My UNfavorite Things

I'm going to have to add a regular "My UNfavorite Things" section to this blog. My inspiration comes from almost DYING last night on my way home from giving Owen his afghan. Tiffany, if you read this, no offense. That car we bought from you SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS! It's great having two cars, don't get me wrong. Let me count my blessings here for just a second:

It's REALLY nice to not have to get up at 5am to take Jason to work in the morning so that I can have the car to get myself to work. 5am and I are not friends.

HOWEVER, if you've ever owned a rear wheel drive car in the winter, you know you may as well leave the POS at home. We don't get much winter weather here, and this winter has been even nicer than normal. But still...every time I think I'm safe driving that car when it's questionable, I end up fishtailing out of control (we're not talking a little fishtail here, we're talking spinning wildly through 3-4 lanes). Thankfully, each time this has happened, the road has been nearly empty.

Another blessing I have to count: When I spun through 3 lanes last night, I went the right direction. Had I gone toward my side of the road, I'd have gone off an embankment. Seeing as how I kinda like this life thing (even though it is expensive, and it kinda creeps me out that it's sexually transmitted and always results in death), I'm glad that if I had to lose all control of the car, spin out wildly, being flung to and fro for about 10 seconds until the car finally slammed into a curb (why there's a curb on a mountain road, I know not, but it is one more thing I have to be thankful for), at least I spun the one direction that was least likely to result in death.

After I checked all my body parts and car parts to make sure we were all intact, I started the car and straightened myself out (I was facing toward the lane I had been driving in) and pulled over. Then, I realized I was in the middle of a curve, on a sheet of black ice, halfway into the far right lane because there was no place to pull over. I decided to head back to Shannon's...and promptly changed my mind, and just found the closest place to pull over.

Another blessing: Even though my cell phone disagreed about this little factoid, I DID have a signal, and was on the phone most of the time I was waiting, either to Shannon or Jason.

Since the rest of the story isn't life-threatening (and is probably only interesting to me), I'll skip to the end. I was a little bit frustrated to find out that this horrid section of road was no more than 6 miles. I could have crawled along at 2 mph until I got to a safe place and I would have been fine. But I wasn't keeping track (from now on, when I go up to Shannon's house, I'm keeping track of what landmarks are where), and I thought I was in the middle of the pass. Poor Jason had to come pick me up, not getting to bed until 1am (and having to turn around and get up for work at 5am) just for six lousy miles of ice.

And there I have one more thing to be thankful for. Two, actually. I have chosen some really, really awesome people to have in my life. Shannon stayed on the phone with me most of the time I was up there, even though she has a newborn baby to take care of and she was exhausted. And Jason gave up a lot of sleep to drive all that way. Those two people most certainly top my list of favorite "things".