Sunday, August 26, 2007

She did it!

Tonight, she's in a big girl bed.

As I type, she's fast asleep in a big girl bed.

She was soooooo excited.
I was giddy.
Tim was weepy.

"What if she falls?" Tim asks.
"Honey, if she rolls off, she's only falling about 5 inches." (Smirk.)

Yeah, it's just on the floor right now.

We were at IKEA today, getting a much needed dresser for our room, when, on a whim, we decided to go ahead and get her a bed.
We strolled out to the car, Audrey eating her ice cream cone, Tim sucking on his soda, and me wondering how we were going to fit all this shit in the car.

We managed to get everything in without much difficulty. I had to momentarily place the cargo cover (below) on the roof of the car to make more room.

Of course, I forgot to put it back in the car when we were finished loading.
We'd been on the freeway for about 10 minutes. Tim was doing at least 70mph. We heard a loud thunk on the roof.
I looked at Tim.
"What was that?"
I knew the answer before I finished the question.
Tim shouts, "Oh shit!"
I'm yelling, "Pull over! Pull over!"
Tim screams, "I can't pull over! Did you see it fly off? CAN YOU SEE IT?"
No, I couldn't see it anywhere behind us. No cars were swerving out of the way. I look in my side mirror and see the flap hanging just over the edge of the luggage rack.
"PULLLLLLLL OVER!!!!!"
Tim skids to a halt in the emergency lane and I reach up, grab it and throw it back in the car.

"We could have killed someone," I said.
"Yeah."

In my head I imagined the worst possible outcomes. I imagined a huge wreck, getting thrown in jail, but worst of all- I imagined the guilt. How could I have been so stupid?

Not 5 minutes later, we're on a busy street near our house. This street has a middle lane that changes directions according to rush hour traffic. The lanes are marked with either a green arrow or a red 'x' signifying whether or not you should be driving in it. We had the green arrow. Tim and I had just started talking normally again after our scare. We were both a little jolted, still.
I look up from whatever I was glaring at inside the car to see a Beamer, head-on, flying right toward us.
"Oh shit!" shouts Tim.
"GET OVER! GET OVER!" I scream.

The BMW barely missed us. My heart was pounding.

"We could have been killed!"
"Yeah."

After several moments of silence, I turned to Tim holding back tears and said, "We could have died and the last thing I would've said to you would've been, 'Pull Over!' "
"Yeah, but we didn't."