Carrie's First Day of Work

It started with puke.

Shane's allergies have been acting up. He's been a regular snot faucet.

This morning, you could tell it had been pooling overnight. Shane coughed as I got him ready. The flavor was audible.

It must have been tangible, too. Shane coughed, swallowed wrong, and flash-urped on the floor. There was another cough, but the training potty caught round two.

I checked Shane for fever, gave him a sip of juice, and couldn't find anything wrong with him. Carrie and I swapped his socks, and continued getting ready.

Next, Shane threw up on his car seat. It was another, cough, cough, urk, blegh. One paper towel scooped up all the chunks, but Shane managed to get his jacket with the dribble this time around.

It was an auspicious way to start Carrie's first day of work!



Once we determined Shane was fine (and oddly happy) we strapped him into the car seat. Shane realized where he was going (daycare) and started bawling. "NO PLAY! NO PLAY!" I'm sure that it was heart wrenching for Carrie to hear him cry the whole way there. I called her on my way to work to see how everything went.

That's when Carrie's car got hit.

There was a strange scrunch. It was almost high-pitched, so it didn't alarm me. I thought it was curious.

"Carrie, what was that?"

No response.

"Carrie, what was that? Are you okay?"

There was a pause, then "I just got hit!"

It took a second to sink in for both of us. Carrie repeated herself "I just got hit! I'm okay, I'm okay!"

Carrie had pulled up to make a right onto the highway. She was looking for a gap to merge into when the man in the BMW behind her saw one he wanted to go for. He started to accelerate and then looked back to see my wife's car too late!

Thank God he didn't hit her hard enough to push her nose into traffic. Thank God, Shane was already unloaded! No one was hurt, but Carrie has been feeling a little stiff and sore tonight. That was my first question. My second thought was (admittedly) how are we going to fix this? The policeman estimated the damage around $3.5k. If it was just cosmetic, I'd want to pocket the repair funds since I could care less how our cars look as long as they're functional. The back light array was smashed up, though. I know Carrie will want to restore the car, so I'm sure that's what we'll end up doing. The policeman deemed the accident the man's fault (duh), but unless the insurance companies deem it 100% his fault our insurance is going to be the ones covering the damage. Carrie was hands free, but on the phone with me through the car's Bluetooth so hopefully that doesn't prevent us from getting our deductible refunded.

Thankfully, I heard back from Carrie after the accident report that she was okay and on the way to work before my students arrived. It would've been really hard to focus otherwise and it was the first day of SOL testing!

Still, a good ending trumps a bad beginning. Shane went to bed without a fuss and Carrie and I curled up on the couch to watch our Voyager episode for the night. It was part 1 of a 2 parter called Workforce. We'll get to watch part 2 after Carrie's formal fundraising dinner she was 'asked' to attend at work!