Blog Number 286

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

As I was getting ready to take the son to school this morning around 8:40 I noticed that my rear passenger tire was flat.  A few weeks ago my rear driver side one was flat, but repairable.  I borrowed the sister-in-law's rental and drove him to school but knew that the jack and the joke tire awaiting me when I returned.  I did not get a chance to get to it until early afternoon (18 minutes total replace time (I hope Jimmy Johnson is looking for pit crew help) and when I got to the tire place I found out it just needed replaced.  The tire is the original that came with the car (which is pushing 7 years old) so I guess it had a good life.  I had just replaced the front 2 tires a few months ago so I opted to replace both rear tires with the same model as was on the front of the car.  $240 later and I was good to go.  As I recall, I just spent $800 on the van last weekend and 3 days later it was totaled.  I am hoping this money invested lasts a little longer.

Picking up where I left off of in the last blog, I had arrived at the hospital where the wife was at 8:30 PM.  I went up to the trauma ward (floor 5) only to be told she was still in the emergency room so I headed back downstairs.  Some friends from church were there waiting for me (only one person was allowed to be with the wife at a time).  They double checked with the person at the desk and we found out she was on her way to her room.  I was happy not to have to spend too much time in the emergency room as the crowd there looked a little scary.  Another friend had warned me not to bring the kids since he was already at the hospital and the emergency room would be enough to scare them.  I was afraid that a fight was about to ensue between the Bloods and the Crips.  Anyway, I went back upstairs and finally saw my wife.  She looked awful.  She had a head bandage wrapped around her entire head and she was wearing a neck brace.  I was able to spend about an hour with her and fill her in on the kids conditions and try to let her in on what happened as she did not have a very good idea of the specifics of the crash.  I had to get some cash from the ATM in order to pay the $4 for hospital parking.  You paid for parking by sliding ones and fives into a machine as there was no person working the parking garage.  I bought a large coke at the McDonald's in the hospital so I would have change (standing in line between a Blood and a Crip).  The ATM hit me with a $1.50 charge as well.  All told, I spent over $3 for a coke just to get change.  When I got to the exit of the garage, they had just left the gate up so evidently there was only charges during normal hours.  Around 10 PM I left her and picked up my daughter from a friend's house.  I let the son stay at another friend's house but I did want to be alone so I selfishly picked up the daughter.  I took care of emailing everyone that I could (along with making a blog entry) and also called my insurance company to get the ball rolling.  I got to sleep around 1 AM but was woken up by my faithful cat at 5 AM.  I forgave him and got up anyway as I knew that the day ahead would be just as long and tiring as the previous one.

It took a while to get the son home, get some breakfast and get the kids to (yet another) friend's house and I did not arrive in my wife's room until 10 AM and I was able to stay until around 4 PM before leaving to fetch my kids.  The wife was living pain pill to pain pill that day and survived various specialists poking and prodding here.  Eventually she got a splint put on her left wrist and was sent down for even more x-rays.  We had hoped that she could be released but they wanted to keep her for observation since she also had a bruised lung along with concern over her neck specifically the C6 cervical vertebrae where there was a crack.  I got home around 6 and we ate some dinner that someone had made for us and then we all went to bed early and slept so deep that we missed the almost tornado like winds (we could see the damage caused as we drove the next morning).

Well that is enough for now.  The wife is still living pain pill to pain pill but the last 2 days were her best.  Her family is leaving Thursday but my mother is on the road as I type this and should be here Wednesday evening.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon