If it ain't broke...

We interrupt your regularly scheduled autism

I was all ready to post yesterday about our lovely (albeit brief) vacation with the kids. About how they both loved camping, and we had a great time. And then we went to OT.

First, let me start by explaining that my dad gave us our car because he got hit by someone during a snowstorm last winter, and decided that he didn't want to fix the damage. We have spent all year working on that car, a few things here, a few things there. We just got it finished about 3 weeks ago. It was completely fixed (except for needing a new paint job). For the first time since Reed was a baby, we had a really nice car (it's a 99 Escort and now that it's fixed up, it's a really great little car).

So, this morning when I took Reed to his OT at Children's, the valet guy I was following behind in the parking garage decided to back into a parking spot. Unfortunately, I was in front of the spot he wanted. He put the SUV he was parking into reverse, and floored it backward into my car without even looking. My car is a mess. It buckled the hood and broke the hood latch (so now it is bent in the middle and doesn't stay closed). Because the SUV was so much taller than my car, it pretty much ruined the whole front of my car. I'm not sure yet if it did any damage mechanically, because Heath had to leave for work without getting to look at it real closely.

Then to make matters worse, the valet is trying to cover his own behind by saying that I pulled in behind him after he was already backing into the space, which is a total lie. I was already stopped behind him before he even put it into reverse. Why on earth would I pull in behind someone who is backing into a space? It doesn't even make any sense. So now I have to wait until they can pull up the surveillance camera footage from the garage, and hope it caught what happened, otherwise they are probably going to try to get out of paying for the damage. And since we can't afford full coverage, our insurance won't fix our car. It will all come out of our (empty) pocket. Please pray that the camera caught what happened and shows that he was totally at fault. Otherwise, we'll have to fight it out with the insurance of the people whose truck he was driving.

On top of all that, after Heath came to pick us up with the other car (affectionately known as "the car of death" because it's not road worthy, and the wheel could fall off at any time), he went into the garage to look at the damage. While we were parked in front of the Escort, another valet person almost hit the Neon while backing into another spot WAY too fast! We (and they) are sooo lucky it was our car, and not us walking behind him when he did that. It's a CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL for crying out loud! There are people walking to and from their cars with their kids all the time! I am beyond ticked off right now. It makes me want to sit in my car with a video camera for a few hours just to show everyone how they drive in that garage.

Ugh. Anybody want to trade lives for a few days? I need a vacation from mine.

posted by Steph at 3:16 PM