What a Day

You know the old saying, when it rains, it pours.
I've had one of those days.
First, I wore myself out getting the basement ready for carpet yesterday.

According to my Fitbit, I walked the equivalent of more than 12 miles and 36 staircases.

When I got home from work, I started by sweeping the entire basement with a broom.
Then I vacuumed it with a shop vac. That entailed either bending over from the waist or squatting. Both were excellent exercises if I weren't so exhausted.
After that, I swept it with a broom again to remove any remaining pebbles or dust. .
Next, I taped off the baseboard and painted the walls of the stairwell a pale blue gray.
And finally, I painted the walls of the basement, leaving them a  grayish-green, which feels fairly neutral.
My husband painted all the ceilings, in the stairwell and the basement, plus the baseboards.
He finished up this morning before heading to work.

We had taken the old rugs that were downstairs and thrown them in the garage. I wanted the carpet guys to take them away today. As I opened the garage door, they kind of collapsed out onto the driveway.
I pulled forward and back to avoid them and then headed on my way.
As I drove, I noticed a strange sound, like pebbles hitting the bottom of the car, the sound you hear when you drive over freshly paved asphalt.
A couple of people beeped, but it was rush hour.
My drive is only about four miles, but as I continued, I wondered if I might have driven over the padding that went under the rugs.

This is one of the rugs and the padding before we moved them to the garage. 

As I pulled into the parking lot, a young man pulled up beside me.
"You have something stuck under your car," he said.
He pointed at the front of the car and I saw that an entire room-sized rug was wedged under the front of the car. Not the padding as I had suspected. A fat tan rug.
"Do you smell that it is getting hot?" he asked, and I agreed that the rug was doing some sort of damage to the car.
He squatted down and tugged at the carpet. "Reverse," he suggested. So I did and he tugged it free.
"What should we do with it?" he asked. He assumed that I had run over it on the road, and I did not tell him the truth.
"I'll call Public Safety," I told him. And I did, telling them where in the parking lot to find it. Again, not admitting that it had come from my house.
Shaken from my experience, I taught for an hour and then my wrist started buzzing. I have a Fitbit that buzzes when I get a phone call.
I didn't recognize the number so didn't worry about it too much. Then a text came.
"Mom, it's Spencer. I was in an accident. I'm okay but I need our insurance information."
His phone was dead so he was using the phone of the woman he rear-ended.
His Volkswagen Passat hydroplaned as he tried to stop, and he hit the back of her car. He might have been fine physically, but he was pretty upset.
Car accidents are emotionally devastating. I tried to reassure him that it was just an accident and we had insurance. Everything would be okay.
I skipped my next class and drove through the rain to the accident scene where Spence sat in the car with the crumpled front end, the airbags hanging like deflated balloons. A police officer sat behind him with his lights flashing as cars whizzed past moving at 70 or 80 miles per hour.

We were lucky he wasn't hurt. He banged his knee against the console and his ears rang for hours from the impact of the airbags.
The tow truck arrived shortly after I got there and I took Spence home. He didn't think he could face work today.
I went back to teach, but ended my last class early because I was too muddled to continue.
Now the carpet guys are here making a comfortable walking surface over that dust free floor downstairs.
I just have to wait for my husband to check my car to make sure I didn't permanently damage anything when I drove the carpet to work. Then he is headed up to the auto body shop to remove all of our belongings from Spencer's totaled car.
Tomorrow is enough time to begin the process of looking for a replacement car for Spencer.
What a day. :(

Another Chance

Yesterday, I wrote about the challenges I face while raising my sometimes stubborn and emotional 19-year-old, but earlier in the week I had been reminded that the two of us have more opportunities to work out our relationship.
On Thursday, my husband called from the newspaper and asked if I remembered a boy named Chase. I did. He ran track with Tucker, and we had been at some parties with his parents.
The boy died in a car accident the night before.
He was 19, going to college, running his own lawn care business during the summer, and he crashed on a curve in the country near his college campus. Not wearing a seat belt, he was thrown from the car and died on the scene.
As I ran the next morning early, I passed the boy's house, and I wondered if his parents were awake. Then I wondered if they'd slept. How could you possibly sleep if suddenly you son was dead?
I knew that they must have been awakened by the police the night before since the accident was at 1 a.m. The police would have known the boy's identity and notified his parents.
As I continued to run, I remembered the feeling when my own 18-year-old sister had died. That feeling that it must be a mistake, that she would walk through the door again any minute. That feeling continued for weeks afterward -- the anticipation that she'd be home.
And I also remembered waking the morning after with the sun sparkling in through the window and feeling happy, until, like a brick hitting me in the chest, the realization came that my sister had died.
There's a moment, just after waking, when it feels like everything might be okay, until the memory flashes the tragedy and it all comes back.
I didn't know Chase well enough to go to his funeral, but I'll be thinking of his family, and being  a little more gentle with my own kids.
We're so lucky to have them alive and in one piece. If we've had a fight or said hasty words, we have another chance to smooth it over.
No matter what path they've chosen, they're alive and at least we have another chance.