sarea | I could say better than ever, but then I'd be lying.

Well ... I'm back now. If you had told me when I posted my last entry that by the time I posted my next entry 1) my car would be totaled; 2) I would nearly have been killed; 3) I'd have a dog that bites and/or chews everything in sight, I might not have left at all. Too tired to recount all the details, so if you want to know what happened, go read Jade's journal entry on the topic. The sort-of brevity of her post does not in any way diminish the sheer miraculousness we feel at being alive, and thanks to all for your well wishes. They mean a lot.

Needless to say, I have gotten no writing done, but I did get to brainstorm some details w/ Jade on our long, long drive back. (I drove from Seattle to LA in 17 hours, and I did it straight through -- crazy, huh? Never again.) It helped me to stay awake, though after awhile nothing worked except me slapping myself repeatedly on the face. Tomorrow I have to go pick up the new rental, because the one we've got is on one-way rates and it's way high. The biggest pain in the ass about everything is all the little things to deal with now: insurance stuff, rental stuff, getting a new car permit at work, etc. Still, my insurance company has been v. good to work with so far, so that's good.

We went to the hospital and had Talis checked out at the vet, and it appears that everyone got through it fairly unscathed (soft tissue damage around the neck and shoulders for me and Jade). Most of the bruises I have are from the puppy and not the wreck. It's really surreal to think about it now; at the time I was just thinking, "This is like a rollercoaster; it will eventually stop." It never fully occurred to me that it might "stop" with me being dead, or maybe I did think it and just don't want to remember that kind of terror. I don't know. I do know that I easily could have a branch through my skull or a piece of windshield through my heart, so all the little things I have to go through now are nothing, really.

Am also trying to refinance my condo and look for a new car and sort out my tax return at the same time (I turned it in ages ago, and just got a note from the IRS that my schedule A was "incomplete" -- which, I don't think that's possible! But anyway). Why not deal with it all at once, I say.