Phoo…

Despite all the drama, we now have everything settled: a check from insurance, a new car, and a loan from my father. What would we do without family? It’s not a big family, but it’s a good one. We can finally take a deep breath, get back to life and work, and stop getting all worked-up about everything. I’ve got some fine tuning to finish on my recently-finished bicycle project, then I’m looking forward to a big excursion around the city with it, hopefully tomorrow. Yesterday involved just tying up a few loose ends with the car dealer, insurance, etc., and then I indulged myself and took a bike ride around the neighborhood, cut some shelves for our garden stand out of some scrap wood I found in the alley, then made some lemon orzo soup. It felt good to do good things, rather than deal with insurance people and car salesmen (two bad things; sorry folks, I’m sure your families love you, but I don’t care for your functions).

I’m also ready to get back to work in a big way. I probably would have gotten started last week, had it not been for all of this non-sense with the car, so I’ve got a whole extra week of enthusiasm and energy stored up and waiting for me to unleash it on Monday. In the meantime, I’m going to take this weekend and just relax.

Unprepared

It’s been a week and two days since my wife’s accident, in which our car was totaled. She’s still suffering some muscle pain in her neck and shoulders, but otherwise she’s fine, physically at least. It’s been an incredibly stressful week, dealing with insurance and trying to find a new car. The insurance company seems to be moving extremely slow, and I’ve had to call them repeatedly to get information they said they would call me with.

We just started looking for a new car yesterday, and have been dismayed to find that our insurance settlement is woefully inadequate. We have the rental car only until the 15th (at least that insurance will pay for), so we have to find a car before then. We’re going to have to go into some debt to buy a new car, since we weren’t planning or saving to buy a car before the accident, all because of some random woman’s mistake. Since this is our first time dealing with any of this, we feel, in a word: unprepared. Thank goodness I don’t have a 9-5 job that I have to take time from, but my wife does, and I’m not sure how we would do this if I wasn’t available at home to deal with insurance, research, and calls to/from auto dealers. How do people do this? Is anyone ever ready for shit like this to happen?

I know we’ll muddle through, but we distinctly feel like this situation is beyond our control in so many ways, and that we just don’t know how to do it. It’s a hateful feeling, and one that can’t be endured much longer.

Crash

There’s a lot going on right now, life-wise. Yesterday, my wife was involved in a car accident, caught in the middle of a chain reaction rear-end collision on the freeway. She’s suffering from some soreness today, and is probably at the doctor as I write, but we don’t think it’s anything serious. The car, however, is kind of a mess, smooshed up pretty good. We’re still waiting on the assessment of the damages, but the tow driver said he thought it was totaled. One thing about tow drivers, they don’t have anything to gain or lose by offering such opinions, and they’re usually right. We’ve got a rental now, paid for by insurance, but we have to pay the tax and the additional damage waiver, so it’s going to add up if we have to keep it too long. But, really, it could be worse, and we’re thanking the universe that it wasn’t.

In happier news, my bicycle project is nearing completion and I learned a lot from it, including how to rebuild and true a wheel, which I consider a pretty major accomplishment. I’ve taken a couple of test-rides, and it runs beautifully, so I’m quite happy about that.

My internal academic clock is also gearing me back up for a busy fall schedule of work. Even though I’m neither taking nor teaching any classes this year (still just doing dissertation and related work), my mind seems conditioned from twenty-some-odd years of schooling to start working harder ’round about mid-September every year. After a summer of feeling un-motivated and somewhat dejected about my work, I’m looking forward to getting busy again.