Crash Bang Boom

Jill is my savior. This blog was so busted up as to be unusable, and in response to my plea for help, Jill whipped out a little code and fixed everything. She tried to explain it to me. She wrote:

“Hey so it looks like your .htaccess file was wiped out (see size 1 vs size 262 in 2nd one below):
-rw-rw-r– 1 wormlips wormlips 1 Jan 5 18:13 .htaccess

It should look something like this:
-rw-rw-r– 1 wormlips wormlips 262 Jan 4 20:39 .htaccess

I copied over the allisonatwork .htaccess file and changed “allisonatwork” to “blog” and it looks like it is fixed. The data inside .htaccess tells apache what to do about requests. The rewrite rules and conditions to map the pretty URLs you have with the actual data in wordpress. The file looks like this:

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /allisonatwork/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /allisonatwork/index.php [L]

# END WordPress

Check it out and let me know.

Bless your heart, Jill. You credit me with far more intelligence than I have. You probably think you’re being totally clear in that explanation, but my brain went sputtering out when I read it. All I can tell you  is that you are my hero. What kind of friend is that who drops everything to help you with a problem beyond your means? A dear one; that’s what.

Speaking of dear friends, I was on the way back from Anna’s house yesterday morning. She’d been in an accident on  Highway 24 near 580 East three days before, and her car is crushed up and in the shop, so she needed a ride to a friend’s house in the morning. Taking her there was on my way home,  so that was a no-brainer. After leaving her, I got on the freeway and approached Highway 24 near 580 East when the traffic came to a sudden halt. I slammed on my brakes. I’m glad I wasn’t looking in my rearview mirror or I would have seen a car barreling at me at significant speed. The next thing I knew I was being whipped forward and back, and my car was pushed into that in front of me.

I’m not good under pressure, I realized. I just sat in my car, trying to peek out the front and back windows to see the damage. I didn’t know what do to. Get out? Call someone? The car in front of me, whose bumper I was resting against, wouldn’t move off to the side, so I eventually worked up the nerve to get out of my car, into the lane of oncoming traffic, and wave him off the roadway. Luckily he understood my hand signals and pulled over onto the shoulder, as did I. The woman behind, who had hit us, was unable to move her car, which was clearly totalled: her engine shoved way back into the body of the car. She was shrouded in airbags and didn’t get out for a while. It was a big impact, and her windshield was cracked from the pressure of the collision, but luckily she was okay. Without seatbelts we all would have been badly hurt.

The person who hit me was a lovely, gracious young girl in her thirties with a low-cut t-shirt and pronounced breasts. We held onto each other’s arms for a moment, to reassure each other. “Thank you for being so nice,” she said. How could I be anything else? It could just as easily have been I who made the mistake: glanced down for a second at a moment of truth.

The California Highway Patrol took seemingly forever to get there, and then a second car arrived fifteen minutes later. Meanwhile, we were right in the path of freeway traffic. I said to an officer, “Everybody’s rubbernecking. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a secondary accident.” “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were,”  he replied. But there wasn’t.

We stood on the jiggling freeway for a solid hour, talking to the California Highway Patrol and digging out insurance documents. I called Eleni and told her I wouldn’t be at Fairyland after all. I checked with Molly to see if she might be able to give me a ride from wherever I was dumped, once off the freeway.

The tow truck finally arrived and dragged both of our broken cars to an auto body shop in Emeryville, where I spent over an hour with a AAA agent who obviously was having his first day of work in the insurance claim department. My patience began to wear out but I maintained decorum.

The owner of the body shop declared my car salvageable, which makes me really happy. I can’t afford a new car now. I have a $500 deductible, though, so I’m going to have to find some stones from which to squeeze blood.

In addition to my gratitude that no one was hurt is my appreciation for the person who hit me. Her husband met her at the body shop and came to introduce himself to me. “I’m the husband,” he said, and enfolded me in the warmest, lengthiest hug I think I’ve ever had. Tears were in his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said. When you’ve been in an accident when your body is whipped around and when you’re all alone with no one to comfort you, something like this really touches your heart.  I shook hands with his wife and we parted ways: me to get a car rental, and they to get their car to a different repair shop. By this time, we’d been dealing with this crap for a full three hours.

The body shop people took me to rent a red Nissan Sentra or something like that, and I’m scared driving it.

The most poignant part of the experience came when I got two texts later that afternoon from the woman who hit me. “Hi Ginna. hope you’re doing okay. Thanks again for being so kind.” I wrote back “Hi, Emily. I’ve been thinking about you and hoping you’re okay. I hope also that you’re not feeling bad about what happened. It can happen to anyone. Take care of yourself.” To which she replied, “Of course I feel miserable, but you being so good  has helped so much. I’m glad we’re all okay.” I’m glad that I managed to have dignity under pressure. But that all stemmed from my knowledge that it could have just as easily been I who whacked someone else. If I ever do, I hope I encounter someone like me. But I won’t.