If it's not in the blog, it hasn't happened yet

After her crash in the Rodeo and my subsequent posting on the accident, Peg wondered, only half-jokingly, how long it would be before various family members started calling us. As it turned out, my brother emailed me that evening offering legal help if needed, and my brother-in-law, after reading fhb that weekend, turned to Roberta and said, "you better call Peg."

The blog, the new millenium's version of keeping in touch with family.

I picked up the repaired Rodeo on Tuesday, and turned in the brand-new Taurus with only 1,900 miles on it that I had had as my rental.

The Taurus is long, at least compared to the Mini-Cooper, and even the Rodeo, and I had had a lot of trouble fitting it into the garage. Last week I came home, parked the Taurus in the garage, and hit the button to close the door. As I was heading into the house, I heard a "bang!", turned around and saw that the door had hit the back of the Taurus. Although the automatic garage door has the usual safety feature which automatically lifts it if it touches anything, it hadn't started back up.

"Jesus!" Frantic Fred screams, dropping his packages and rushing back to the garage, visions of how he's going to tell Allstate about this. I hit the garage door opener, and the door starts lifting the back of the Taurus into the air.

"Jesus!" Redundant Fred screams again, and I hit the button again to stop it.

"Calm down," I encourage myself, since I think I'm on the edge of a heart attack, and seriously consider gobbling some of Peg's blood pressure pills.

I scramble over the hood of the Taurus, as I can't get around it (Peg asked later, "Why didn't you open the passenger side door?" And you know, it never occurred to me), get into the driver's seat, start it, try to pull ahead, can't, realize I have the parking brake on, pull a lever, nothing happens, realize I still have the parking brake on, pull another lever, hit the gas... and bang hard into the wall.

The hood flies open.

"Nooo," Fred screams at this point, thinking I've now succeeded in damaging both the front and back of the Taurus. I get out of the car, circle to the back, where I've now cleared the garage door, and open the door fully, waiting to see how bad the damage is.

There's no damage. Not even a scratch. Nowhere. Bumper's fine, trunk lid is fine. Underside is fine. My God. So I hop back into the Taurus, back it out, and take a look at the front end. No damage. And I finally realize the first lever I had yanked was the hood release, and that's why the hood opened.

I stagger into the house, where Bear is screaming, because he had heard me screaming, and Kittenish is howling because Bear is screaming, and we all calm down.

I have a big martini later.