Welcome
to November. To begin this month of Thanksgiving & gratitude, I’ve got a
pretty big one. Last week I was involved in what was actually a major car
accident. I was driving on my merry way to work, about 6:45 in the morning,
still in the dark, along the Farm to Market road I’ve driven daily for months,
and regularly for more than a year before that, with no problems. As I rolled along at 60 mph, largely in the
dark, save for my headlights, and those of the pickup behind me, visibility was
limited, but everything seemed normal. Little
did I know that “normal” was about to blow up in my face, literally. There suddenly appeared, in my vision, a HUGE
black cow’s ass. Apparently the deer whistles on my bumper do NOT mean a thing
to cattle. I barely had time to register what it was, let alone get my foot off
the gas and to the brake, before the cow was on my hood, and my airbag was
blowing up as I slid off the roadway into the gully between the road and a
fence line. I landed between a tree and the fence. I was able to get out of the car on my own by
the time that the pickup behind me pulled over (having also hit the cow) safely
onto the shoulder, and got down into the gully to check on me. He went back up to see if he could see where
the cow was. A guy in a Cadillac stopped to see if he could help out, and was
out of his car, near it, on the fence side, rather than the street side, when I
heard another vehicle hit the cow, and saw a pickup skidding on its roof
(having knocked the cow out of the roadway), right into the back of the Cadillac,
which caused it to throw its driver right out of his shoes, farther up into the
grass, near the fence. The guy in the
upside down truck managed to get himself out of his truck, and he and another
guy came down to see if I needed help up out of the gully.
My car is
totaled,
with only liability insurance (since it was 21 years old), but I am so
very thankful that I walked away with some scrapes, bruises, a mildly scratched
cornea, and a small laceration near my hairline which required 2 staples.
The
only others transported and with undriveable
cars were truck #2, who had a small cut on his forehead and another on
his elbow; and Cadillac, who, while strapped to the backboard and the gurney,
could feel them touching his feet, move his feet, and was completely lucid, so
it seemed no spinal cord damage or obviously broken bones. Given the condition
of the vehicles, It could have been so much worse. I spent a few days with my dear friends, and
came home on Saturday night to spend a day loving on the kitties before I went
back to work on Monday.
I was
blessed with a generous gift from a cousin that provided me with a down payment
on a newer, nicer vehicle. My payments
are affordable, and my mileage is looking very close to what I was getting in
Stellaluna.
What are
YOU thankful for today?
