Tough News to Break to the In-laws

For those of you who are my friend on Facebook, this post will be old news to you, but I still wanted to share it here for posterity purposes.

On April 21st, a day before I was 9 weeks pregnant, I was using my in-laws car for the day because mine was in the shop having new brake pads and rotors installed. Normally I try to take their older Pontiac that has definitely seen better years, but it wasn't working so they loaned me their fairly new Impala with their two favorite features - a sunroof for my F.I.L and heated leather seats for my M.I.L.

Well, on my way home from work, I turned left onto a street that is marked as dividing into three lanes - the left lane became a left turn lane and a straight lane and the right lane became the right turn lane. Once the road divided, I needed to get in the right turn lane in order to continue on my way home. The car in front of me was hugging the center line and had no turn signal on whatsoever. At this point, I signaled and switched into the right lane. As I'm even with the Suburban I notice the driver start to come into my lane. At this point, there was no way to avoid getting hit whether I slowed down or sped up. Honking my horn as loudly as possible and trying to scoot up a little so I wouldn't take the brunt right in the driver's door, I brace for impact. By the time she finished hitting me, the driver's side view mirror was hanging by a wire, there was no handle left on the driver's door so you couldn't open it from the outside, and the whole side of the car was dented in and scratched from that point back.

To say I was ticked is an understatement! I'm mean I'm driving my in-laws car and I'm newly pregnant for goodness sakes!

I backed up so I could pull over into the closest parking lot and immediately tried calling the cops who unfortunately were not answering their 911. Meanwhile the other driver is asking me what I want to do and just wants to exchange insurance information and leave. Of course she does - her car has barely any damage and she's facing a big insurance settlement for fixing the damage to my in-laws' car.

Finally I reach the police and someone comes. I explain what happened and mention the lady had no turn signal on. She acknowledges she doesn't recall if she had her turn signal on and that she didn't see me. Meanwhile, I'm hunting for the insurance card and registration that seems to have mysteriously disappeared from my in-laws car. It is NOWHERE to be found. Finally, I call them (terrified to tell them what happened) and the whole time I'm talking with them, they're forgetting that I had THEIR car for the day and they thought I was calling to ask them where MY registration and insurance card was. Thankfully the cop saw that the vehicle just passed inspection (which required a recent insurance and registration) so he let me pass with the previous copies (which were in the car go figure).

I'm waiting for him to issue the other driver the ticket (after all, she's the one who completely came into my lane and broad swiped me) and give me a copy of all her info so I can pass it on to the insurance company and next thing I know he comes over and tells me I'M at fault for the accident because I was "improperly passing on the right". He tried to tell me that the road is a one-lane road there even though it's clearly marked as a two-lane road with numerous signs and markings that it's splitting into a 3-lane road at the point where she struck me. No ticket was issued at the scene because he said "we never ticket people here because it keeps traffic flowing." Perhaps you don't ticket people there because it's actually a two-lane road and they're doing nothing illegal? So, imagine my surprise when a couple days later the cop sends me a ticket in the mail for a $250 fine and 4 points, not to mention what it will do to my insurance premiums.

On top of that, the insurance company ended up totalling my in-laws car because the lady hit me hard enough to damage the bar between the driver and passenger door on driver's side and it would cost more to fix that than the $13K the car was worth.

Thankfully, my insurance company (which also happened to be my in-laws company) completely disagreed with the cops finding of me at fault, especially once I sent them pictures of location where the accident occurred clearly showing it's a two lane road that splits into three and thus I was doing nothing wrong driving in the right turn lane when I was making a right turn.

My court date was on the 3rd and thankfully a family friend who is a cop in a different town came with me. A defense attorney who was there happened to guess he was a cop (he was in plain clothes) and spoke to the prosecutor on our behalf. The charge against me was changed from "Improper Passing on the Right" and a $250/4-point ticket to "Obstruction of Traffic" which was a $41/0-point/no insurance impact ticket. Plus, the defense attorney also asked for a special reservation so that the other driver can't come and sue me personally now that I basically am no longer held responsible for the accident. It was such a relief to finally have it all behind me and I'm so grateful for many things surrounding the incident:

1. My in-laws took the news like champs. Turns out my M.I.L. actually totalled her M.I.L's car when she was 4 months pregnant with my hubby.
2. Our insurance company declared the other driver to be at fault and thus we weren't liable for fixing the damage to her car.
3. I had an already scheduled dr. appt for an ultrasound the day after the accident (the first one hubby was at) and it was such a relief to see that our baby was perfectly healthy and not impacted by the accident.
4. I'm incredibly grateful for our cop friend and the defense attorney who helped me out for no cost. 

2 Days in a Row? Seriously?

I give up on being able to use the toilet at work anymore.

We recently split our building in half and my nice private bathroom (thanks to the fact I was the only female here) stayed on the half that's now rented out. That means I now have to share a bathroom with men. Dirty, smelly men.

I finally convinced the boss to let me buy some seat covers (or a** gaskets as his son referred to them...I have to admit that gave me a good chuckle because I never heard them called that) only to realize yesterday that it clogged the toilet when I went to flush it. Bring on embarrassing situation #1.

"Yum, excuse me boss. Do we have a plunger anywhere?"

That's one question I never hoped to have to ask at work.

Well, remember that nice private bathroom I used to have? Turns out our one and only plunger must have somehow got put in there when we split the building. Bring on embarrassing situation #2 - drive down the road to the plumbing supply store where a bunch of men work and ask them if they carry plungers and if so can I purchase one.

I didn't possibly think it could get any worse. Boy, was I wrong.

Braving use of the bathroom again today, I proceeded to flush only to have the problematic handle which is known to fall off from time to time fly up in the air and land smack dab in the toilet right as everything finishes flushing down the drain. Down goes the toilet paper. Down goes the seat cover. Down goes the handle.

"Yum, boss. Know that handle that falls off from time to time? Well, it fell into the toilet right as it was flushing and it kinda went down the drain."

Provided I still have a job tomorrow after messing with the toilet two days in a row, I'm never using the bathroom at work again.

Thankfully my boss has already pretty much told me I could do whatever I want and he doesn't care. He might reconsider after this, though!

UPDATE: Boss just came in to report that he's going to have to take the whole toilet off because the handle is not in the trap. Hopefully we don't have to bust up the concrete floor that the pipe runs under. Why does stuff like this happen to me?

Thank Heaven for AAA

My brother and his girlfriend are visiting for a little bit before they start their last semester of college. They spent yesterday touring NYC and attending tapings of Good Morning America and The Late Show with David Letterman. They also got to see and speak with Chuck in the NBC Studio store in Rockefeller Center.

After work, I took my car for an oil change and met hubby at Chili's (thanks to my bro for the gift card for Christmas) and as we finished eating Brock called to say they were on the train and heading our way. Hubby and I had separate cars and instead of him heading home and me heading to the train, he opted to drop his car closer to home but along the way and ride with me.

We made it to the train station about 5 minutes before their train arrived and turned the car off to save on gas. Brock and Leah get in the car and I go to turn it on only to learn it is completely DEAD. No lights are coming on even. DEAD.

Never have I been so happy to have hubby with me because not having any jumper cables, the only option was to call AAA. The AAA is only in hubby's name. Thankfully, the guy was there in 15 minutes and ran some tests on the battery. He said he'd be able to charge it enough to get us back home, but that we'd have to get a new one anyway. We decided to save the hassle and have him install the new battery then so Brock and Leah wouldn't have issues when they used my car today.

It'd sure have been nice if there was some way the guys who performed the oil change I had just gotten on my way to dinner would have been able to tell my battery was going to be dying in less than 3 hours. Then again they probably would have charged me more than the AAA guy did.

Hopefully now that my car has four brand new tires and a brand new battery it won't need anymore expensive work done before we're ready to get rid of it in a few years!