Angels Among Us

Yes, I rolled my hummer - affectionately named “Cherry Bomb” - last week. For those who already know the story, feel free to skip this next paragraph. For those of you who don’t care or find my unfortunate event trite or insignificant, feel free to leave my blog and create your own blog, wherein you can discuss your own unfortunate event, thus, trumping mine and feeling better about yourself, by yourself.

Now then, the boys and I were on our way to Tampa to meet up with my husband (who had gone by himself for work-related issues) and a few of our friends who live in that area. It had been raining on and off the entire trip, and we were about an hour and a half south of Tampa when the rain finally let up. I was cruising along at 70 mph in the Venice/Englewood area when Cherry Bomb started fishtailing. We all know how unsettling that feeling is, but imagine my horror when the fishtailing promoted itself to hydroplaning, and the hydroplaning upgraded to losing all control of my massive vehicle. As we skidded from the far left lane, spinning across three lanes of traffic heading right for a five foot drop-off into the Florida wilderness, my hands left the steering wheel and I began fervently screaming prayers to God. This event is tragic enough, but…

…my babies were in the car.

I don’t know the position of the car or how long we spun before we started rolling. I don’t even know how many times we rolled, but it was at least three. All I remember through it all was the dog slamming into the passenger‘s window, and slamming into a tree at some point.

Some people have asked me what I was thinking through it all, and as difficult as it is to replay the whole scene in my head…well…what is that they say about curiosity and a dead cat?

Here were my thoughts (from what I was able to muster) broken down into a time sequence:

Point of fishtailing: If I don’t get control, I’m going to start hydroplaning.
Point of hydroplaning: If I don’t get control, I’m going to start spinning out.
Point of spinning out: If we don’t stop spinning out, we’re going to flip!
Point of flipping: How is this going to end….

We landed on the passenger side. As I dangled from my seatbelt, I twisted around towards the back. “Are you guys alright?”

“Yeah, we’re ok!”

I can end the story there and declare that God is good. But there’s more…

I unbuckled myself and fell onto the passenger’s door. Robbie, grasping what had just happened, started panicking. “Why am I just hanging here?! What just happened?! What am I supposed to do?!?” Meanwhile, I can’t find my phone, because everything in my car is everywhere. I was stepping on things I didn’t even know I had (where did this pink hairclip come from? Oh, there’s my CD!) I hit the Onstar button, but apparently they hired Charlie Brown’s teacher as the Onstar spokesperson.

I had to calm Robbie down. So I unbuckled his seatbelt and he tumbled into his brother. Now it’s a fun, fun game for them. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t stand on the actual window because the glass might break. So as I guided my feet onto the panels, I saw my phone peeking out of some random crevice. Thanking God for the hundredth time in the last twenty seconds, I grabbed it up and dialed 911.

“Thank you for calling the Manatee County emergency department. Please wait for the next available representative.”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?

I rolled down the driver’s side window so I could stand up straight. People had already pulled off the side of the road and were rushing over. “Are you okay?”

“We’re all fine, thank God,” and that was the first of the million times I repeated that sentence.

A began lifting my spawn up through the driver’s window and passing them to a bunch of men, handing over my dog, and ultimately lifting myself out as they helped me out of the car and onto the ground. And then this is what I saw….

Andrew looked up at me, an empty packet of Capri Sun dangling from his protruding arm, and announced, “Here Mommy, I’m done with my juice.” The women standing around began crying.

Cop cars and fire trucks roared to a stop on the side of the road and uniformed men came running in my direction (now I know this is a dream come true for some women, but please…now is not the time).

Amazed that everyone involved in the accident was standing there, they retreated back to their trucks and left, save one cop who wrote up an accident report for me. In the meantime, one of the guys who stopped hooked a tow strap onto the front of Cherry Bomb and righted her…and she was still running! So believe it or not, they actually drove her out of the jungle area, up the ravine, and onto the side of the highway.

Another car stopped and a husband and wife rushed over, the woman exclaiming, “I saw them pulling babies out of the car and I just had to stop!” It was this couple who talked to the cops because I was too distraught, and he drove - yes, I said it, Cherry Bomb is a trooper - he drove my car to the next exit while the boys and I got in her van (her kids were entertaining mine) and they took us to a McDonald’s, where we waited an hour and a half for my poor frantic husband to pick us up.

I could continue about how the tow truck driver couldn’t believe that that car had rolled (none of the windows were broken, airbags never deployed, and really the only damage was done to the body), but I really just want to address a question that arose when relaying this story…

While most people have joined me in thanking and praising God that we were able to walk away from what could (and probably should) have been a fatal accident, after the usual comment of, “God really was protecting you,” some ask, “Well if God was protecting you, why didn’t he just prevent the accident from happening altogether?”

Well I have an answer for that completely logical question. First, I invite you to look at the picture on my face book page, and read all the comments written below it. Read my wall posts; scan over the comments written under my status from that day. So many of my friends wrote praises to God - praises that would have never been proclaimed had the accident not happened. Not to mention my grateful expressions to God in front of all the people who stopped and helped me, my insurance company, etc. I truly believe that God was fully glorified throughout the whole situation, and isn’t our whole purpose for existence to bring honor and glory to Him, no matter what the cost? Didn’t Paul say in Philippians that “Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death”?

So if that is what it took for me to be used as a vessel of God to bring glory to Him, then I will roll my car every day if that’s what it takes. And there’s no disputing the fact that angels really are among us, and I will never stop praising Him for sparing these two angels imparticular:

Networking and Jazz Hands

Deadline my butt. This is why I haven't made it as a writer yet. No matter what ridiculously mad skillz one may have in writing, if one doesn't subject one's self to deadlines, one's writing skillz are rendered jack crap.

And yes, that's skillz with a "Z." Whole other class bracket than "skills." No one wants those anymore. Having skills is like having an associates degree. But toss a Z in there and you might as well tack a PhD onto your name. And grow a really sophisticated mustache.

I'm writing my second novel. I'm still sitting on my first one. Joel's been giving me stellar opportunities to promote writing and I really have meant to do it, I really have, I swear. But it involves a lot of research and one must have ample time to research and still maintain enough wit to write something sassy (insert jazz hands). So for the sake of helping out my buddy...

Click here if you like credit cards. Heck, even if you hate them, go ahead and click that sucker. Click here if you have sucky health insurance. Click here if your car insurance blows, or here if you have ever or are planning on ever petting a puppy. Click here because I said so.

There. Now can someone please publish a sister? Gosh!

Preschool Blunders: A Bonus Post.

So it's the time of year that everyone loves yet has nothing to do. Perfect weather, foliage riddled in flowers, and yet the closest holiday (and by holiday I mean time off of work) is still a month and a half away. I mean, the most exciting things I've heard the last few days is something about tax returns and maybe the loss of a mucus plug.

See? Nothing to update our facebook statuses about.

And I just need to blog. So allow me to share with you a what-would-be humiliating conversation that occured amongst myself, a four-year-old, and her father. Eh-hem...

Four-year-old: I want to go to your house!
Me: Ok.
Four-year-old: I want to sleep at your house!
Me: Well then who's gonna sleep in your bed?
Four-year-old: You!
Me: Me? So wait, you're gonna sleep in my bed and I'm gonna sleep in yours?
Four-year-old: (giggling) Yes! You sleep in my bed with Robert! And Robbie!
Me: So you're going to sleep at my house with nobody there? (she nods) Listen, you run this by your dad and see what he says.
(She drags me by the ring finger down the hall to her father)
Four-year-old: Dad, she is gonna sleep with you.
(Father and I, both shocked, look at each other)
Me: Um, she actually wants to swap houses...
Dad: (laughing) Oh! Oh, ok, because I thought she meant -
Me: Nope. Nope, that's not what she meant.

(sigh) Come on, Memorial Day.....

Mas Fuerte!

I believe that children should be well-mannered and respectful.

"Please," "Thank you," and "May I?" should be part of their every day vocabulary.

But, with everything, there are exceptions to the rules. There is one situation in which a child should be as demanding as he wants, and the adult has an obligation to fulfill this command....



"Push me higher!!!"

Kids These Days...

I've mentioned before that my work is roughly .75 miles from my house. While this is good and all, I must also mention that there are three school zones between here and there, two of them in an alternate route. Going straight on Hammocks Blvd. runs me dead into an elementary school, where parents picking up their children are under the impression that they have the right to stop in the middle of the road, thus eliminating any and all movement of other motorists. Passed that rests Hammocks Middle School, where I must break for acne-personified moving at the speed of erosion, AND their stone-still parents. No, thank you. I will by-pass the alternate route and take the conventional way home, which dumps me off behind Varela High. I turn into my subdivion just before the blinking yellow school zone light, so some may say this would be the best route to avoid back-ups.

Well they are wrong.

Know that at this time, all good little teenagers are skipping home from school. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. And they all think that everyone on 152nd Ave. is looking directly at them. These little punks do whatever it takes to catch attention. Some disregard the sidewalk made specifically for this purpose and utilize the street as their means of transportation.

Do they not see that I'm driving a Hummer?

The worst part is when I try to swing that right-hand turn into my subdivision. Those little jerks won't stop! They all just flow along, and the minute they see my beast of a vehicle, I SWEAR THEY START WALKING EVEN MORE SLOWLY.

LISTEN! COMMON SENSE TELLS YOU THAT WHEN A CAR IS COMING, YOU STOP OR RISK GETTING CLOBBERED! BUT THESE KIDS THINK THEY ARE QUEEN OF THE ASPHALT AND THEY CONTINUE STROLLING ALONG, JUST LOOKING AT ME AS I GIVE THEM DEATH-LOOKS AND ULTIMATELY CUT THEM OFF AND TURN IN ANYWAYS. And yes, I yelled that paragraph in it's entirety. Just like I do in my car. Daily.

One of these days, I'm going to just run them over. And you will know when this happens, because the story will be plastered all over the news that evening.

Warning: this next paragraph is riddled with cliches of the bitter and the old. Continue at your own risk.

We were not like that as teenagers. I swear they are waxing worse and worse. I don't understand why some of them (aka the punks) think they know everything, yet they still live with their parents, rarely have jobs, and have never paid a bill. They've never tasted responsibility or financial difficulty, yet manage to have all the answers.

That is the only proof to me that I am no longer a teenager, considering it seems like I just got out of high school a couple weeks ago. And I'm sure we had the same irritating tendencies - although surely not to this extent - yet I feel no different now than I did then.

I'm still rebellious. I still have the attention span of a fruit fly. I still need to be humored. Although those are all characteristics of a woman, as well...

Ok, ok, example. So I can't run on a treadmill unless I have something occupying my mind. I went to the gym a couple weeks ago clutching my ipod. I began running and wasn't five minutes into it when I had already skipped through my whole playlist. I found them boring and trite. So I looked up at the tv's suspended from the ceiling. One had basketball. Meh. One had baseball. Ugh. And one had politics. Kill myself. Six minutes down, twenty four to go. I started feeling short of breath. But I can generally run three miles without even sweating. Ok, ok, what could I possibly do for twenty-four more minutes to keep my mind off cardiovascular activity? I tried merely thinking about stuff, but I had nothing to think about. My mind, for once, was a blank page. I actually wanted to start crying. It took all my willpower not to scream out to the entire gym, "ANYBODY! GIVE ME SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!" I finally just got off and jumped on an eliptical machine for the remaining 15 minutes. Wanted to kill myself on there, too.

High schoolers, do you do stuff like that? Well if not, enjoy the story. And can you please tell your peers to yield to oncoming traffic? Thanks. I really do like you guys. Oh, and also tell them not to do drugs. Now get off the computer and go study for your test.

Reality Mists, Cave Chains, and Other Sad Pitfalls

When I arrived at work this morning, I was greeted with this thick fog sprawled across the back property. We all know what a sucker I am for a solitary tree, so combine that with the sunrise, and here I am scampering across the lawn with my phone, snapping pictures like some crazy morning optimist.

It was the fog, though, that sparked my attention. The way it just hovered dormant and still. It reminded me of this series I'm reading involving the Olympian gods living among mortals. While the books are generally light-hearted and geared towards children, they use Mist as a solemn symbol of how humans use reality to excuse situations that seem abnormal. I'm basically left feeling cramped up in a reality straitjacket.

All this thinking reminded me of something I learned long ago...and philosophers, forgive my butchering of this theory, because I don't remember the story so much as I remember the illustration of it. Apparently I need visual aids to retain any form of information...

Plato concocted the "Myth of the Cave," wherein he imagined people chained in a cave their whole lives, facing an empty wall; the only images they see are shadows on this wall. He describes how their only forms of reality are the shapes and movements they see projected onto the wall. He states that if they were to escape this prison and personally witness the objects responsible for casting the shadows, they wouldn't be able to associate the two. He went further to say that they would probably return to their imprisonment because that is what they have known their whole lives.

Again, the picture is what has lasted with me, but I believe I also specifially remember this because of the severely despairing impression it left on me. We actually do this. "Ignorance is bliss" isn't some hilarious pardon for our indolence or incompetence.

I am by no means a philosopher; therefore, I am not going to go into depth with this theory. But I would like to point out from a Christian standpoint how often we do this. And I'm warning you now - I'm not taking this in the direction you think I am.

I get serious red flags when I see a pastor who has lived this squeaky clean life inside this sad little bubble, trying to witness to or counsel a drug addict. I know some people are gasping right now; let me try to make this short and sweet. Say you are studying to be in the medical field. Everyone knows that you don't spend years and years inside a classroom behind a text book; a huge portion of your time is spent in the hospitals getting hands-on experience. It's ridiculous to assume that one can properly learn this practice being solely educated through lecture. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Do I think we should carry on in debauchery, because grace abounds? God forbit it. But I do know that the Great Commission is to Go into all the world. How can I go into the world if I am chained to a wall, watching only the shadows of what the world is? Once I am released from my chains, I won't comprehend the world anyways. I'll crawl back to my cage. Although their lifestyle is not my own, how can I understand their addictions, vices, and downfalls if I am ignorant of them?

Christians seem to forget that God is in the world. The drugs, the prostitution, the cold-blooded murders, God is in the midst of it all. He's not absent, so why should we be? We cling to this "don't-ask-don't-tell" mindset and stay tucked inside our bubbles and focus on moot points and the length of our skirts.

Just be educated. That's all. It never hurts to know things. And if you're wondering how to "educate" yourself without participating in it, just open your eyes. It's all over. And when you find it, don't run from it. Dissect it, prod it, and empathize with it. Pour God first into the deepest holes and let Him fill the voids. And if you claim to have opened eyes and you still don't get it, then you're just ignorant and there's no hope for you.

Simple-Carbohydrates Anonymous

I felt a strange headache coming on midmorning this past Sunday. Strange in the sense that I didn't think a pair of Advil would clobber it this time, but it was slight; almost like an irritation behind my orbital cavities spreading from the pituitary gland. And if I leaned down, it pulsed. It felt like my frontal lobe just might spontaneously combust.

I knew it wasn't a hangover, and I had already drank my coffee....but my sutures were pounding and I would swear that they were chanting, "De-ple-tion" with each pulse. Then I remembered something - I hadn't eaten sweets in about 48 hours.

I don't have an addictive personality. I'm not an alcoholic, I don't smoke, never have I done any type of drug whatsoever, all the while heeding to I Corinthians 10:12 as well as 2 Corinthians 3:5. Seems like a winning combo....

Hi, I'm Traci. And I'm addicted to refined sugar.

My sweet tooth is powerful, haunting, and unjust. It runs a mean tyranny. It is judgmental and racist, performing vicious holocaust practices on anything boasting the names Hershey, Nestle, or Russell Stover. However, it basks in decadence: flan, creme brulee, baklava, pastalitos. It hails the names of Toblerone, Hagen Daas, Ghirardelli, and Godiva.

It hasn't been fed in the past four days.

It was all an accident, I swear. Never would I purposely neglect my sweet tooth. It all started Saturday when I didn't have time to eat until two o'clock. I had a gyro and that's all I ate that whole day, save a couple bites of churrasco and mushrooms that night. Then came the strange headache. It was then that I realized it probably isn't normal that I spoon frosting out of the can like it was a bowl of ice cream and call it dinner. That most people generally don't eat a meal of cupcakes and then follow it up with pudding for dessert.

SO, that's it. Since then, I haven't eaten any sweets, and it sucks. Try going to the gym with no energy. Try doing downward-facing dog with "De-ple-tion" racking your skull. Try walking into the kitchen at your work just to find that the sugar fairy has left bags of donuts, cookies, pastalitos and croquettas donning a sign that says, "Free." It hurts. It physically hurts.

But summer is on it's way, and my size zero's are manifesting in my drawer. Maybe once I drop some weight, I'll reward myself with a trip to the Ale House....(cough, cough) captain jack's buried treasure (cough)....

Nice to Meet You, and Welcome to My Personal Space.

I get really suspicious of people whom I meet for the first time and they act like we've been best friends since second grade. It's a recurring trend that I'll spend an evening with a complete stranger who talks the entire night of him/herself and I sit like a silent bobblehead, listening to this person's autobiography and cringing at stories to which not even his/her mother should be subjected. Then at the end of this strenuous evening, my entertainment comments, "Traci, I like you so much. You are such a nice person. We have to get together soon." And then I continue my bobbing-head motions, only this time with a masked horrified smile on my face. What else, pray tell, do these people possibly have to tell me? I already know everything from their suicidal father to the amount of stitches in their episiotomy. Can't we just be pen pals?

No, but really, I generally like everyone I meet. However, I'm not one to allow them to Riverdance all over my guard. Have you seen the episode of The Office called "Murder"? Remember at the very end where Michael, Andy, and Dwight are having a three-way standoff, and it's well after five o'clock? Why can't more introductions be conducted in this manner?

Not to mention I'm a closed book. I laugh at the fact that I generally can't get a word in edge-wise with these people, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't discuss my episiotomy with them anyways. Or my fun, fun family. My few close friends have pried and nestled themselves into my existence. They are the few who will call me and ask me about ME. Then they dissect every word of every sentence and will demand elaborations. They respect my privacy, yet are the only ones who don't have to.

Maybe it's just me, but I think it's important to earn someone's trust instead of having it shoved down my throat. I don't know; it might also be my maternal instinct. Pedophiles are growing on trees these days, and Miami is the perfect climate for a Pedophile Tree. Far be it for me to nurture one in my backyard.

Maybe I should be more gregarious and not such a hermit. OR!!!! If they want to get to know me, they can just read my blog. After all, my fingers keep no secrets.

The Love for Your Child: A Parable

Beats me why I'm so bad at this. You'd think it wouldn't be such a difficult thing to regularly update a blog...but at least I always justify it with some cliche' phrase like, "Such is life," or "It is what it is." Nothing like using a good cliche' to cause a public disruption and then utilizing it to make an escape.

So since we're discussing cliche's, I was talking the other day with someone about how you always hear that "kids change your life," and you blow it off until you have kids of your own and really do realize that your life was a meandering, pointless shadow until they came along. And it's not something you can explain to the child-less; the closest I can come is with the following example:

Please take what you're about to read with a grain of salt. It is, after all, just a parable. Eh-hem. Think of the most terrible, horrifying, gory experience you can possibly imagine. The one you won't ever let yourself think about; the one that you are convinced is Thee Worst Possible Way To Die. For me it is to be buried alive, but use your own imagination. Now don't confuse what I'm about to tell you with "sacrificial love." Sacrificial love is this: when given the option of either you or someone you love having to endure this fate, it concludes with you pondering, sweating, and either a.) guiltily letting your loved one go and then killing yourself, or b.) humbly, heroically and terrifyingly taking the plunge to save Loved One. Either way, you wonder if you're making the right decision and you're terrified either way (unless you're Jesus - which you're not - about to be crucified).

Now, let's toss kids into this equation. If given the choice of either myself or my child enduring this fate, I would burst into gregarious laughter and swan dive into that casket. I would help them dig the hole, and hold the lid down while they nailed it shut. I wouldn't even bat an eyelash.

Obviously, this is all theoretical and not the conventional way to describe the love of a child. But it does go beyond scribbly hearts with wings fluttering around.

It's interesting how, when it comes to those on whom you depend vs. those who depend upon you, you'd think it would hurt more to lose the one you depend upon. But it's actually the other way around. The instinct of the depender, maybe? This is all theory, and by the grace of God, I pray it remains theory. But I know that for those that have experienced such a loss first hand can try explaining to me the peace that surpasses all understanding. And me, in my simplified mind, will ask them to speak in one-dimensioned parables.