Folks, in place of the well-thought-out, insightful, essay-esque post that was my plan to write tonight (and will try to show up tomorrow night), in place of that I give you this…a small pity party, table for one.

You know, when they transferred the tag to the new car, they were supposed to leave off the “hit me” sign. Yes, dear readers, you infer correctly: I was in a freaking car accident tonight!

First things first:
1) It was so totally *not* my fault.
2) It was yet another teenager who was at fault.
3) The car is driveable and all lights are miraculously intact.

What will need replacing is the fender and passenger quarter-panel. Sigh for the crunchiness of fiberglass.

Once again, I tried to avoid what I saw happening and in doing so probably saved myself more serious damage. Once traffic cleared out of the way I moved out of the road and then jumped out of my car to survey the damage and scream my head off. Yeah, I did not handle this with aplomb or even tact. I believe my exact words were “What the fuckwere you thinking? Did you not see the traffic? I just got this car not a month ago. God bless America!”

I later apologized for cursing him out and he was really apologetic and actually really nice about the whole thing, which made me feel like a tad more of a heel for flying off the handle (did I mention that I actually beat up the steering wheel after it happened. Several expletived were uttered inside the car at that point before I’d even gotten out of the road.). Not that he hadn’t deserved it, he admitted fault and we waiting for the police. 30 minutes. Then another 30 minutes or so while the officer looked up every code on the form as she wrote the report and his two citations (he also had an expired tag I realized when I read the report at home).

It was when I was sitting in the car, waiting for the officer to finish her report, that the tension got to me. We had pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and in the spot next to me was a car with some sort of plush overlay on the dash, etc. and a couple of stuffed animals (a turtle and a gator to be exact) on the dash as well. The owner came out a little later, left and came back, and I found it peculiar that it was an apparently single male who entered his car through the passenger door. Anyway. It was the stuffed animals that did it. It got me thinking about a past boyfriend or two who would, when I was sick or down, bring me a little stuffed bear or something, just to cheer me up.

Enter pity party. I had been waiting about 45 minutes total by now and it was so weird not having to call someone and say “I’ll be late getting home” or even to feel like there was someone I *could* call that I could whine to about my bad luck, who would ask if I needed anything and even though I didn’t would still show up when I got home (or be waiting for me when I arrived) even if it was just to give me a hug. I miss that dammit. And that weird empty feeling, combined with the stresses of work lately and my overwhelming schedule this month and I lost it. Just started crying. Silly, I know. This is one of the ways I vastly differ from my NaNo MC who–while taking from many of my own experiences because hey, it’s what I know–would have held it together much easily and managed to just laugh it off. But oh well, I miss having someone in my life, not exactly a news flash, one day I’ll have that again at some level. Enough.

So tomorrow afternoon I’ll call his insurance company to make sure the claim is at least being started. I do not plan to even involve my own insurance company in this if I can help it because there really shouldn’t be a reason to. I think I’ll wait and see who notices the car first tomorrow. I’m going to try not to say anything and just wait and see.