Shane is here!

Our son is born!  He's healthy, and looks great. I was an ugly baby, so he obviously takes after his mother (and he has the dark hair to prove it!). I cannot describe how happy I am to be a father...partly because it still feels surreal to me. I look at Shane and it's hard to believe he's mine. Oh, he's got my chin, but it's still going to take time to sink in. I'm really happy and looking forward to being a father.


If the beginning of the last post didn't make it obvious, it was a rough delivery. Carrie was in labor for 11 hours, but never dilated more than 1 cm. The doctors said that it was a sign the baby was too big and Mother Nature was trying to tell us that the baby was going to need to come out another way: Cesarean style. It wasn't what we'd hoped for, but I have to give the hospital credit for how quickly they acted. Our doctor made the decision, left the room, and within a couple of minutes I was handed a set of scrubs, and a few minutes after that we were out the door and down the hall.

If that was all that we had to deal with, it wouldn't have been such a bad experience. However, Carrie's epidural failed. Hours into the process, Carrie decided to go the epidural route. It didn't work. We found it out the hard way when several procedures that should have been painless made Carrie miserable (and I learned a new vocabulary term: sacral sparing). The second epidural looked like it was doing its job correctly until they put Carrie on the operating table. The needle moved, hit a blood vessel, and the catheter filled with blood. Poor Carrie started to feel a lot of pain. They tried dumping more meds into her system, but she cried out because she could feel what was happening to her. At this point, they told me "you have to go outside" and dumped Carrie under general anesthesia. I like to think I'm a brave man, and I can count the times I've teared up in the past years on one finger (once). It's really scary worrying that you may lose both wife and child. When I heard Shane cry out and they dropped him in my hands I did tear up. It was one of those odd moments where it felt like my mind and body weren't on the same page. I was thinking one thing, and my eyes were thinking something else. When Carrie started to wake up from her drug-induced sleep, she was annoyed because she's never gotten to see me cry before.

Rough story, but it doesn't end there either. When Carrie started to become more lucid, she was in a lot of pain. The narcotics in her IV (the good stuff) weren't cutting it, and the anesthesiologists kept upping the doses. Eventually, they started using a key to unlock the safety procedures on the little toy pumping the medicine into my wife. Shane was born at 8 PM, and we didn't end up getting out of the recovery room and settled in our new room until midnight. Then, the pain meds ran out and the dispenser started beeping incessantly until it got examined and changed out. Sleep for me came around 1 AM. At 5 AM, the nurses came in with Shane for some bonding time with Mommy and I found out Carrie had been unable to sleep for the second night in a row. She was in pain, sleep deprived, and becoming more and more distressed (especially when there was an hour gap in the refilling of her pain meds). The situation didn't get better until Carrie was given a shot of some sort of intramuscular shot of a different pain reliever. Around noon, she was able to sleep for about three hours and things have been much better since then. We've seen Shane, the parents saw Shane, and Carrie is now on Percocet which is proving much more effective.  I've heard my wife crying and sobbing more than I ever wanted to in the past 36 hours. It leaves you feeling helpless, because there's nothing absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

Even with all of the difficulties, both mother and child are healthy and in no danger. It's amazing, and I can't help but feel so grateful. Carrie was able to get up out of bed when the nurses made her, and she's been acting like she feels much much better. Thank you to everyone who was praying for us. I started making calls to people when I could, and I'll be making more calls tomorrow. Thank you to the nurses who were patient and very helpful. Debbie, Audrey, and Munja all stick out as being exceptional. Thank you God for giving me a happily sleeping son!

All right. Memory preserved and I want to try and get a couple of hours of sleep before they bring in Shane for the next feeding. Good night to all, and to all a good night.

Still waiting on Shane....

It's been a long day and we're not there yet. Carrie and I woke up at 7 AM. I say "woke up," but Carrie apparently never fully fell asleep. I was a lot better off, but the couch "made-of-what-feels-like-wood-boards" wasn't very helpful.

The day started off with an Oxytocin drip for Carrie. She's been hooked up to what I've been calling her "portable Christmas tree" ever since. Our nurse, Debbie, has been excellent. Very friendly, and always positive. The day has been far from easy, though. I think both Carrie and I went into this thinking that an induction would be much quicker than going into labor normally. The average labor time is 12 hours (I think), and somewhere in my brain I was expecting to be holding my son around the time school normally lets out for me. Instead, it's 7PM at night and we're no further along than when we started.

For the first four hours or so,Carrie resisted asking for pain meds. When she gave in to getting an epidural, it was with the thought that she could relax and maybe even sleep. So began the problems. The position of leaning forward to get the epidural was very painful for Carrie. When it went in,


time out for c-section.

Everything is going to change...

I'm not as nervous as I thought I'd be. It's not that I'm not nervous, it's just that I don't feel a crushing weight or anything like that. I suppose that's because largely I'm a spectator here. Carrie's the one feeling the pressure. My job is going to be moral support for Carrie and acting as calm and collected as possible for her sake.

We checked into the hospital just before 8 PM. Carrie dropped herself off at the emergency room (she wanted to drive) and then I drove off to hunt for parking. We signed in, and we've been parked in the room ever since. The hospital has done it's best to make what's clearly a hospital room look homier (if that's a word). There's cabinets, a rocking chair, and even a (fake?) wooden headboard attached to the hospital bed. If it wasn't for all of the high-tech monitoring equipment, baby care station, and hospital bed they may have even pulled it off. We've spent the last three hours talking to the nurse, setting up monitoring, medicine, and drawing blood (Carrie's least favorite part). The Ravens - Steelers game has been going on in the background since 8:45 or so. It's been a great time-killer, and I've been making sure to keep Carrie updated on her fantasy stats. Hopefully the sleeping pill will take effect soon for Carrie. It's after 11 PM now, and I think they said they were going to give us a 6 AM wake-up call.

I've spent a lot of this weekend thinking about how different life is going to become. There will be no more "give me five minutes to see if this game finishes" or "I'll just sleep in/roll over/hit the snooze button and get up later." The world is going to shift from Mike-time to baby-time. I got a sneak peek at what that feels like when I shifted to married-time, but baby-time is going to take things to a whole new level. I don't know what sort of sleep pattern Shane (and therefore Carrie and I) is going to have, so I don't know how many extended activities will be possible. While folding and putting away baby clothes today, I decided that I should try and write a journal of every day. Nothing big, but maybe just something I can show to Shane later or to keep people informed. I don't want anyone to feel left out. There's just so many people to call, and supporting Carrie takes up most of my time. I'm writing this in the dark as she's trying to sleep. It's too dark to read any of the parenting books I brought with me (last minute cramming), so I think I'm going to try and get some sleep for tomorrow. After all, who knows when I'll get another chance for six glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep?

Two days until BBDay

Two days until "Baby Birthday" and counting.

I'm going to be off work for the next 8 weeks or so thanks to FMLA leave. I have the sick leave saved up so that I'll be paid throughout (nice!), but I'm still worried that my classroom is going to explode while I'm gone. Logic tells me that it won't, and maybe it's just pride that makes me think I'm that integral to how things work, but the feeling remains. I stayed late Thursday and Friday trying to make sure everything was ready. I know I forgot things, and I hope Mrs. Mitchell will be able to improvise. One of my students has been DREADING her impending arrival. He even wrote down "Mrs. Mitchell" for the answer to his bonus question on a quiz yesterday. The Question? "When does the nucleus disappear and when does it reappear in mitosis?' Clearly, his mind was on other things!

Last night, I couldn't really focus on much. I watched some TV and played some games (lost), but I kept thinking about BBday. I think a lot of it was also just worrying about my classroom/job. Today, we slept way in (later than I wanted, but Carrie sleeps better if I hang around), and we've done a ton of work since. Hours and hours of laundry, cleaning, cat pots, and trying to make sure that the house will survive on its own for a few days and be ready for us when we return with Shane in tow.

My wife has decided to hover over my shoulder at the moment. She's been trying to entice me to watch SG-1 while I've been writing this. First, she started singing the song, then she prepped the PS3 and has been watching the back of my head, and now she's hovering behind me. Do you think she's looking forward to it?  Thankfully, I happen to love SG-1 as well, so I'm off for now!

Induction is scheduled

Carrie's induction is scheduled. If the baby doesn't show up this week, we report to the hospital at 8 PM Sunday  to overnight and start in the morning. I'd wanted to write, but I've had a hugely hard time focusing lately. The baby is near.

I'm really looking forward to being a father.

The future?

Today I got videotaped in my classroom for a little bit. Well, I was in a video at least. One of the students in my classroom is involved in a pilot program involving an iTouch. Someone came in to videotape him using his iTouch. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but it really is a useful piece of technology. One of my coworkers showed me an app on her iPhone that simulated all of the phases of mitosis a couple of day ago. You had to pinch the membranes together to activate cytokineses and pull the chromosomes away in anaphase. It makes learning large vocabulary words a heck of a lot more interesting than it normally is.

It's amazing to me the rate at which technology is spreading for better or worse. There's a lot of really awesome application that even I can think of. Look at my student's iTouch. It allows him to communicate when he otherwise would have difficulty. If we hooked it up to the internet, it could be a study aide or even turn boring lessons into something more interactive. Who knows? Maybe we'll have classroom sets of iPads or iTouches in the future instead of laptops! I was psyched today reading about a contest designing moonbases for the year 2069. I want to be alive when that happens!

Information used to be a difficult to obtain resource. What you could learn and recall was a huge part of your education (and it still is). Nowadays, it seems like it's more useful to teach how to find knowledge or interpret what you find rather than teach knowledge itself. Why teach the kids what the population of the United States is when a simple Google search will give them an exact number? Google is on their phones and with the way technology is going, it may even be imprinted on their brains one day (there's an app for that!).

I'm not going to harp on the downsides, but they are there. An innocent Google search can lead to a gut-churning porn site or virus with a simple misclick. Misinformation abounds; tact and moderation are hard to find commodities. People have become so used to easy information that when it's not available they go with the quickest answer they come up with (see "missile launch in CA"). Bullying used to be escapable, but now it can find kids wherever the internet beckons. Every day, I have to listen to kids talk about friending strangers on Facebook as they walk down the hallways. I'm glad all of these tools are going to be available to Shane when he's older. I'm not sure how I'm going to teach him how to avoid all of the disadvantages of the technology, but it is something I've thought about more lately.  You know...seeing as I'm going to be a father sometime in the next few weeks if everything goes as planned (fingers crossed and praying).

I haven't posted anything for a few days, so I wanted to post something real quick but it all boils down to me thinking about my impending fatherhood. It's something I'm thinking about more and more with the due date coming up December 12th.  The doctors said Shane may come early so that's even more to think on. I just hope the kid waits until after next week. There's only 2.5 workdays and I'd rather not have to make up an easy workweek. Plus, I'm going to a Penn State game at FedEx field this weekend with my father-in-law, his brother, and my cousin-in-law. I'm a Cornhuskers fan myself, but it will be neat to see FedEx field in person for once. The Redskins won't even be losing in it!

Daylight Savings

Daylight savings tonight. I've always loved being gifted an hour. Giving it back in the spring sucks, but that's something I'll worry about then instead of now.

Monday marks week 35 of Carrie's pregnancy. We started off the day by going to Home Depot and spent most of it doing cleaning and work on the house (the excitement of married life, no?). I won't bore you with details of painting and trying to put cardboard under door hinges to make them close easier. Instead, I'll tell a short story about moulding.

For those of you not in the know (as I wasn't before owning a house), moulding is a strip of something that runs between two surfaces. Usually, it's where the walls meet the floor or the ceiling. Look around your own home and who knows? Maybe you have some, too.  Anyway, the moulding I'm going to mention is a beveled strip of wood mounted where the top of the walls meet the ceiling in our soon-to-be-born baby's room. It's also a cracked, nail-pitted, chipped paint piece of an eyesore that somehow manages to bend and warp so it doesn't touch the ceiling and/or the wall in some places. We could replace it, but that's a lot more work than just trying to spruce it up. Carrie had already repainted the walls of the room and was working on the trim, so she decided to caulk the gaps and some of the nail wholes. Then she started to slap on a fresh layer of paint. A fresh layer of paint that started to bead and refuse to stick to caulk. Whoops. Silicone is apparently a "no paint on me" surface unless you happen to buy the special "I'll let you paint on me" variety. My first thought was to scrape out some of the caulk (which would've been a lot of work), but that got nixed due to our stucco ceiling. Home Depot didn't offer us many options either. The man behind the counter just winced. His advice: "think outside the box." Our solution: masking tape!  We bought a big roll of tape, and while I was trying to fix doors, Carrie smoothed tape across the moulding and painted it. The wet tape bubbled slightly, but it turned out to look a lot better than we'd hoped. You can't even see the cracks anymore! They're covered with tape! That moulding has probably never been stuck up there better than now. I'll probably have to replace it one day, but at least the baby's room is ready.

No writing productivity to report. I've written an outline for a couple of stories, but no words are penned yet. I had to take work off on Monday for a contractor so I'll try to do more then. Today, I tried to help Bill break his League of Legends losing streak. We failed. The streak goes on.  Yesterday, I played a game as Gargas that went pretty badly as well. His ultimate is to throw an explosive barrel that knocks enemies out of its radius. I had pretty poor timing on several throws which caused a chorus of "I hate you, Mike"s over vent. In retrospect, it's pretty funny. It'd have been even funnier if I'd been doing it on purpose. I could have pushed enemies into retreating teammates for laughs, but hindsight is 20/20. I think I'll just stick to my usual fare.

Saturday, October 23rd

Today was the baby shower for my firstborn, Shane Malcom. Granted, he hasn't been born yet, but it's still something to look forward to! The reasons for the name were simple.

1) The name should sound like it's spelled.

2) The name shouldn't have some weird pronunciation that everyone is going to butcher the kids whole life.

3) It should not rhyme with his last name (though it's acceptable for a girl). For ex: Shane Wayne is a no-go.

4) It shouldn't be hard to spell. Let the kid have an easy kindergarten and first grade.

5) Carrie and I wanted something Irish/Scottish sounding that wasn't typical american. I like being a mike, but I have so many friends with the same name we just call each other by our last names.

6) No family names. There was no sense to pick one side over the other. Let the kid make his own name.

Honestly, I'm still partial to Finnegan, but that's more something you give a kid as a middle name. It's the kind of name that a person with a personality will dominate and make the best of....or it's the kind of name that could make someone the target of ridicule the rest of their lives. That's why it's best as a middle name where if it's not a fit for the kid it would remain 'secret.'  I don't know half of my friend's middle names or I just tend to forget them if I don't dredge my memory for them!

Anyway, there was a bit of drama today. Carrie had a panic attack, and she spent the entire baby shower upstairs in the room we stayed at when we lived with my parents. We were late getting there and it was a boatload of stress, but I'm still glad I got to see everybody. The day was filled with work until around 6. Upon waking there was lots of cleaning, followed by house maintenance, diplomacy, the baby shower (fun), and then back home for cutting the bottoms off doors so that they can swing free. When the plumber finally came to install the new toilet, I was cleaning up and dragging in gifts from the baby shower. He was taking his time, so I dug out the shovel to cover the 'skunk hole' in our front yard. On an odd note: the plumber asked for a little extra cash after he was done because of needing to replace a broken flange. When I started to look for my check book he started saying "nevermind, nevermind." I gave him the five bucks I had in my wallets (minus the 2-dollar bill), and he sped away. It's like he was seeking a bribe of some sort.  

The sad thing is, youtube taught me exactly how to do the whole install a month ago. I watched part of the process and it's definitely something I could've done myself. Oh well. You live and you learn, and frankly I was exhausted at that point. Tomorrow, I plan to write! I have a "surprise" IEP meeting that I almost wasn't told about that I need to have a draft for. Plus, there's that whole "I want to write a book" thing.

I'll just have to wait and see how much I get done. Back to watching Big Trouble in Little China.

Sunday, October 17th

Not much writing productivity to report lately. The only writing I've been good about lately is the filling out of forms for work, posting on the journal, and the occasional vent log that gets deleted instead of posted. As of this Friday, there's a brand new time-killer: Puzzle Quest 2. Carrie and I are both addicted.

After I write this, I'm going to sit down and force myself to do some writing. During the work week, I work, come home, clean and take care of Carrie. In between, we watch an episode or two of SG-1, and I may have time to play a LoL game with the boys online. The weekend is when I should be writing. I had the opportunity to write before Igor's party yesterday, but I've totally binged on Puzzle Quest 2.

Right now, Carrie is bouncing and shouting on the couch about how excited she is about a new spell. I love my wife. Plus, since she's playing puzzle quest, I can't! Time to write.

Moving along...

Things are moving along. It's been tough lately, but we'll get there yet. I'll be thrilled to finally see Shane and I know Carrie will be thrilled to be on track for her body getting back to normal.

Lately, we've been doing a lot of work on the house. The in-laws surprised me last week with beginning an onslaught of home improvement. My father-in-law and I have so far replaced four of the interior doors, and only a closet door and two bathroom doors remain on the docket. Also, to take advantage of the 30% tax rebate and prevent the extra $100s our winter heating bills cost, we have contractors scheduled to give us a new front and back door (the front door is the one I ended up basically laying on as we drove it home).  I sold my old car to my sister, so that's going to cover the cost of both of the doors. It should pay off in the long run and make the house warmer for the baby without breaking the budget.

I thought this article was pretty interesting. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-13/tech/apple.sexting.patent_1_text-messages-sexting-apple?_s=PM:TECH  It's not so much the "no sexting" as the parents enforcing grammar and practicing foreign languages on their kids phones I thought was hilarious.

So, my wife is on bedrest...

In a word, last Thursday sucked for my wife.

The day before, Carrie told me that her foot was bothering her when she walked. I've heard many stories about pregnant women and swollen ankles, so I assumed it was something of a similar nature.

Nope. It was a stress fracture. I got a "I broke my foot" call at work. And that wasn't the worst of the day.

Carrie has been going through a lot of horse trauma. Chilly got starved by a leaser over the long winter, rescued, and now has Lyme disease. Throw in some angry/hurt feelings and you have a butt-load of stress for my wife. Pregnant + Lots of Stress = the beginning of pre-term labor.

At first, I didn't really believe it was happening. Carrie was only 26 weeks in. She said she felt weird, "like a large cramp from a period." We tried calling the doctor. No response. Twenty minutes later, we started driving to the hospital "just in case" and called the doctor again. I still didn't think anything was happening at this point, but I figured if it just turned out Carrie was just having a panic moment, I could easily turn around. If it was real (and it was) then we would already be on the way. I'm new to the whole parenting thing, but having a baby isn't something you want to take unnecessary risks with.

When we called the doctor again, she seemed annoyed that we were already in the car. However, when we finally did get up into triage, Carrie started having contractions every 3-5 minutes. I remember asking the nurse, Jonni (or something like that), if the blips on a machine were contractions. She replied that Carrie "had been having one for the past 30 seconds." I'm not going to relate the whole night in agonizing detail (I could write a short story on the hospital, the hunt for a wheelchair, empty nurse's stations, and attempting to draw blood from a woman who violently hates needles). Instead, I'm just going to point out that we didn't leave the hospital until after midnight. What's the first thing we do? McDonald's.

That's right, we went on a 12:30 run to the Scottish restaurant on the way home because we were starving. Go sweet tea.

I wrote up lesson plans for a sub (since I was supposed to be up in a few hours) and sent them off at 1:30 AM on the dot. Carrie had already passed out from exhaustion at that point. I closed my laptop, said a prayer, and passed out the moment my head hit the pillow. Carrie's been on bed rest ever since.

Lose on a Cruise

Carrie took off work last week and we went on a cruise we booked back in February. At the time we booked the cruise, there was no baby bouncing around in Carrie's belly. We had to get forms signed from doctors, and we just met the deadline of being able to cruise by one day. One day! And we wouldn't have even made that day if the doctors hadn't pushed Carrie's due date back by five days when we got the first ultrasound.

Everything started off wonderful. We drove down to Richmond for a night with my in-laws, hopped on plane for a quick flight and no troubles, and then set up shop in a NY hotel. That night we went to Ninja New York and had a blast. I wouldn't want to pay that much (everything is more expensive in NY) for a meal except for some other great occasion, but the food was great, the ninjas were funny, the ambiance unique, and the magician hilarious. Inger and Pat were a lot of fun and the whole night was a good couples experience. 

I have picked up a new quirk from the experience in the form of a mild fear of NY cab drivers. Wow. Affordable, quick, but if I drove like that I'd be in jail. Even when I used to speed around as a dumb teenager I never weaved that madly. Carrie was more afraid of the subways than she was of cabs, so that was the method of transportation we ended up using.

The next morning, we got to the dock early. There was no line. We checked in in around 15 minutes, Carrie pulled the pregger card, and we were on the ship within twenty minutes before most everyone else! We parked up in the buffet restaurant and watched everyone slowly mill about and load. The day proceeded well until Carrie dropped asleep at 8 PM. 

While Carrie was asleep, I went for a walk around the ship. It was starting to rock a bit in the water. I went all the way up to the top deck, but it was roped off with high wind warning signs. Now, I had carried a composition notebook up with me I was taking notes on. The wind on the deck I was on was strong enough to start tearing the top pages out of the notebook as I held it. It was impressive.

I ended up back in the room around 10 PM and Carrie woke from the last sleep she'd get. The ship was rocking a bit now, but I hopped in bed and went to sleep next to my wife around 11. From here on out, the ship really started rocking. We had a drawer that liked to slide open and shut itself, and eventually the wind was bad enough it prevented the the balcony door from sealing. The annoying rush of wind through a small leak became ubiquitous. The rocking and the wind did not stop. It went from 11 PM Monday to 6 AM Wednesday or somewhere thereabouts.

Carrie was miserable. Before the trip, she had been complaining her growing belly was making it hard for her to balance. On the trip, she didn't feel safe moving about the cabin. I had to steady her anytime she left the bed. On top of that, she started getting sea sick and there wasn't a single medicine proven safe for pregnant women that could help (the doctors and nurses all said so each time we called). Room service was crappy (they couldn't put a milk carton in a microwave), the TV played the same three movies for over 24 hours, and my wife couldn't sleep. 

Wednesday morning, we talked to the Doctor. She recommended that we get off the ship while we could. We took her advice. It was the best decision we could've made and I don't regret it in the least. Thankfully, Carrie had bought cruise insurance way back when and we're in the process of seeing what we can get refunded. The guest service desk was very helpful as well, and I'd like to say our room steward Iputu was very helpful throughout the whole ordeal (there just wasn't much he could do).

To get off the ship, we were required to schedule a flight. Basically, we had to prove we were willing to go back to the US instead of becoming illegal immigrants to Canada (not much chance of that with how cold the winters get).  Delta was quoting $670 each for a flight back to Richmond. That sounded nasty to me (even though the cruise insurance was supposed to pay it) and I thought it would be nice to have at least a day to recover in Halifax, so we called our agent: my mother-in-law. Mrs. Cassano quickly found a flight on US Air for $580 for BOTH of us and booked us at a hotel for the night. I know that the insurance would've paid for the full cost of Delta, but hopefully they'll cover the hotel room since we saved them the better part of a thousand dollars in airline tickets.

Halifax is, in a word, awesome. It was a great city to walk around. The weather was great, good food was everywhere (as was lots of beer), and I got to run up to and walk around a star fortress. Carrie took a nap at that point and I ran up and down the battlements and generally marveled at the monstrosity. I have a strong urge to pick up another Sharpe book or boot up Empire Total War again after the experience. 

Anyway, to bring a long post to the end, we hopped on a boat, got sick, hopped off, and then finally had a good time. We hopped on a plane with a pair of fresh lobsters, Bob and Marley, and flew back to Richmond to spend a couple of day decompressing with the Cassanos and cooking Bob and Marley. The names? Bob came from a T-Shirt Carrie's mom had tried to prank Carrie with that we happened to see in the lobster shop. Marley just kinda followed after. No talented musicians were harmed in the cooking process.

It wasn't the vacation we planned, but it ended up being a good story.

Carrie's Car Got hit

It was at the end of my lunch break when my cell phone rang. The number had a strange area code, and I assumed it might be another teacher calling and looking for a substitute (too bad I'm working full-time!).  I picked up up the phone fully expecting a 15 second conversation somewhere along these lines:

Caller: "Hi, I'm a teacher at.."
Me: "Hey! I'm a teaching ESY too!"
Caller: "You are?"
Me: "YEAH!"
'click.'
(I've done this before and found it amusing).

However, it was USAA. "Mr. McCruari, your wife is not hurt, but her car was hit..."

I'm glad that the conversation started with my wife not being hurt. Carrie's in her second trimester.

The lady on the line continued to tell me a little bit about what happened, and then told me she was concerned about how upset my wife was. She asked if it would be okay if I could take to her and help calm her down.

Poor Carrie, was really upset. It was a hit-and-run on our 'new' used Prius that we'd bought from her parents. At this point, my lunch break was already over, but I signaled the other IA to go ahead and take the kids to the gym without me. The USAA agent, Carrie, and I spent the next 15 minutes talking on the phone and figuring out who to take the car to and what we needed to do to get a rental.

Praise God, that they called during my lunch break. I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. Praise God again, that Carrie wasn't in the car when it happened. It's a crappy situation, but I'm thankful that it happened the way it did instead of some other way that could've been much much worse.

I called Carrie again during the students' silent reading time to check on her. She hadn't gotten home yet, but she sounded collected. Then I called again the moment I put my students on their bus, and Carrie had already taken it upon herself to contact the mechanics, drop the car off, and pick up a rental. Once Carrie gets into 'work-mode' she doesn't relent until the job gets done.

Anyway, Carrie's driving around a rental Camry and life is continuing. Hopefully, we'll see the Prius again soon.