So Alive

Things I ate for dinner at Chuggles in Antigonish on Sunday night: steak, french fries with vinegar, coleslaw, garlic bread, two spicy caesars, mudpie with hot fudge sauce

Estimated calories for same: approximately a frillion

How much I care about that: Not at all.

Reason being: Taco and I miraculously walked out alive and mostly unhurt after flipping poor Gladiola on an ice covered highway.

We were driving home from Sydney on Sunday afternoon. What had started as a beautiful day turned into snow squalls and, apparently, a would-be killer patch of black ice on the TransCan. (This after Taco’s sudden bout of laryngitis put the boots to him singing his sweet smart songs for anyone in the middle of the night. Long drive for not much, you know? Anyhow.) We hit the black ice. Started travelling inexorably toward the oncoming traffic, swerved wildly, spun a hundred and eighty degrees and smashed into the guardrail on the driver’s side. Driver: that’d be me. The guardrail lifted us up into the air, where, according to witnesses, we sailed for a while before thumping down, again on the driver’s side, then rolling on to our roof. I hung there from my seat belt, upside down, and watched the windshield crack into a billion pieces. And I thought, well, that’s going to cost me some coin to fix. And then I said: Holy shit, Taco, I totally fucked up the car. Never for a minute did I think Taco wouldn’t be alive and ok, even though I saw him go sailing up toward the ceiling, heading for points unknown. He ended up in the backseat, I guess.

Anyhow. The car is totalled. We are not.

The RCMP drove us to Antigonish, to the aforementioned Chuggles, where we ate the aforementioned meal which, can I tell you, was the best food I’ve ever tasted. Because I was alive, alive, damn it, that’s why.

So far, it’s been a really interesting year. Heh.

Meant to go to the new gym yesterday, but all my muscles and fibres and bones and joints were achy. They are less so today. So soon as the rental car company calls me about our replacement vehicle, I’ll head out to do errands with a big finish at the gym. I can hardly wait. It will feel so sweet to move these limbs, to sweat, to breathe deep, to feel my muscles work and stretch. Because it’s a miracle they can. I don’t generally fall for miracle talk, myself. But clearly, someone is looking out for me these days.

Thanks, dad.