Stopped with a THUD

I recently got into a car accident. My first car accident really; never been in one before. You know, with the Cincinnati weather and the fantastic driving skills of Cincinnati drivers in the snow, I always hesitate whether it's worth my while to head out in the snow. Since I live in Hyde Park and commute up to Hamilton (about a 30 mile commute), I keep watch on all the school closings, traffic reports and what it looks like out my window. I tend to listen to Cincinnati Public Schools and if it's bad enough for CPS to be cancelled, I call it a day and stay inside.

However, I did not follow my own rule at all when it came to that fateful Wednesday. I had stayed home on Tuesday because we got dumped with a pile of snow and I certainly knew better then, but when Wednesday came, I told myself to not be a sissy and get on the road. I didn't have to be in to work first thing, so I laid low in the morning and headed out about 10:30ish.

The roads were fine, especially main roads and the highway...or so I thought. I was driving, minding my speed, not messing with the radio, my phone or anything else. My focus was on the road.  I was in the left lane driving on I-75North.  I had just passed by I-275.  I was about halfway to work.  All of a sudden my car hit a patch of ice and I began to spin.  "Uh oh", I thought, "this isn't good."  I tried to correct the spin and Brent has told me time and time again to "turn into the spin"...well, in the heat of the moment, you're just doing your best.  The tail of my car spun to the right and it spun to the left.  I ended up spinning 180 degrees and I was facing southbound...I was nose-to-nose with another car on the highway.  Talk about scary.  Luckily, the traffic on the highway was sparse, otherwise, it would've been MUCH worse.  I traveled backwards down the highway across 3 lanes of traffic and ended up smacking my back left end into a cement wall.  It was like that scene in Wizard of Oz when the house finally lands in Oz after the tornado and there was this silence.  I had to do a once over and catch my breath.  I was okay.  I wasn't injured.  I hadn't hit any other car.  I saw a car drive past me and mouth the words "Are you okay?".  I nodded in response.  I called 911 to let them know what had happened. 

A police squad came and I sat in the back of their car as we waited for the tow truck.  My car was undriveable.  In the meantime, the nice policeman wrote me up a ticket for failure to control my vehicle.  I didn't even think twice about it since I got in an accident.  I thought it was standard procedure.  I reminded them that I wasn't do anything suspicious.  I wasn't messing with my radio or phone; I wasn't speeding.  I probably sounded crazy...probably like a person who has never been in an accident sitting in the back of the police squad waiting for a tow truck on a snowy highway.  While we were waiting, we saw several cars and trucks spin and have difficulty in the exact same spot I did. 

The next day, I got a phone call from that same police officer that wrote me the ticket and he felt bad for writing me a ticket knowing that others did the exact same thing as I did and so he recanted my ticket.  How nice.  Now I know that just because I got into an accident doesn't mean that I deserved a ticket. 

Even with that said, I'm staying home when CPS calls off !  Not worth it!

finally!

so many of you know that i have a part time job at the cheesecake factory (don't be jealous...seriously) and i have been wanting to quit there for...years! but since it's been a steady income for us and since we're on a one income household for now, now is not the time to quit the extra income. it is however time to explore other options for extra income. i've been talking (and talking and talking and talking and not enough doing!) about applying for a job that actually relates to my degree that i have earned (speech language pathology). wow, tada! what a novel idea!

so today i did it. i finally bit the bullet. i applied for a part time/PRN speech path job at cincinnati children's.

wish me luck!

hello. my name is cindy and i'm a bad blog updater. well, i'm inconsistent that is. i would like to use the excuse that nothing exciting has happened for me to blog about. but that's just a lie. straight up fat lie. i can think of a handful of things that have happened since i last blogged...

1. we had our 8th annual wine party in january. that's usually the same weekend as my birthday, so it doubles as a birthday party for me. that gets my husband off the hook. lucky him... and i don't think i have any pictures from that night. is that sad or what?


2. i turned 31. that can be lumped into the same 'event' as the previous, but it was an event nonetheless. now, 2 months later, i can't tell you what i did for my actual birthday. maybe if i blogged about it earlier, i'd remember. OR we did absolutley nothing and it was just divine. i think it was the latter.


3. brent and i joined give back cincinnati. it's a non-profit guilt-free volunteer organization that allows us to learn more about our city while also meeting new people. i even took another step and joined a committee with GBC. i am a member of the civic engagement committee. i'm learning as a i go as far as what the heck the committee is all about! for a while, i was confused. i'll probably post something from one of the events sometime.


4. balls around the block. sounds pretty vulgar...and i think in the beginning it actually was, but it has evolved. bottom line? it's a pub crawl downtown to bars literally around the block. we also raised money for a cause. i think this year was for a dog park to be built. there were 5 of us that participated and it was a blast! at each bar there were drink specials just for us crawlers and we had a good time meeting our team. Go Team Righteous Room!

this is bethany and i with our team leader...of our first team. we decided that we didn't like our first team, so we bailed and joined the boys on another team at another bar. we had to fear the deserted team the remainder of the night!

5. i've had this desire to go to a dance class for a while now. i used to dance when i was a child (hello mildred lyons!), but haven't done it (besides in a bar or club) since. my friend bethany has been going to the cincinnati ballet for a while and so i have joined her on a couple of occasions. the thing abou this class is that they don't necessarily teach you the steps, but you get to flail around the studio while trying to learn the steps. the more you go to the class, the more you learn the dances, the more of a workout you get. hmph. but it is fun, i promise!