Thursday, November 1, 2012

Thanks & Gratitude Day 1



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?