When You Don't Even Have Time For Your Life to Flash Before Your Eyes

Or How Many Thoughts Can Actually Occur in the 

Time It Takes for Your Minivan to be Totaled

Gratitude. Yep, that's the emotion I feel when I look at this mangled mess of my minivan. And not just a light dusting of the stuff - of gratitude. No, I feel a deep expansion of it in my chest, pressing on my breath and forcing me to take a deep breath- of gratitude. 

Not for the wrecked vehicle. The amount of problems that has caused me is just one more headache in my life lately, especially when I'm down to half a house still, I'm experiencing a major Crohn's flare-up and my income is wacky.

Being down half a house can be frustrating like the girls are living in the 'dorm room'- which is all their mattresses on the bedroom floor. Half the time they hate it- no privacy, their personal items packed in boxes and stored in the garage, no where to escape from the Baby Blueberry who thinks that sisters should play with her all the time. And forget the state of the mattresses, they seem to think that the mattresses are giant trampolines.  

      But they have gratitude too. They realize that they still have a house. They have heat. A roof over their head. So these things are inconvenient- and frustrating. And Baby Blueberry still hasn't potty trained- it stopped the day she watched the toilet explode with poopy water but it will happen. 

But I don't hear a lot of complaints from them. 

But onto the minivan. 

I was driving Bean to dance. Abu was already at dance and Blueberry was in the back in her car seat. The roads were nasty that night but let me back up a little bit further... 

The night before I had the weirdest dream.  This old woman gave me three silver charm bracelets that had been blessed to protect my girls. I woke up feeling a bit unnerved. What did my girls need protection from? And does a bracelet given in a dream really provide any sort of blessing?

That morning my father-in-law worried about the state of the tires on the van, called and said he was going to take the minivan that night after dance and have snow tires put on it. Since the bald tires weren't working great on ice and snow, I agreed gratefully with his suggestion. But in a few hours, I think bald tires actually worked in our favor...

On the way home from dropping off Abu to dance all I could think about was being in a car accident. My thoughts were getting quite chaotic with what am I going to do tomorrow without a car and I have interviews to get too and kids to drop off to dance. The thoughts of having a car accident were heavy but I assumed it was because the roads were nasty and people were driving stupid. - no, seriously, people if the roads are icy, slow the hell down. But I swear, people really don't understand physics. If that is one subject we need to spend more time on in school- it's physics. Not crazy, abstract, concepts they refer to on The Big Bang Theory physics- but simple laws of motions. 

Back to the story....I told Bean we needed to leave a bit early for dance, I didn't want to be in a hurry. And while I drove I was super aware, trying to avoid the sinking we're-going-to-get-a-car-accident- feeling. 

We stopped at one of the main intersections, in the turning lane, waiting our turn. As we have done a million times before, as we have done since. 

When this oncoming truck decides to run the red and plow into the oncoming car...right in front of us. In less than a second, the pick up truck hits the oncoming car- no breaks applied- ricochets off of them, and hits us head-on in the turning lane. 

There is no time to do anything except realize that we are going to be hit and hopefully it doesn't hurt too much. I let my foot off the brake, I wasn't going to fight against the force of that beast coming at us, and with bare tires, when the pick-up hit us, it slams us back into our seats and we slid about 10 feet back and six feet to the right, luckily into a buffer lane between the turning lane and the other lanes. So we avoid hitting anyone behind us. 

There is nothing like the image of a huge ass truck bumper coming right for your vehicle, aimed towards the passenger side with one of your babies in the passenger seat, knowing it's going to hit and there's nothing you can do. 

NOTHING. There wasn't time to move the vehicle. There wasn't time to throw it in reverse, which wasn't much of an option, because there was cars behind us. 

In less than 2 seconds you just have time to know. To know that events put into place are about to happen and you hope or PRAY that it will all be okay when that 2 seconds is over. 

Abu asked Bean later, "Did your life flash before your lives, like in the movies?" 

Bean answered, "No, there wasn't even time." 

Luckily, when she realized we were going to be hit, she took a deep breath, relaxed and allowed the motion of the crash to move through her. She didn't brace, she didn't tense and all those talks of physics I had with her and car accidents and explaining that sometimes bracing can be the worse thing you can do, actually clicked and she was fine.

The first thing I did was check my girls. Bean was okay. Blueberry was okay. Quiet, not even crying.

 But in a few moments she says from the backseat,  "That was scary. Oh, my God." 

And then after I realized my girls were okay. I was okay. We walked away without even whiplash. And even though I realized too that my minivan was totaled. Front frame bent into the engine, radiator destroyed, bumper damaged, alignment screwy...all I could feel was gratitude. 

My girls were okay. 

The minivan I can replace. I miss my minivan but it's totally, completely 100 percent replaceable. 

My girls were okay though. More than okay, they weren't even hurt. 

So yes, losing our main car has been a pain in the ass. Especially when the other driver didn't have insurance and due to my own dumb ass I only had liability on my van. (When we were first married we could only afford liability on our vehicles and our vehicles weren't worth much. When we got the van, I should have switched it but I didn't even think about it. Lesson learned.)

But if the other driver had insurance, than I would at least be getting a check to help replace my vehicle from their insurance company instead I have to take them to small claims court. Which seems like a waste of time, because if they weren't paying insurance...

But with all that being said...gratitude. 

Adventures in Sewer Back-ups, Ruined Basements, and Insurance Companies

      Sewer Germs are so GROSS-in case I forget to mention that- GROSS

     With most of my friends this year packing up and leaving for exotic places and new adventures, I wanted a grand adventure of my own.

     What I settled for was sorting our stuff and getting rid of clutter so we would be ready to move should the remote possibility arrive and fix up our house in case we needed to sell it in hurry. A girl can be hopeful, right?

     Tuesday I got my wish- just not the way I had envisioned it.

    My fairy godmother sucks.

    Bean was in the shower when the water started raising. She hurried out, hastily putting her clothes on as the water started to come out of the toilet. When she came rushing up the stairs and said the toilet was overflowing, I grabbed the plunger.

      “No, Mom. You don't need that. It's not plugged.” She's trying to explain to me as we rush back downstairs.

     I stop at the bathroom door, shocked by what I'm seeing.

The towels stopped the gushing, which I wished I captured in a photo, but you can see the water still coming out of the toilet and this is towards the end of the 45 minutes.

      Water is like a geyser shooting out of the toilet, with debris of toilet paper and branches and who knows what else, (I don't really want to know). The shower is overflowing, and the floor is already covered in an inch of water and it's quickly flowing into the other parts of the downstairs.

     “Get your Dad.” I holler at her, not sure what to do. This is more than a blocked sewer pipe out to the main sewer line.

Gross

      The next few minutes pass in a hurried blur of shouting at each other as Hero Hottie comes rushing down the stairs and realizes we can't do anything to stop it.

     The older girls and I start to grab things off the floor before the water can reach it and throw them onto top of beds and counter tops, trying to save as much as we can. From the photos you can see we couldn't save everything.

     And for 45 minutes we watched as water kept pumping into our house, ruining half our house.            

      Destroying the girls' bedrooms, the downstairs bathroom, the living room. Inches and inches of sewer water flowed everywhere.

     The cause: The construction company up the street had busted a water main, causing sewer to back up into six different homes on the blocks. Our house was hit the worse. But all the houses would need new flooring.

     We sent the girls' over to Grandma's so they could clean up and get the sewer water off their bodies. The upstairs was contaminated by our footsteps.

     My house was a bio hazard.

What's this brown stuff?

     Gross. Totally gross and just a little – no, completely gross.

     Sewer water. People's poo. Covering my girls' bed. My couch. My Blueberry's toys. I wanted to cry. And scream.

    Hero Hottie was upset. He marched down the street, still in bare feet because he didn't want to put sewer water covered feet in his shoes and started demanding answers.

   Mostly who is fixing this and they better start right now.

   Hero Hottie and I are pretty easy going people. Except when a company pumps sewer water into our home for 45 minutes and RUINS our house. Then we're a little bit more demanding.

   Which was a good thing. Because within a couple of hours, the construction company had professional cleaners, Stanley Steemers, at the house, decontaminating the floor so we could safety walk through and grab our personal items that were savable.

Clothes, baby potty, Abu's retainer and waterpik all totally gross and ruined

   

Blueberry's toys completely ruined. You can't clean those toys enough. Not for this Momma.

Who wants toast?

Sorry Gibson, it got your dog food too.

    In the last few days, the company has taken the flooring out of Abu's room, ran 13 giants fans to dry the sheet rock, tore out most of the bathroom, and spray all kinds of germ killing chemicals into cracks and around edges of walls.

   Bean and I have spent the last four days, not doing schoolwork as planned, but sorting through the damaged items, making an inventory with photos, and then finding the replacement price of the item on the Internet. That way they can see how much damage they did, at least the monetary side of it.

   They can't replace the sack of letters I had from loved ones who have already moved on, and they can't replace the box of teenage memories, the photos that Bean looked at and said, “Wow, Mom you were pretty when you were a teenager.”

   “Thanks.” I said sarcastically.

   “No, I just meant...you're pretty now too. It's just, you didn't have wrinkles.”

   “Just stop talking.” I said. 

It's just stuff. But it was the stuff I used to take care of my family.

These are the things that can't be replaced.

And you want to know the irony of this? We are in the process of fixing up our upstairs shower, so this was our only working shower. Guess what kids? We're all taking showers in the kitchen sink. Or with the garden hoses out back. It's only a little cold outside this time of year. Brrr.

These giants fans, 13 of them, run for 72 hours to help dry everything. There is a constant hum upstairs and the cove heaters are turned up to 90 to heat things up. The smell upstairs is stomach turning. Damp, and hot and coying.

    They can't replace the container of dance costumes I had been keeping from all the girls' dance recitals since they were five and tiny and just my little girls. And they can't replace a Blue Blankie that was Abu's security blanket, especially when I was sick. She carried that thing everywhere, quietly watching me, wondering if Momma was ever going to get better.

    The couch, the beds, even the toys are replaceable. We won't get new price for it, but as long as we get enough, Hero Hottie and I can rebuild the downstairs and give the girls' their rooms back.

    But in the meantime, my mother-in-law is kindly doing all our laundry since my washer and dryer is off limits until they have been decontaminated. We have been staying at my in-laws' house too, until we can buy another mattress and set up three girls in the tiniest room in our house.

    

     A teenager and a toddler in one room. What could go wrong?

   When Blueberry finally saw our house, her bottom lip quivers, her eyes filling with moisture and she whispers. “House broken.”

     Yes, little sweetie, our house is broken.

     So in a way I have been granted my wish. We packed up part of our house and MOVED it to the garage. And we're redoing our entire downstairs. And I'm having a grand adventure of the character building sort.

     Blah, character building adventures are for literary novels. I wanted sun, sand and fun. I swear, one of these days, I just going to move to New Zealand. Their website says they're the happiest place on the Earth. I'm assuming after Disneyland, of course. 

Some beach in New Zealand, works for me- I'm not picky