More on the car

This morning I filled out the insurance papers and faxed them to our agent. I also sent him the pictures I had taken of the damage.
Glass in the car seats

I think the broken glass on the kiddy seats is a really sad image, but the fact that the kiddies were far far away when this happened made even this imagine less than traumatic.

This is the way the car looked:
From the right side
From the left side

and of course, there were assorted parts strewn on the floor.
stuff

Today I got a call from the insurance guy who told me that the vandals got the ??? main electrical thing (I must interject here that my knowledge of how vehicles work consists of understanding that the small people who sit under the hood and pedal subsist on a diet of gasoline (poor things) and somehow are satisfied enough to do it day after day with precious little complaining, but I digress) and that that thing is not easily available. So, he told me, they will have to go to junkyards to see if they can purchase one. So of course I realize that it is possible that the vandals have taken the item either because someone ordered it (because they are not easily available) or that they have sold it to someone who sells the item, because it is not easily available. Hence, it is possible that my insurance company may be buying the part that was stolen to replace it in my car.

However, I prefer to believe that it is a bit like a heart, the part that keeps things running, and I would prefer to think that it will be a piece of a car whose body failed it and that it and I will be happy as it comes to live in a new and happy body.

Or maybe sometimes a car part is just a car part.

Of Mess and Men

So picture this: I wake up in the morning knowing that today I must help my daughter get her daughter to gan and then come home and take my husband to the hospital to be checked by his surgeon. I get ready, go outside, and when I get to the car I first notice that the driver’s door is unlocked. Of course I always lock the car when I leave it, but even if I had not, then all of the buttons would be up because all of them unlock at the same time. Something wasn’t right. Next, I noticed glass in the back seat, the front seat, the seats reclining all the way… already I was starting to feel sick. Then I looked at the steering column, the absence of the panels around it, wires coming out, many wires, and electrical parts on the floor in front of my seat, on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat on the floor in the back.

The car was trashed.

My brain immediately flat-lined. My heart started beating fast, I began to shake, and I was incapable of thought. So I sent back into the house and did the only thing I could think of: called my son-in-law for help. If he had not already been fast-tracked to a place in Gan Eden after 120 years or more, today, I am certain he’s on the list. He was able to think and to act.

He arranged for someone to come and take the car to the Toyota dealer and called the dealer and reminded them to keep the car inside since it was raining. I had taken pictures of the damage to the car, informed neighbors, and later made a police report. One of my sons was very helpful and reassuring and he gave me some of the insurance info I needed and alerted the insurance adjuster via email that on Sunday morning, I would need an appraiser to look at the car so that it could be fixed. Only a couple of hours later, once I had gotten my husband to the hospital driving my son-in-law’s car, was I able to shed the tension and begin to relax.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it is a blip. Best guess: our “cousins” just wanted to steal it and they were foiled by our immobilizer. To the best of my knowledge, nothing is missing from the car and all I’ve lost is a little of my faith in some parts of the human race. Of course, it strengthened my trust in others…

My husband continues to recover. We hope for better news each day.

Shabbat shalom