I know, I know. It's been so long since I've blogged that you probably thought I was in a ditch somewhere. Rest assured that was just the previous Friday. No ditches since then, although I am knocking on 10 different kinds of wood as I type that.
The aftermath of the car-deer murder-suicide pact (the deer was committing suicide and chose to use our car as its instrument, thus murdering the car) has been anything but fun but certainly illustrative of the joy that is our Modern Insurance Industry. You know, the one where you pay and pay and pay and the moment that you need them to pay, they find a way not to. That's not to say that the insurance company has offered us nothing, just that it feels that way when I think about having to buy a replacement car on what they're saying is fair. Or when I think about having to junk my beloved car at all.
I have always developed sentimental attachments to my cars. At this very moment I have a picture of the car I drove through most of college, a 1978 Peugeot sedan, on the bulletin board in my office. I loved that car, despite its tendency to refuse to go in reverse, allow its doors to be opened in the winter, and, near the end, go forward at all. (Really, it was surprisingly possible to drive a car without reverse for the better part of a year. Tricky, but possible.) The sentiments surrounding the current car are worse than the Peugeot because I inherited it from my grandfather. It's a double-whammy.
On top of the emotions are the newly rediscovered fear of driving that I have. My dislike of driving has been pushed under the surface for some time now, mainly because in Montana I just don't have a choice. I have to drive, and I often have to drive long distances. Most of the time, Chip does the driving and that helps, but he can't chauffeur me everywhere. I have to drive to Bozeman tomorrow for work (26 miles over a mountain pass, the same drive where we hit the deer) and I'm already queasy about it. And no, I don't think it's just morning sickness, since I'm safely out of the first trimester.
Overall, the whole thing is just another reminder of how quickly things can change. One minute your biggest worry is how to get through the 10-CD audio book of Harry Potter Three before it's due at the library in two days and the next you're trying to figure out how to get your family safely off a major Interstate without a car.
Luckily, we had the break of Thanksgiving to remind us of the actual important things in life. The car feels important right now, but I'm confident that someday we'll be able to look back and laugh. I think it's going to be a while, though.