chores, collision, chaos and calm

for what it's worth, i'm an alliterative whore. land of the lost had initial appeal due to it having a lotta lovely l's.

chores: spent the morning running errands with daughter. wife is selling her memory boards at a craft show, so we crossed a few things off our to do list together. this took me past our old street and i drove down it. pretty uneventful until i hit the top of the street. or rather, i hit a truck at the top of the street.

collision: the top of our street dumps out onto a main traffic artery. within the better part of four years i developed an impressive ability to piss people off by being pretty aggressive about getting out of and into my street. well, in a split second where i assumed the pickup in front of me was headed ALL the way out into traffic, he stopped short. our van stopped too, after connecting with his truck.

daughter was a-ok. dad was instant adrenaline. climbed out of the car, after applying the hazards. driver does the same, we examine his truck—a beefy pickup. seemingly no damage. same goes for family van.

"i guess we should exchange information," i suggest. "yeah, i should probably have it checked out," he notes. i'm thinking...if it looks ok, it probably IS ok?! he's deadpan. not concerned, but not convinced all is well. we exchange info and we go our separate ways. i ease into traffic and head to our next stop on the errand trail. then the whole thing hits me at once.

chaos: the wreck goes through my head again. it turns out, the first thing out of my mouth was, "sorry about that." my lawyer dad always instructed me to be polite, but to do nothing more than exchange information. and no matter what, do not claim responsibility or innocence. this gets me rethinking everything and, of course, analyzing what COULD happen...doctor's bill, new bumper, insurance issues. oh wait, no report was filed with the police. would insurance cover it? and on, and on, deeper into the pit of negativity i seemingly dive into whenever something like this happens.

i call wife and am clearly upset. she tells me not to drive anywhere until i am ok. i am not ok. even daughter can tell this.

we complete the next errand at the library...returning confederacy of dunces and checking out the prayer of owen meany. i pray to my higher power. i am thankful nothing worse happened and pray that the man is honest. i pray that if something did happen, it will be something we can manage. this makes sense as serenity returns to my shaken self.

calm: a few more errands and i meet my mom and two nieces for lunch. i suggest eating at stone's, a diner my family frequented while i was growing up. mom nixes this, the owner snubbed her the last time she was in there— lord only knows when this occured. i suggest the next diner up the street as i am jonesing for the safety and comfort of greasy-spoon food. it used to be called the Harrison Grill. it is now the Harrison Egg Grill. nieces are intrigued to be eating somewhere they've driven by a million times.

my family has eaten there however. when i was in grade school, we would go there after midnight mass. this was typically during the holidays when we would rather stay up late on saturday to hit church, then grab breakfast in the wee hours and stay in on sunday. my dad was a nightowl and until having daughter, i pretty much was too.

realizing how young i was and how late we must have stayed up amazes me in retrospect. eating there again kicked the calm up another notch as daughter stuffed herself with fried potatoes and turkey from my california club. it was a good visit with my mom and nieces, ages 12 and 8.

now daughter sleeps. and i am thankful nothing worse happened as a result of that collision. bills can be paid. it'll figure itself out. my shrink will be proud.