We love to see deer heads hanging on the wall

2004-10-18 - 10:44 p.m.

So, to continue the story from yesterday, we spent a very sleepless night in Groveland Saturday night. On the bright side, though, the rain didn't start until after we were safely in bed and the roof didn't start leaking until after we were awake in the morning.

At around eight the next morning, things in town started to open up and we finally had access to a phone. My parents called all their friends within 300 miles and not a single one was home. It was pretty frustrating. So we started going down my short list of friends. I called DeenPo first, but she wasn't home. Then I called Doodle. Doodle was the one who rescued us. She drove up to Groveland from her home in Turlock. I'm so bad. When I was telling her how to get to us, I left out the fact that part of the road she would have to drive would be steep and windy. In hindsight I think I probably should've told her, but at the time I was thinking it would be better not to scare her.

While we were waiting for her, we went to the market and bought toothbrushes and then had breakfast. We spent the rest of the time wrapped in blankets in our heatless drippy motel trailer. When Doodle arrived we all piled into her van and I drove back down the mountain. Honestly, I thought I was driving really slowly and carefully, but I didn't realize how scared Doodle was until after the steep windy part was done and she relaxed. I apologized and she said at least she was too scared to get carsick.

We dropped Doodle off at her work (I was so glad we made it in time for her to not be late) in Modesto and then borrowed her van and drove home to Sacramento. We all showered and changed clothes and then turned around and drove her van and my car back to Modesto, left her van in the parking lot at her work, and then turned around and drove back to Sacramento. It was a whole lot of driving, a lot of it in the rain, and we were already exhausted from the stress of the accident and the lack of decent sleeping conditions. I owe Doodle so much for rescuing us.

But in the end, everything turned out ok. My whole family is alive. It could easily have turned out differently. I am a firm believer in seatbelts now more than ever. My dad walked away from it all without a scratch. He strained his hip a bit climbing in through the window to get some stuff out of the back, but that was after the accident. My mom has a big bruise on her side from hitting the door handle (we think) and she has a big scratch and a broken fingernail on one finger, plus a bump on her head. She seems to be the worst off. I have a bump on my head, a couple of bruises (I have no idea how I got these--did our stuff fly around in the back seat and hit me? I don't remember it.), and a sore neck and back. Not bad, considering what could've happened. There could easily have been a car coming the other direction. We could easily have gone over the drop off on the side of the road. Our car ended up with it's back end buried in a big dry manzanita bush. We could've started another forest fire! When I think of all the horrible things that could've happened that didn't, I am truly amazed at just how lucky we are.

This morning I got a call from the pharmacy manager at Hospital #3. I've been invited for an interview. We haven't set a date yet, he asked me to look at my schedule and call him back. I'm hoping Hospitals #1 and #2 will call so I can interview at all these places. Anyway, I will most likely be flying to Seattle at some poing next week.

I went to volleyball open gym tonight and played like a mad woman. I'm so sore now. I'm definitely sorer than I was after the accident. We didn't have as many people show up tonight as we usually do, for some reason. We usually have two courts going with full teams of six playing with one sub each while one team is sitting out waiting to play the winner of whatever game finishes first. Tonight we had one court going with a full game and on the other court people would play with however many were left over. At one point there were two guys on one side of the court and one guy on the other and that one asked me, "Wanna play doubles?" so I joined him. I haven't played that hard in ages. Doubles are particularly hard because you're in on every single play, you have to cover more of the court, and you never get a chance to rest. And all three of those guys were really good so it was really, really fun, but afterwards I was so tired I could hardly play the rest of the night.