Not Our Normal Grocery Run

On Monday the boys and I were headed to HyVee for our usual Monday morning grocery run. It was about 10 a.m., and we had just passed the elementary school I used to teach at, about a mile south of our house. I realized that there was a car stopped ahead of me waiting to turn, and I hit the brakes a little suddenly, as I was coming up on the car a bit quickly. I stopped, and Zach asked, "What happened?" I said, "Well, the truck in front of us is turning, and I didn't notice it at first, so I had to hit the brakes sort of suddenly." Zach said, "Oh."

WHAM!!

And my hat flew off my head (I think) and there was a blaring horn and I realized we had been rear-ended. "Oh my gosh!" I said, and Zach asked, "What was that?" and Drew started crying. "We just got in an accident," I told Zach. "Are you guys ok?" Boy, I felt shaky. The next few minutes are sort of a blur in my mind. I think I turned off the car and got out. I remember watching the truck that I hit pull and and then back up. I saw the driver that hit us get out of her car, and the man I hit asked me if I was ok and if I'd called 911 yet. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, so I hadn't called anybody. The lady that his us, Vanessa was her name, her horn just kept blaring and blaring, which was very unnerving. Thankfully, Bill, whose truck our van was pushed into, was somehow able to disable the horn to stop the awful noise. I think the impact and the noise startled Drew, because he didn't cry for long. After a while the police got there and took all of our information. The boys waited very patiently in the car for a while, and finally I got them out.

Here you can see some of the damage. I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures, I'm realizing.

This is the damage to the front of my car from hitting the truck in front of me. I also broke the front headlight on the left side.

This is the truck I hit. You can see that his lovely trailer hitch punched that nice hole in my front bumper. He had minimal damage.

This is a close-up of the Chevy Monte Carlo that hit me. I was sitting still, and I don't know how fast she was going, but fast enough that both of her airbags deployed and her sunroof, which was closed, popped open.

Front of her car; back of mine.

Back of my car.

The police officer that did the accident report wrote down that the truck had sustained approximately $1500 worth of damage, my Chrysler Town and Country had sustained approximately $2000 worth of damage, and that the Monte Carlo had sustained approximately $3000 worth of damage. I don't know what that guy was thinking, but he's obviously not very good at estimating damage. The dealership called Mike today to say that using used parts, my car would cost about $7700 to fix. Just a smidge over $2000, huh? I had figured this would be the case when I realized that I couldn't fold down the back seat anymore. Mike hasn't given me the full run-down as of yet, but it sounds like the A/C and radiator are both broken, the frame is bent, and all sorts of other stuff. This is definitely a time when I'm grateful we had a minivan and we had all that space between the back of the car and the boys in their seats. I can only imagine how they'd be feeling if we'd been in our old Passat or something. Of course, the rental car company gave us a tiny rental, so Mike's driving that for a few days while I drive the Buick, and hopefully we'll figure out what we're going to do about our car soon. We're not sure if we even want to get it fixed and then drive around a car that's had all that damage. It will be worth a lot less for resale now that it's so messed up.

A couple of good things did come out of the accident, though, if you ask Zach. First, the officer gave the boys each a coupon for a free Frosty from Wendy's. Second, we stuck around long enough to watch the tow truck get the Monte Carlo hooked up and taken off towards wherever it was going. And I was glad we got hit on the way to the grocery store, instead of on the way home. It would have been a real bummer to have our cold groceries getting warm and ruined as we sat there. Plus, Zach enjoyed telling the man at the meat counter at HyVee all about the excitement.

The day didn't get much less exciting, unfortunately. I left the boys home with Grandma Linda and met Mike at Farrell's, where we work out, at about 5:30. As I got back into my car at 6:30, Linda called to say Zach wasn't feeling well and that he'd complained about his head and neck hurting. When we got home he was asleep on the couch, and when I took his temp, it was a whopping 104.6 degrees! I quickly called the pediatrician on call, who happens to be a friend of ours from college. He called back and gave me some tips on how to check for possible meningitis and what to do. So after a cool bath, some children's Motrin (which Mike had to go buy, because we didn't have anything but infant Tylenol- Zach probably hasn't had any pain relievers since he was an infant!), and some crackers and cheese, Zach seemed a bit better. His temp. was all over the place over the next 12 hours. It would go down to 99 or 100 shortly after getting a new dose of Motrin, but a few hours later it'd be back up to 102 or 103. We ended up going to see the doctor on Tuesday morning, and Zach got his throat swabbed and his finger pricked. White blood cell count wasn't too bad, step test was negative, so Adam (or Dr. Secory, as I should say), was pretty certain it was just Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, especially given the sores in the back of Zach's mouth. Zach was scared but brave through the whole thing, and when I told him he'd be getting his finger pricked, I promised that later on we could go take advantage of those free Frosty coupons. Anyway, we went back today for a recheck, and it seems things are on the mend. Zach's throat still hurts some, but his fever seems to be gone, and we ended up not doing another WBC count, which made Zach happy. And the boys were very happy to go to Wendy's last night for a Frosty. We ended up getting just one and splitting it between 2 cups.

So it's been a busy week, and it's only Wednesday. I hope the rest of the week isn't nearly as interesting!