So, this is one of those calls that you don’t want to hear on the answering machine, first thing after coming back after being dragged around the neighborhood by the dogs; a kind-of-upset voice from one’s only and dearly-beloved child saying

“Mom…I’m OK… I was run into by a truck and the car is totaled… I’m at 35 and Theo Malone, can you come and get me?”

There may be crappier ways to start a Monday. Frankly, I can’t think of any of them at the moment. Cpl/Sgt. Blondie is ok, but rather interestingly bruised. She is loaded up on painkillers, and her poor little Mitsubishi is in the SAPD impound lot; the concensus from the investigating officer, the EMT, the tow-truck driver and the FD response unit is that it is indeed, totaled.

It was only a light pick-up truck that hit her, after a very complicated series of events best left to the insurance people to sort out. She had the presence of mind to gather up most valuable items from it— including her textbooks from the trunk (which the tow-truck driver had to pry open for her).

She was waiting far me by the side of the road, with everything from the car loaded into a plastic tub, and a very nice and understanding SAPD patrolman (Yay, SAPD… where gallantry is not yet dead!) waiting with her, who gave me a lecture about having a cellphone of my own, since the accident had set up the most awful slow-down of traffic. I swear, I could have walked that last mile faster.

She is OK for now, but will probably feel like heck in the morning, especially when she starts to thread the maze of claims and adjustments, never mind the bruises. We plan to hold last rites for the Mitsubishi, and bury a portion of it in the garden sometime this week.

In about 500 years, someone doing an archeological dig in my garden is going to go nuts.