blended as well, I stagger out of my car trying to both assess the damage and dial my cell-phone. Neither of which worked very well and my shoulder was screaming at me from the snapping it got from the seat belt. I remember my hands shaking and the hiss of air from the rear left tire and that tire was tilted funny. Luckily there was a witness and she had already called 911 before I made it out of my car, and the sheriff’s deputy must have been seconds away because I was still trying to figure out how my cell phone worked when I heard the sirens. I knew I needed to call the office to say I’d be late and the insurance company for a claim number and a tow truck.

The long and the short of it is that she (a 17-year-old high school student) was found at fault (no duh) and cited. I can only feel so bad for her, even though her car did seem to sustain more visible damage than mine, the adjuster has already warned me that my car very well may be considered totaled based on age and milage (and the 2 previous major accident repairs in its 8-year tenure with me). This really sucks since I paid off this car last summer and was really counting on having no car payments for at least another year. Add to that the fact that the car’s worth is no where near a reasonable replacement value and I’m really fearing those two little words: it’s totaled.

Granted, the body shop it was towed to, the guy there said it might not need frame work, but it seems a fine line as to what the insurance company will be prepared to do. Time will tell. So, in light of the truly sucky afternoon (who knew a 3-hour lunch could be so bad?) I made a big pan of chicken and rice and will finish off the german chocolate cake I bought over the weekend before taking a bubble bath, downing a preventative-measure muscle relaxer, and going to bed early. Oh, and to add insult to injury, Hertz was out of normal-size cars and now I’m driving a gas-guzzling Highlander. Yes, I bought the insurance because the last thing I need is a $500 deductible on a car that isn’t even mine.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as a wrongful termination of a car’s life suit that can be brought if the insurance company won’t pay a decent amount?