On the plus side, I think she knows just how much I love her now.
2005-08-18...9:56 p.m.

This MORNING. This morning I got up, finished getting the kids ready for school, and hustled out the door to go meet their bus. As I was loading Alex in the car, I noticed that he was grubby. And I don't mean just grubby, I mean his little arms and hands were GREY and had left little trails of themselves across his face. This means that Corey only sent Mercedes in for her bath last night. Whatever. I am MOM because I am She Who Carries Wet Wipes In Her Purse, right? Anyway, the precious little angels got on their bus on time, looking mostly like the spawn of respectable citizens.

I got home, and called the insurance company and asked the agent to kindly extend the rental contract on The Imp. I like calling it The Imp. It makes it sound like an ugly little car, doesn't it? Like a Gremlin? Anyway, the contract was extended, and just to be on the safe side, I called Enterprise to make sure that it had been done. I mean, with the way our luck has been running regarding the van situation, I could just SEE Enterprise sending the cops to the house to arrest us for grand theft freaking auto. So anyhow, that's all taken care of, and the rental is extended through the 25th.

I tried to go to sleep, but I kept waking up every half hour or so because I was having a succession of nightmares. I don't know what they were about, I just know that my heart was trying to beat it's way out of my chest, and I didn't sleep for shit. I finally got up, and talked Corey into going to a dealership with me to get some info on a couple of vehicles we're considering. However, the salesman that I spoke to on Tuesday - the one that told me to come back on Thursday with my husband - wasn't even there. This pissed me off, because as most people know, my BIGGEST pet peeve is having my time wasted. So chances are, we won't be going back there, at least, not to deal with the same salesman. At least we're supposed to be getting a vacation out of it. Like I actually WANT to go anywhere. But I guess we're supposed to get a getaway, a cruise, and plane tickets for $99. Doesn't that sound nice? I'll probably die of scurvy or something if we go on a cruise.

Afterwards, we went to go see Christine and haul her hiney out to lunch with us. We ate lunch at Denny's and hung out drinking our drinks and chatting, and it was very nice. Not exactly coffee at 9 at night with nobody else, but still nice, and I'm glad we did it.

We went back home to a message from Hartford Casualty (does that make anyone else want to say it in their best British commercial announcer accent?) saying that, officially, the van is a total loss. I pretty much knew that from the get-go, but I guess I was harboring some kind of hope that it wasn't a total loss, because I felt really depressed after getting the news. So I had to call the people our auto loan is through and find out what they wanted us to do. They wanted the insurance info, and they're going to try to get the pay-off expedited. Otherwise, if it's not paid off by September 3rd, we have to make another payment. Fortunately, we've been paying extra towards the loan, so we have a little bit of credit, enough to knock our next payment down by about $100. So that'll help, if we do have to make our next payment. And they're pretty happy with us, so they said that they'd be willing to finance us on another vehicle if we need them to.

So tonight...

Tonight, Mercedes was in the bathroom, taking her bath. I had just settled down to enjoying a bowl of my favorite cereal which I have not been able to find for YEARS, and I heard her coughing. I went in to check on her, and she was laying face down in the water, legs out behind her. I screamed her name while reaching down to pull her out, and she came flying up out of the water.

I lost the little bit of the cereal I had eaten, and stood there, shaking and crying for a couple of minutes. This was a little over an hour ago, and my chest still aches from thinking about it. Let me clarify that she came flying up out of the water under her own power - she was just playing and holding her breath under water. I did NOT have to perform CPR (OMG I'm tired - I almost said VCR instead of CPR) or any other horrific thing one should never have to do to one's own child.

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