The good, the bad, and the ugly – part 2

And now, back to our story …

I woke up way too early, dying of thirst. I tiptoed to the bathroom to fill a glass, and of course had to pee as soon as the water started running. I shut the tap, set the empty glass on the towel on the counter so it wouldn’t clunk too loudly, and peed. After that, I washed my hands and went to dry them on the towel that was laying on the counter. Yes, THAT towel. The one with the glass on it. The glass that crashed to the tile floor and shattered in about 62,349 pieces. The tile floor on which I stood barefoot.

Me: Ooops!

BFJ (startled awake): What was that?!?

Me: I seem to have broken a glass.

I now know why I will never have tile in any bathroom of mine as long as I live. Because when you try to sweep up broken things, the pieces lodge in between the tiles and you have to sweep over and over and over again to scoop the pesky little shards out of hiding. A vacuum is always a better option, but apparently those aren’t routinely provided in hotel rooms.

So I only had about five hours of sleep, but that was okay, because a spa visit is SOOO relaxing, and that was on our afternoon schedule. Well, it was relaxing, sort-of, but it would have been even more relaxing if my esthetician didn’t talk so much. I have been to many spas, but I have never experienced someone who talked as much as this gal did. She just didn’t stop! I put up with it during my body scrub and wrap, but for my pedicure, I finally picked up some old magazine to “read” just so she’d stop talking. I mean, they do have to explain the treatment and ask you some questions , but they don’t have to repeat themselves over and over or ask you what you’re doing tonight. That’s what a hairdresser is for.

The spa was also where I tipped over this tall, gangly branch arrangement. I was just trying to get to an armchair to sit down and fill out my information sheet. It obviously was trying to guard that armchair. At least it wasn’t a heavy arrangement, so it didn’t break the window that it fell against.

Anyway, BFJ and I later said our goodbyes and I headed home, scrubbed and polished and glossy and craving quiet. I had it for a couple of hours, then DD came home and PG arrived. But the lack of sleep was catching up to me, so I went to bed pretty early.

Sunday morning around 10, just after DD left for the day, the doorbell rang. I answered it. To be blunt, it was a summons server. Remember that car crash I had last summer? Apparently, the other driver is now claiming damages from me because he claims that he was injured in the crash. He wants general damages, special damages, costs, interest, and “such further and other relief as this Honourable Court may deem meet and just”. He is claiming that because of my “negligence’ (two pages of listed negligence, by the way), he has sustained a whole whack of injuries including some that “before the trial of this matter will be disclosed on medical/expert evidence”. Oh yes – he has also suffered “loss of enjoyment of life and will continue to suffer a loss of enjoyment or life in the future”. And “a loss of income, past, present and prospective”.

Wow.

This is the guy who, when we collided, said he and his girlfriend were on their way to the airport to go to Las Vegas the next day. This is the guy who yanked open my passenger door right after impact and asked if I was okay (then yelled at me), who told me that he was okay when I asked him the same question, was later walking around just fine, was talking animatedly to his girlfriend and various other people at the scene, who hauled luggage out of his damaged car, who got first into the fire truck then into the police car to keep out of the rain, who phoned a buddy to come pick them up, then climbed into said buddy’s truck with the girlfriend and luggage.

My point being, injuries??? He certainly wasn’t acting like he had any at the time. I understand that some soft tissue injuries can show up later, but what is itemized on the summons is rather extreme. I guess it’s kind-of a generic list, as is the list of my alleged negligent behaviours, but it still is upsetting.

I was absolutely in shock, having never even seen a summons before. Legal matters scare me, and I don’t speak or read legalese, so all I could do was to start shaking and say to the summons server stuff like, “What exactly is this? Am I being sued? Do I need a lawyer?”

He assured me that my car liability insurance would take care of all this, that all I had to do was call the insurance company. He said that they would ask me to bring the writ in to them, and then their lawyers would handle everything. I wouldn’t have to pay anything else, he said, the insurance company would look after the entire matter.

I noticed that my address was wrong in a couple of places on the document, so I said, “That’s not my address. This isn’t me.”

He said, condescendingly, “It’s you. That’s just a typo.”

“It’s wrong in two places,” I persisted. “How can that be me when the address is wrong? What else is wrong in there?”

“Ah, forget it!” he snarled and left.

I shut the door quietly, still trembling. I needed to process this. I needed to make sense of it all. I needed to research – and PG was on my computer!

We had a subdued breakfast. I was still thinking this whole thing through. After we ate, I wanted to clean the kitchen myself, then get on-line to see what I could learn about this situation into which I had just been thrown. And that’s when I spilled the opened bottle of wine on the floor and on the kitchen carpet by the sink. And that’s when I cried – but only a little. I had a kitchen to clean and now a floor to wipe and a carpet to blot.

And fortunately, I also had a glass or two of wine left in the bottle. For later.

The good, the bad, and the ugly – part 1

This has been quite the weekend.

My weekend included such diverse elements as an overnight stay in a swanky hotel, a phone-call to hotel security, quality time with my pal BFJ, a chatty spa visit, skanky girls, broken glasses, blown-out candles, a tipped-over branch arrangement, a spilled glass of beer, a spilled bottle of wine, an almost-crunched back bumper on my car, and a delivered Writ of Summons.

Cool, huh?

BFJ is one of my very favourite people. We have been great friends for over 25 years and have seen each other through many, many good and some bad times in those 25+ years. She is smart and funny, wise and intuitive. She is working on her masters degree in counselling, and she will be an amazing counsellor. She is also even more hooked on spas than I am, and we try to get away together three or four times a years overnight to a hotel and spa. This weekend was one of our hotel ‘n’ spa dates.

The almost-crunched bumper came when I was parking my car in the underground carpark of the hotel. I backed in, then popped the trunk to get my gear out. As I got out of the driver’s seat, I realized that I could back in almost another metre, so I hopped back in to do so. I reversed quite slowly, I thought, then heard this big BANG. Holy shit! was my immediate reaction. I’ve smacked my car AGAIN!

I sat there, cursing aloud for a couple of minutes, then got out to see the damage. Nothing. I was still a half a metre from the wall. Huh? I examined the bumper more closely. Nothing. What is going on?!? I puzzled. I definitely heard a huge banging noise. I was so sure I’d hit that wall. Okay, I hadn’t been going fast at all, but that noise surely indicated some damage.

Then I realized that the bang was simply the car trunk bouncing down when I thought I was close to the wall and braked, apparently rather suddenly. O – kay. No damage. No one around to witness my incomprehension and confusion either, fortunately.

After BFJ and I settled into our hotel suite, we headed out for dinner. On the way, we kind-of got blocked by a group of very skanky teenage girls tottering in stilettos down the street ahead of us. Their skirts were basically belts, their tops were down to THERE, and not one of them wore a coat. In February. Okay, this is Vancouver, and our temperatures aren’t as low as most of Canada, but you still need to wear a winter coat in February here. They looked like hookers, quite honestly (Beginner hookers, maybe. More experienced ones probably walk better in stiletto heels.). In fact, a gal coming down the street toward them, and us, said, as she passed them, “A buck for a suck?” We almost died laughing, BFJ and I, but the skanks didn’t get it and twittered on and on about it as we finally were able to get past them and carry on looking for a restaurant.

We ended up at a small bistro that reminded me very much of restaurants in New York – narrow, long, dark. Very personable waiter and yummy food, too. That’s where said waiter dropped a glass and broke it, and where the guy at the next table spilled his beer all over the table and over one of his eating companions. That’s also where BFJ, in her exuberance, laughed so hard that she blew out our candle. She quickly got up to exchange it with a lit one on another table, but as she set it down on our table, she started to laugh again and blew it out again. The server came to our rescue at that point and replaced it with yet another candle that stayed lit this time. I think BFJ figured out how to turn her head to laugh.

Back at the hotel, we stayed up till 2, still laughing (We do that a lot. As I said, BFJ has a terrific sense of humour. And she thinks I’m funny, too.). A scant half-hour later, with BFJ already deep-breathing on the other side of the room, I started to hear loud voices and louder music. Somebody somewhere near our room decided that a loud party in their room at 2:30 in the morning was a good idea and wouldn’t bother anybody. I couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from. It sounded like it was outside our window, but since we were on the 28th floor, that was unlikely. It was quite loud in our bedroom, but not in our living room. Next door maybe?

BFJ woke up about then, and held the door as I scouted up and down the hallway in my jammies, listening at the doors on either side of us. Nothing there.

BFJ: “I think it’s coming from below us.”

Me: “I think we need to call security.”

So BFJ called the front desk. They had just received another call about all the noise, and told us that security was already on their way up. We listened very closely, hoping to hear the arrival of security at a door near us. We didn’t. But in ten minutes, there was absolutely no noise at all. No music, no voices. I love hotel security. They are stealth. They get results. I want to be hotel security when I grow up. They have power.

And speaking of power, I have the authority to keep you hanging at this point. This stunning story will continue tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.