Crash! (and not the Oscar-winning movie)

Okay, crash is kind of an overstatement. More like bump, with a bit of damage. I'm telling you, I should have just stayed in bed on Wednesday. So, I was leaving for my session with the Future-Mrs-K.U., and my aunt was here to babysit Clara and Corwin. As I was backing out of the garage, I clipped my aunt's van. Her van that is so new it still smells new. She's had it for about a month. Yikes.

Of course, I went inside to tell her (and apologize profusely) after I had taken a look and realized that it wasn't that bad. The plastic thing-y (yes, I'm very proficient in car lingo) that is like a hubcap broke, and her mirror had a scratch, as did the plastic trim around the wheel. My vehicle has a miniscule scratch in the paint (as in, when I showed a friend, she had to say "where?" twice), and a tiny little scratch in my plastic around the wheel - both things too small to worry about (it'll have more in normal wear and tear from gravel and salt before the lease is up in two years). My aunt obviously has to get hers fixed, but the bonus is that my uncle works for the car dealership where they got it - he's the service manager - so he'll get a good price on the repair. Before deciding whether to put it through insurance, we decided to wait for the price. The odd thing is what received the most impact was the tire of the van, because it was parked with the tire turned out. So, what seemed like a good thing had me worried about alignment and stuff.

I drove off for my session. Trying to decide what would be best (do I call the husband and deal with it then, or wait until he gets home and hears "Daddy, Daddy, guess what?" from Corwin, and then I get home to very irate husband?), I decided to bite the bullet. Before going any further, let me preface this by saying that this is my first accident. I have been rear-ended, but this is the first accident that I have caused (okay, I scraped a car in England, but that was driving on the wrong side on ridiculously narrow streets and didn't affect my insurance or driving record. Anything like that on a whole other continent really doesn't count). I also have a clean driving record - no speeding tickets, nothing. So, I called. And I told him that I'd had a bit of an accident that was quite minor. And he said "What the f*#% did you hit now?" Excuse me? So I hung up on him.

This was very rich coming from him. Because, and let's get this WAY out in the open, two years ago he did the exact same thing!!! No kidding. He actually backed straight into my aunt's old car (when I said exact, I meant same person and all), not just a little clip on the side. There was some damage to the car, but my aunt and uncle never told us, just that it was no big deal, etc (I just found out that it was over $400). So. . . I called back, and tried to be reasonable and pointed this out. I could tell he was still mad, but I thought maybe he would calm down a bit when he saw my aunt's van and realized that it was quite minor.

When I got home after my session, he wouldn't look at me. And he was even more annoyed because my aunt had called to let me know that there was a driving problem - the front end was messed up (guess I was tight to be worried about alignment, etc). There was nothing we could do until my uncle took it in the next day. The husband remained cold and frosty (good for beer, not so much for husbands), so I was glad I had movie plans.

Today, we found out it was going to be just under $2000. So I called the insurance - after the husband had a small freak out that our insurance was going to go up 25% a month, blah blah blah. Actually, no. Since we have no damage to fix on our vehicle, we have no deductible to pay (yay!). And my aunt will have no deductible because she is not at fault (yay!). And since this is our first mark on our record, it will not affect our record or premium (yay!yay!). Apparently their rule of thumb is that if you have three at-fault "fender benders" within 36 months, they will raise your premium.

So, it has worked out all around. Even good drivers can have accidents, and that's why there's insurance. You'd think my husband would be talking to me by now, huh? Well, he is, but there's still some frostiness. Ah, spring is coming, he's gotta thaw sometime!