This and that

This is what my car used to look like: 

This is what my car looks like now:

 

 

That is what the rental agency gave me for the interim.

 And this is what I'll be driving next. 

 ????????????????

I have no idea how much I'm going to get from insurance (they've already totaled out the RAV) and that's making it a little difficult to start searching for something. Part of me just wants to get another RAV, slightly newer. It was essentially the perfect vehicle for me, drove nicely for long distances, good on gas, plenty of room for stuff and dogs. Another part of me just wants to try and find an upgrade, either Highlander or 4Runner, or perhaps something not Toyota at all. I just can't quite make up my mind.

Oh, what happened, you ask? It was the weirdest thing, Harry Potter and friends showed up on their broomsticks, completely slizzered and were playing chicken with the traffic. Harry Potter is a dick. He was even texting and flying at the same time. 

At least that's my idea of why the guy behind me never even put on his brakes before slamming into the back of me when all the other traffic was nearly stopped. You'd think a sea of red tail lights would be some sort of indication that perhaps you should SLOW DOWN just a bit? So I was nearly stopped, the guy in front of me was nearly stopped, the other guy stopped when he ran into the back of me, which then shoved my car into the guy in front. It was a sandwich with me as the filling. It wasn't nearly as fun as other people had made it out to be. "Oh, being a sandwich is AWESOME!"  Bunch of liars, the whole lot of them!

The guy in front of me was fine and drove home. I'm dealing with your typical whiplash  and have performed last rites over the Passion/Puppymobile. The guy who hit me got pretty knocked around by his airbags or something, was taken to the hospital and his car is resting in pieces next to mine at the city lot.

Oddly--and thankfully--the pros of this situation have outweighed the cons. 

 The cons: 

• I just paid the damn off TWO WEEKS AGO. I don't even have the title yet.
• I just put new tires on it three weeks ago. There weren't even 500 miles on them. 
• This is the absolute worst time for this to happen, in terms of budgeting.

The pros:

• Sawyer was not with me
• Sawyer was not with me. 
• Sawyer was not with me.
• Engineer Boyfriend was not with me (nor anyone else). 
• Neither were my laptop or camera.
• I'm not really hurt, considering.
• It was a smaller car that hit me, not the 18-wheeler that was in the lane next to me.
• I have full coverage.
• The other guy has insurance as well
• Sawyer was not with me. 

I keep having minor panic attacks thinking of how very different this situation and blog post would be if he had been in his normal spot, which is curled up in the front passenger seat. He might have been ok if for some reason he was curled up in his other favorite spot, which is the little footwell directly behind my seat. However, given that the force of the rear impact popped off a bunch of paneling and sent it flying, he still would have most likely been injured in some way. I can't let myself think of what would have happened if he had been in the front, I'll bloody lose it. 

I would have been just as frantic if anyone else was with me, but they would have had on their seatbelts and such and most likely been just a bit banged around like I am. My airbags didn't go off, so there was that as well.

I've also decided that I hate years I turn an age that ends in "9". When I was 9 years old, a daycare worker tripped me as I was playing tag with some other kids, which screwed up my knee and it still gives me problems to this day. When I turned 19, I rear-ended a lady when she stopped for far too long at a random light (none of the other drivers were stopped) and I slid on the rain-slick roads right into the back of her Ford Tempo. Nasty whiplash from that one, but both cars were fine (hers barely had a scratch on it). Now I'm turning 29 this year and this happens. Any guesses as to what 39 is going to bring?

I had just detailed the car last week, so there wasn't a lot of extraneous stuff to pull out. One of the things I did find stuffed under the driver's seat was the Ruff Rider car harness I'd gotten for him years ago and never really use. I took the backseats out of the RAV years ago and I don't really have seatbelts in the back anymore anyway, thanks to a certain black dog. With this next car, depending on what it is, there is always going to be at least one seat left in/up in the back and Mr.Intrepid Aussie is going to be buckled up for safety like the rest of us. Losing him in a wreck is not going to be my "Year 39" event, because he's going to live forever anyway.

Quick Miracle Update: He's up to 70lbs and has been in foster care for the last few weeks! 

(photo courtesy of Miracle's foster home with IDR+)

He's looking like a real dog now! He's still got a ways to go, but he's getting there. 

I haven't had a lot of time lately to go out with the camera. It's either been -24F (that's without windchill, kids), snowing or I've been up to my eyeballs with business stuff. I've set my sales goal for this month at $12,000 so I can get a free iPad from Passion Parties, plus my team is in a contest to have me pay for them to go on a 4 day cruise to the Bahamas this fall, so coaching calls are high up on the To-Do list. Add to that some work I've been doing for my dad, setting up photo sessions and my limited ability to get out of bed before 10am and the day just sort of gets away from you. Oh and then there's the whole "holy crap, I have an actual social life!"...

Although, one surefire way to guarantee getting up on time seems to involve eating some little smokies after the Superbowl, losing a filling in the process and wondering just how soon you can get that gaping hole in your tooth fixed. If your dentist is as awesome as mine, the answer to that is 8am the next morning. So I had an actual "Monday" for the first time in a while, dealing with rush hour traffic to go sit in a dentist chair, getting informed that I need to get a root canal and having a new temporary filling put in. However, again, my dentist is awesome and I dealt with all this while sitting in a cushy chair getting a friggin' *back massage*. That almost made up for not drinking any coffee before I left the house. 

Almost. 

So yeah, hey, help me out this month? You'll help yourself out in the process because I'll give everyone 15% off their order and you know another box of chocolates really isn't what you want for Valentine's Day. Use code "blog" at checkout from my website, just follow the pretty blue link: www.loveyourpassion.com  . Happy shopping!