Nobody's Dead

Hi! So, I had a really crappy thing happen to me today, and I thought I'd tell you about it!

My day actually started very nicely and quite normally. I got all the monkeys and Mr. Shabby out the door, hit an on-line sale that I heard about at the bus stop and then it was time to take the dog for our regular hike through the woods.

 We are so lucky to live a five-minute walk from miles and miles of woods and hiking trails - we didn't even realize how lucky when we bought our house. It wasn't so much on our minds then, but now that our kids are bigger and we have a high-energy dog, miles of woods are a blessing. But I digress...

We had a nice *chilly* walk, and by the time I got back to the house, it was time to head over to school to pick up the little dude for his orthodontist appointment (I love to schedule my kids' appointments in the middle of the day because we can pretend we're playing hooky and go out to lunch :-}).

I picked him up and by then we were running a little late to the appointment, so instead of hunting for a spot on the street, I decided to park in the garage under the office building.  I don't really like this garage because it's very small and valet which always takes extra time and frustrates me. But it was faster than my other options, so that's what I did.

As I'm pulling into the garage, and telling my little dude that we are going to have to hustle once we park the car (little dude does not really understand the concept of "hustle" so I was trying to prep him), I hear this horrible, massive, screeching CRUNCH coming from the top of my minivan. And that's when I remember that thing that I keep forgetting to tell my husband... please take the  hamburger off the top of my van before I drive into a parking garage with it hahahahaha wouldn't that be funny. Yeah.

Yes, I did that.

So, my little dude was really upset and I did my best to reassure him -and myself- that everything was gonna be OK. And that might have worked, telling myself it was OK - even after I saw how I'd completely totaled the hamburger - if the parking attendants had been slightly more understanding, compassionate, nice, what have you. But they really weren't. They left me sitting there, at the scene, in my car for like, five minutes, wondering if anyone was ever going to come over to me or if they'd just leave me there all day, feeling extra guilty every time another car pulled up behind me. 


When they finally did show up, they barely spoke to me or acknowledged me at all when I gushed apologetically. When they finally did speak to me, after our orthodontist appointment (where I received a print-out of the fees involved with "Phase 1") it was to tell me how this was gonna go down, and what I might expect to have my insurance billed for..... sign-repair people payed by the hour, giant-expensive-garage-door repair guys who may or may not discover some horrible damage I had left in my wake. Oh yeah, and what a jarring, awful sound it had made, so he doesn't know WHAT that repair guy is going to find... yeah. I had managed to convince the little dude, but by the time we left the place, I was a bit of a wreck. 

At this point I tried repeatedly to call Mr. Shabby, because he has a very special way of making me feel oh-so-much-better in these situations. He's not a hit-the-roof kind of guy. He knows what's worth getting upset about (but I was still going to preface it with "the good news" - nobody's dead)... No luck.

I was feeling quite lousy by now, but I sucked it up and took my dude out to lunch, as promised. It was chilly and windy on the shady side of the street; I was hungry and cold and all I could think was how I couldn't wait to talk to Mr. Make-Everthing-OK. We stopped in at the cupcake shop and I hoped that they still had the secret-flavor of-the-day, which is FREE, but you have to know the secret flavor (thanks, facebook ;-}) And they DID. The dude thought it was all, like, the coolest thing, "like a secret code!" OK, things were looking up a bit.


So, with cupcakes in hand, we landed at a sunny table at our favorite burger joint. As I warmed up there in the sun, with a beautiful view of my little sweetheart, I started having a bit more fun with our lovely little lunch date. After our burgers arrived, we got into a long, involved discussion about Nerf guns. And that's when I remembered what's really important.

More soon,

oneshabbychick