...and then I smashed up the van.

Oh it was a glorious Saturday. We got up, we watched The Wiggles for the 600th time, commemorated that with some Eggo Waffles, cleaned up the house, walked to Dominick's for some slices, A. Meg was coming over to take the kids shopping and to dinner, I was going to go to work 4-11, Andy was going to enjoy some down time, and then SMASH!!!Into the guy in the Expedition in front of me. All good things come to an end.

Apparently, losing my cell phone was not enough for me to realize, hey slow down a bit, pay attention to what you are doing, no, I have to do $10,000 worth of damage to my sweet, innocent van. Now, I am really slow, because every part of my body is aching and it hurts to make sudden movements.

So summing it up. I was 2 minutes away from work, I was sitting at a light, annoyed that we were going to be short staffed, thinking about what task to start first, about the laundry I would have to switch when I got home that night, you know the drill, I don't need to remind you that 5,000 things run through my head in a 5 minute time frame. That's impossible you say, try me. The guy in front of me went to go, light green, I stepped on the gas, apparently the guy in front of him didn't get the memo that green means go, he stopped, I didn't, air bag coming towards my face.

I am an instant mess, oh also, in case you didn't know, I am like overly emotional. No really, I carry 10x the amount of emotion a normal woman might carry. My poor husband you say. My poor brain! My Mom Mom describes me as passionate, my husband might categorize it as annoying...occasionally.

Four men, jump out of this beast I hit, asking if I have kids in the car, I say, no and they are trying to carry me out of my van. Apparently, they are not familiar with the reaction of a woman who was in a car accident. It is the end of the world, as we know it.

The driver and his friends were more than gracious. They told the police officer exactly what happened, no cross words, 'it was an honest accident.' The one man looks at the driver and says, 'Lucky for you man, you had that hitch on the back, saved you from more damage.' We all slowly turn to look at my sad Kia,who now has a jacked up hood buckling right in the center. Yeah not so lucky for me. Yes, this lovely man, had a tow hitch on the back with a giant Harley Davidson emblem on the end. It was as if my van wasn't unlucky enough to hit the back of a giant SUV, it also git sucker punched by a giant piece of steel, right down the middle. His damage was minimal. He had it; cracked tail light, dents and scratches in his bumper and a slight dent right on the left rear corner, but clearly pale in comparison.

Then my knight shows up, and immediately hugs me before surveying the damage. He was quite valiant I must say, and took care of everything, taking me to sit in the passenger seat of the car he came in. Not one cross word, not one bit of blame, despite there being plenty to dish out. I love him dearly, most especially in times when my emotions are called for and he knows it, he is my comfort.

His friend Josh happens to own an collision shop, just the place my car needed to go, imagine that. Everything from the tow to the rental suv parked outside has been taken care of by him, and for that I am so thankful. Kendall said as we were driving home in it this morning, 'I like this car Mommy, don't crash it, ok?'

Things could have been so much worse...friends are pretty great.

So I have never been in a car accident outside of a fender bender, not even the passenger in one. So I was/am pretty shaken. The ride home tonight from my parents took 50 minutes instead of 30, due to me suffering from a severe case of nerves the entire way, not allowing myself to take any focus off the task at hand. I didn't even listen to tunes. I still can shut my eyes and see the crash, and feel it. Scary. I cannot imagine being in a crash more severe. I am terribly sore, and as the day went on today, it got worse. Of course, I pushed it, took Motrin, felt fine. I played at the park, lifted the defensive lineman of toddler football, Ethan, no less than 50 times, now I lie her with just my fingers being able to type, nothing else can move without it feeling like I worked out for the last 24 hours, and then was thrown in a boxing ring for some fun.

Josh says the van did exactly what it was to do. When I hit the brakes it did a nose dive to protect itself from extensive internal and much more costly injuries, it took a lot of the force of the crash and crushed on impact so that I wouldn't. It set off an air bag for me to hit instead of a steering wheel, even if I did actually put my arm up to block the impact of it, and am now bruised, better a forearm than a face. Much thanks to my dear Kia.I knew I loved you for reasons more than being able to get in the middle of a book throwing fight on a road trip thanks to your space.

Last evening, I got to come home and put my babies to bed, I got to snuggle with my knight, and today I got to feel the thankfulness of things being taken care of by others wiser than I.

Not so definite on all the reasons God placed me in this car accident, but I am leaning towards slowing me down a bit and reminding me that I cannot control every single thing! Oh, did I forget to mention that I also am a bit of a control freak, minor, but I am. I am thankful to him for protecting me and my family and am willing now to release a little more control back to him, baby steps...one of the many lessons I will learn from this, down.

* On a side note, I would just like to make a small suggestion to those that created the name 'air bag' to describe what comes flying out of your steering wheel when you are hit. The word air generally leads someone to think; light, perhaps even fluffy, per se. Then team it up with bag, and the driver might think, trash bag like material, again, light, fluffy. A bag made of air, how bad can it be? So you might want to change that name to: Chemically sprinkled, Turbo Air Filled-Hard Plastic Device. I suppose that might be to long, but we can abbreviate.

I am not trying to make light of the situation, but to those who have not yet had the Air Bag Experience, I feel it is my duty to let you know, it is not as comfortable as those dummies in the crash test commercials make it seem. Sure it is better then the other option, a steering wheel. But what comes at you is made of material that reminded me to the plastic you might find on an air mattress. Then you would fill that plastic up with air to almost to the point of explosion in less than a second, and what you are hitting is something that could surely leave you with abrasions. And then as if it is saying,'Poof,' out comes this cloud of something powdery, but tastes like Comet cleaner, comes spraying out. I couldn't breathe for a few seconds after this occurred.

I don't know, just an idea.