someone watching over me?

This morning was one of those mornings where nothing goes right.

My alarm clock went off at its usual 5:23. I hit snooze and reset my phone alarm for 5:40, then got up to pee. I left the door of my room ajar so the family's waking rumblings would keep me from falling into a deep sleep. Yeah right. I woke up to the 6:53 traffic report. I cursed, then hopped out of bed and into the shower, hopped out, pulled on my clothes (which luckily I had ironed the night before) and caught the 7:03 traffic report (I'm speedy). The traffic was only backed up to Derby Street - exit 15. That meant I had two exits at the speed limit before hitting a wall of traffic, and by the time I got there, the traffic may have dissipated slightly. It was worth the risk of taking the highway.

I gathered my keys and bag, then remembered that I was going to have to find the piece of paper with my Tufts access codes on it because I needed to email myself online journal articles from Tufts library to save cashmoney on copying. I fumbled and knocked a bunch of stuff off my craft table and onto the floor. Damn. I found the paper though, success. I took one final glance at my room and walked out into the hallway. I went to go down the stairs when something happened. I don't know what it was, I didn't trip and I didn't turn my ankle, but I fell, and hard. I tried to catch myself as I fell down the stairs because the tile floor at the bottom does not make a good cushion. As I fell, my legs turned out at the knee, and I could feel my knees taking the impact at every stair. I finally managed to throw my right hand out to my side and slowed my fall by dragging the heel of my hand along the wall. You know how you get a rug burn if you rub your skin against carpet? Yeah, well the same thing happens with wallpaper. I came to a stop just before the end of the stairs, and managed to land on my butt. I sat there for a minute, breathing heavily, pain radiating from my knees, shins, and my right hand, which surprisingly stung more than anything else. I was really still until I calmed down, then limped through the kitchen, grabbed lunch from the fridge, and went outside.

There was a thick layer of frost covering my Subaru Forester. I jumped in the car and pulled the seatbelt only to go flying backwards. The seatbelt had wrapped itself around the lever that reclines the seat, and when I pulled the seatbelt, the tension pulled the lever and the seat fully reclined. I untangled it, put the seat upright and looked through my frosted windshield. "Seriously, is this some sign I shouldn't be going to work?!" I asked. I started my car, and jacked the heat, but the car wasn't warm enough to defrost the windows. As I eased out of my driveway, I pounded the windshield wiper fluid button and sprayed washer fluid all over my window. It defrosted most of the window, except for the part in front of my face. I had to creep slowly down my street, and then drive slowly and carefully turn down Union Street while waiting for the window to defrost. Luckily by the time I was ready to merge onto the highway, my windshield was clear. Of course, as I made my way onto the onramp, someone pulled out of a gas station and cut me off, then proceeded to merge at a speed of 25mph. "RRRRRRRRR" was all I could say.

Since the breakdown lane is active in the mornings, I stayed in it - it's not the fastest moving lane, but I think it's the smoothest, plus if I stay in that lane, I don't have to cross one or two lanes of wall-like traffic to exit to the T garage. Of course, the drivers around me were moving painfully slow. I'm not a speed demon, my care hates going about 65, but when the road is clear, going 40 on the highway just isn't optimal. I was boxed in though, passing wasn't an option. I had only gone a few miles when I saw the State Police merging onto the highway. "Dammit," I thought, "What now?" I turned on WBZ to catch the traffic report - the timing was perfect "and now we're receiving reports of a right lane accident just before Derby Street. It's in the active breakdown lane with is NOT going to be helping anyone traffic-wise." Great. A box truck was kind enough to let me cut in front of him, but few other drivers were getting the message. They were flying down the breakdown lane until they nearly smacked the trooper's cruiser, then cut people off in the right lane. Five or six people did this to me. Just as I was ready to really lose it and either let the expletives fly or turn back around because clearly the higher powers were against me, I came upon the accident scene. One car was fairly undamaged, but the Subaru Forester involved was missing its front end. Yup. A Subaru Forester, same as mine, but red. I gaped at it, and glanced at the front in my rearview mirror. It appeared that the person driving it had made it out ok and was unhurt, but the car was totaled. I sat in my car thinking for a minute. Then I realized that today the higher powers weren't working against me. Despite the bruised knee and shins, the cut hand, the scrape on my leg, the higher powers were clearly working for me. Amazing.