IF . . .

IF Brent had taken the van to work today and left me the car without air conditioning. . . .

IF I had just gone straight home after hanging Syd's campaign posters this afternoon . . .

IF Brent had not called me at that exact moment . . .

IF I had not been stupid enough to answer my cell phone at that exact moment . . .

IF I had just gone back to bed this morning and stayed there all day like I wanted to . . .

I would have avoided this:

Fender bender. Totally my fault. Totally sucks. So many ways this could have been avoided. So many promptings ignored. Ah, well. No injuries. No sense beating myself up over it.

If I had done any of those things I maybe could have avoided this accident, but I may have also missed the super fun field trip I went on with Riley. Or the great food and conversation with friends at the Mongolian BBQ place for lunch. Or the smile on my son's face when we finally found those elusive Bakugan balls at the third store we visited. Would I have traded any of that? I don't know.

Life is a series of little oppositions. The highs and the lows. The good and the bad. The joyful family reunions and the crappy car wrecks. You can never know what the day's going to bring. But you can know (as I now do) not to answer your phone while driving. What a loser!

[PS: This wreck may have been karma because I did a really mean thing this afternoon. This not-so-nice little girl named Makenna is also running for VP at Syd's school. She hung her posters up yesterday. Today we walked through the school and hung one of Sydney's posters next to every one of hers. And I maybe might have made sure that Sydney's posters were more prominent than hers. Every time. See, mean! I didn't say that plan out loud to my child who was just carrying the stapler and putting up whatever I handed her wherever I suggested. But it was definitely my plan. My evil, evil, terrible plan. Don't judge me!]