My computer is still in the infirmary, but after hearing how I crazy I’ve been going these last few days without a computer, my stepmother took pity on me and loaned me her laptop. (I hate trying to type on these things!)
Yesterday was another one of those days when I had absolutely no reason to wake up early. My daughter is at her dad’s house for the weekend – quite possibly for the last time before he moves to Las Vegas and she will only see him once or twice a year. I had nowhere to be until noon or so…so what time did I wake up? 5:00 AM!!!!!!!! I tried and tried, but could not go back to sleep. Eventually I turned on the movie I had started watching the night before, “Down With Love.” I had fallen asleep watching it then, so figured maybe it would have the same effect. Nope. I had the beginnings of what felt like a sinus headache, so I took a 12-hour Claritin D at 8:00AM and managed to doze until about 9:45AM before finally just getting up.
Since we never actually made it to the pool last weekend, my sister and I had made plans to give it another go in the afternoon when she finished working. She called me at 12:40pm to say she was on her way home, and I was to meet her there. She told me to take my time, because she was going to stop and grab some lunch on her way. Lunch sounded good to me, too, so I left about 5 minutes later and hit the drive-thru at McDonalds before getting on the road. That may have been the best decision I have ever made in my life!
There are a couple of different ways to get to my dad’s house (where my sister is currently living) from mine. On this particular day, I chose to follow the Baltimore beltway around to 795 through Owings Mills, and then to 140 towards Westminster. Shortly after getting on to 140, traffic began to slow down unexpectedly. There was no traffic light in this area, and the road curved to the left ahead of me, so I could not see what the holdup was. As I came around the curve a minute or two later, there was chaos in the road ahead.
There were people and vehicles everywhere. The traffic headed in the opposite direction was stopped completely, due to not one, but TWO overturned cars to one side of the road. There was a bright blue VW completely flipped over. The passenger side was facing me, and as I slowly drove by, I could see a man half-in and half-out of the side window. There were people crouched around him. He was face-down, with his head lying on his folded arms, as if he were simply snoozing in a chair by the pool. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get out through the window, or if that was where he ended up in the accident. I really didn’t want to know, so I didn’t look too closely. The second car was on its side, very close to the first car. I couldn’t tell if anyone was still in it or not. This accident was so fresh, the first fire truck was just pulling up to the scene as I was passing by. A little further down, there was a third vehicle. This one was on my side of the road, facing the wrong direction. Its front end was smashed and it had several flat tires, but at least it was upright. Everyone seemed to have made it out of that car ok.
I passed the accident and continued on my way. The first ambulance passed me on its way to the scene a minute or two later.
I made it to my dad’s house without any further incident. It turned out that my sister had traveled that same road, about 10 minutes before I had – just minutes before the accident happened. It occurred to me that if I had not made that 3 minute stop at McDonalds, or if she had taken a few minutes longer getting her lunch, our afternoon may have turned out much differently…
Anyway…we were fine. We made it to the pool, and had a nice, relaxing afternoon there. They made everyone get out of the pool for 20 minutes at one point after hearing a couple rumbles of thunder. This was actually a blessing, because rather than wait it out, many people elected to leave, so when they opened the pool back up, it was much less crowded! It never actually rained, so we just kept lounging on our chairs until the lifeguards gave the all clear.
After the pool, we went back to the house to have dinner with the family – after a brief pit-stop at Kohl’s to look at baby clothes! (My sister is expecting in August) After dinner, I got to play with the kittens for awhile. At one point, all three of them were curled up in my lap, sound asleep. They are 3 weeks old now, and are starting to grow little personalities – and claws and teeth! I think I have decided to name the one that Megan and I will be taking Harley. She is orange, black, and white (the colors of the Harley Davidson logo), and she has just a little bit of an attitude. In fact, when I asked her if she would like to be named Harley, she lunged at my thumb and tried to bite it. lol…Harley, it is!
Of the three kittens, Harley is the largest, which is funny, because she slept through at least 2 feedings just while I was there last night. She’s kind of like Megan in that once she is asleep, she is OUT. I tried to get her to wake up so that she could go back to her mother and eat, and she just wouldn’t do it. That’s when I took the picture you see above. I picked her up from my lap, thinking that would get her up, but she just curled up in the palm of my hand and kept right on snoozing! Too cute…