When Life Slaps You in the Face

This morning I wasn't feeling too good, so at about 5:45am I camped out in the bathroom for awhile. After that I went upstairs with the intention of doing a little work before heading to my job. I got into my email and found one from my brother Ken which changed all that.

Last night Ken and his wife Jean were driving down from Show Low to have dinner with their two daughters. Somewhere between there and Payson the roads were slushy. They had rain and sleet and snow and sleet off and on, in one spot they hit some ice and lost control, and ended up rolling twice.

My brother came out of it rather battered, but able to get out. They had to use the jaws of life to get Jean out. She didn't fare so well. They rolled in her direction, so she took the worst of it. We figure her right arm must have gotten pinned between her and the arm rest. She ended up with a compound fracture and inch or so below the elbow, both bones broken above the wrist with another piece broken off, and several cracks in her wrist and hand. On her left arm, the lobes of on of the humurous bone were sheared off. She had a chip broken out of her hip, and she smacked the back of her head pretty hard. She says she remembers the first roll, but that is all.

She had surgery this afternoon to put her right arm back together. The doctor said he wasn't even sure how they were going to do it because there were 7 sections of bone to put back together. There was a possibility that they would work on the other arm, but they said they would probably schedule a second surgery for that. We haven't heard how the surgery went yet.

DramaMama and I went over to the hospital around 10:30 and stayed for a couple hours. Ken was in pretty good spirits, and Jean was awake and talking to us.

Jean does stained glass with their own business, and had several pieces in the back of the Yukon. They got obliterated, and all of the windows in the vehicle were gone. You would think with all of that glass that they would have been sliced up, but neither of them got cut.

Apparently, they had just gotten car insurance re-instated. In fact, Ken said that about 20 minutes before the accident, their agent called and said they were covered again. Where they were, they had very limited cell service, so he called the agent and was able to say they rolled, Jean was hurt, and the call dropped. Once Ken got into Payson, after they life flighted Jean to Scottsdale, he was able to talk to the agent and get it all squared away.

THEN... Ken had to rent a car and drive for an hour and a half to get to the hospital where they took Jean. I personally think that would have sucked big time.

So all in all, they came out of it fairly well considering. The Yukon was destroyed, but it held is shape and protected them.

Oh... and it was Ken's birthday.

A Bit of a Sobering Day

Last Wednesday, we saw on the news that 4 teens were involved in a very serious accident in which one was killed. He was 15, and his 16-year-old brother was driving. The one boy that wasn't ejected was the only one wearing a seat belt.

The next day, I found out that they are the sons of one of my co-workers.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/video/?bcpid=1155316042&bclid=1155212903&bctid=1509297819

The video is labelled Fatal Crash in Gilbert.

Today I attended the memorial with several people from work. Very sad.

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There is another video on that page labeled Mesa Standoff. THis happened just down the street from us. It mentions Leisure World. This is a retirement community where my dad lives.

That day, they locked down the Bear's school. Somehow the kids learned that a bad guy with a gun was loose in the area. So naturally the Bear had a thrilling tale. According to him, the man with the gun shot him right in the back. He took the bullet out of his back and threw it at the bad guy. :) Later he came back to DramaMama and said he wasn't telling the truth... Oh REALLY?

I Have My Insurance Agent on Speed Dial!

No Joe... say it ain't so!

What could be worse than one munched car?

Type in dumb answer here: __________.

Our nice little Bonneville has become the latest victim of the Weezil clan driving school of maniacs.

To top the day off another of our goldfish died.

All involved in the accident were okay. DramaMama was, shall we say, most unhappy with the kid that pulled in front of her. Even less jolly about the cop who ticketed... HER! The Bear said it was scary.

This makes our third car in as many years to get munched. My accident was nearly three years ago, and falls off the records in April.

Clinton has now been in two auto accidents in less than a week. This time his girlfriend was with him.

I am trying to keep a positive outlook about all of this. DramaMama has a sore back, and the girlfriend bit her lip, but that is about the extent of it. Everbody walked away from it. I was at work, so I called my dad, and he went out there to help them. My sister and her husband also showed up.

My sister just came by and handed us a wad of money to cover the rental car we have parked out front.

DramaMama is online looking for a new car... because, well... WE DONT HAVE ANY MORE!

Crash, Boom, Bang, Pow!

Welcome to my morning. I was casually dejunking my house when I received a phone call from our frantic teenage new driver.

"I just hit a car!" >>hyperventilation noises<< "Are You okay?" >>More hyperventilation noises<< "Calm down. Where are you?" "I'm on Diamond, I mean Delta... no Diamond." >>hyperventilation noises<< "Calm down, are you okay?" DramaMama picked up the other phone. "What happened? Were you in an accident?" "Yes!" I got myself together (I was in my jammies) and took off. Knowing that his girlfriend lived on Delta, which by the way is only a couple blocks from our house, I hustled over there but saw nothing. I then came 1 block closer to our house to Diamond where I found them. It was a lot worse than I had imagined. My butt-ugly turquoise/green Chrysler POS... I mean LHS was inside another car's trunk. When I say inside, I mean just that. The front left corner of my car was within an inch of the bottom of the rear window. 2/3 of the front of my car was in contact with the other one. The first picture you see was snapped just as the tow truck yanked our car out. I missed the shot by about a second. My car's green life blood was draining everywhere. There were busted pieces of tail and headlights all over. Both of our airbags deployed, but from the look of our son's forehead, he headbutted the steering wheel before his blew in his face. He had a nasty goose-egg that was bleeding slightly. This next picture shows the damage to the front end of my car: As usual, the photo doesn't do it justice.

This next shot is the other car once my car had been extracted:

This came pretty close do doing it justice. The thing was pretty roughed up.

You wanna hear the real crappy news?

Less than a week ago, I made my final payment for my car. I don't even have the title yet.

Wanna hear even more crappy news?

Just yesterday, I paid nearly $400 for work done so the beast would pass the emissions test.

To add insult to injury, my registration expired a significant amount of time ago for which I received a ticket earlier this month. I had taken it in for emissions testing, but it failed. This is why I had the work done. So as the the officer was taking down the details, I told him about that, and produced the repair papers to show them that I was telling the truth.

No dice. I received a second citation for the expired plates.

Now... here's more crappy news:

Clinton was driving to an audition which he missed. My plan was that as soon as he got home, I was going to take the car back in for the emissions and then get it registered. Missed it by that much.

Now... My wife hasn't brought this up yet, but yesterday while I was at work, she called and suggested that I go get the emissions taken care of on my lunch. "Naw," I said. "I'll do it Saturday." If I had done as she said, my car would have been registered, and I wouldn't have gotten that second citation. So now I have 2 court dates. Gotta love that.

One thing though. I'm not going to miss that car. I have regretted buying it for pretty much as long as I have owned it. I traded in a beautiful Chevy Tahoe for it. Dumb stupid and not smart. The Tahoe would have flattened that car! :)