Aurora Borealis

So the woman who rear-ended me last month is lying about what happened.  It seems to me that if you look at the damage to both cars, it’s awfully clear what happened and the story she’s telling doesn’t make sense..  But her insurance company (Geico) sees a way to not pay, so they’re going to try to take it.  It remains to be seen if our insurance company (State Farm) will be able to get them to pay.  Funny – we were about at the point that we said it was time to evaluate our insurance policies and needs and see if it made sense to shop companies.  One thing for sure – we won’t be giving our business to Geico based on the way they’ve behaved in this.

Got the word from Geico on Christmas Eve eve, I believe, that they weren’t going to take responsibility for the accident.  But I waited until after the holiday hoopla to proceed with State Farm.  Took our car into the body shop this morning and have a rental.  Waiting to hear from them on an estimate for time to repair.  Called earlier this afternoon to check, and the guy said he’d probably know something before the end of the day.  But since their business day ended about half an hour ago, I guess I’ll check in tomorrow.

We decided that if we have to rent something anyway we’d go ahead and rent a minivan to check it out, since we think the next car we buy will probably be a minivan.  So I’ve been driving a Dodge Grand Caravan around all day.  The larger version of what my mom had.  A number of years ago when she and I and my sister drove from here to Disney World, I got a chance to drive it a lot.  But mostly interstate driving.  I’m pleased to say it handles nicely in town, too.  This is a basically no-frills rental model, but I think I could be happy with a minivan.  This one has what seems to be politely called a “conversation mirror” (a.k.a. mom spy mirror), and I really like it.  I get a really good view of the Agent, even though he’s seated directly behind me.

Here’s hoping for the best on the resolution of the ultimate payment on the accident, but I expect it will be a long time before that is officially resolved.  And here’s looking forward to officially joining Minivan World.  Now it’s time for us to go get Mr. Tldz from the train.

So indeed we did not get to Mass today.  But we did read the lectionary while Agent Murphy was napping.  I know, I know – not the same as going to Mass; but it’s what we could manage today.  And it’s turned out to be a very nice day at home.  We’ll get back into the normal flow of going to Mass next weekend.

Now there’s a new soup to be made for dinner.  And, seeing as it’s Epiphany, I guess I should take down the Christmas cards we received – which served as really our only Christmas decorations this year, besides a small nativity set.

The plum pudding was a success.

We had fun lighting it on fire and serving it up with a very smooth-tasting hard sauce on Christmas Eve. (Mrs. Tldz will get to uploading a picture of same just as soon as she can get a moment away from keeping Agent Murphy out of whatever trouble he tries to find to get into.)

The pudding makes about twenty slices, which is great, except that there are only two of us who can eat it. Agent Murphy is too young by a decade or so and Mrs. Tldz’s mom has gone back home after her Christmas visit. To help out the spirit around the office, Mrs. Tldz drove me and the plum pudding to work on the Monday after Christmas. Several people commented on it, happily and a good half of the pudding disappeared over the next couple days.

We’ve written down a recipe for next year. It’s not quite what we did this year, but the changes are minimal. Mostly, it consists of using a touch less cognac in plumping the fruit and being more definite about how much to pour over the pudding before we light it on fire.

Turns out that the toaster oven is a great way to heat up a couple slices in the morning. Re-heating the hard sauce is oddly more difficult than it would seem, but the end result is good enough to slather over the pudding.

All the worry and fuss paid off and next year will make for a good repeat of our new tradition.

Agent Murphy still doesn’t have any words, but yesterday he walked up to the  refrigerator door and started licking it.  So we offered him a chilled teething ring and he was happy with that.  He’s finally started getting some teeth coming in in the back, after having 8 teeth up front for a while and nothing else.  Of course, these fits of teething  seem to turn him into a pooping machine, so he developed a really nasty diaper rash/burn.  We got some prescription diaper cream because our regular OTC stuff seemed to be doing nothing, and now it’s healing pretty well.

We are  happy to report that all 3 balls from his new hammer ball set have been located – one retrieved from the trash.  Yuck.  (Not as bad as having to fish his shoes out of the diaper pail, but still.)  This, however, convinces us, sadly, that the long missing letter from his name puzzle bench has ended up in the landfill.    It’s a real shame, and he misses it.  One of these days, will have to look into whether replacement letters can be obtained.  And perhaps we shall have to find wasy of locking down our trash, etc.  We’ve pretty much convinced ourselves that we have to start looking for a new house sooner rather than later because our curent layout just isn’t suitable to have a play area for the Agent where his toys can be mostly confined.  So we’ll just have to take a risk on what may happen with taxes down the road.

Will start thinking about all that after stuff with the car accident is settled – or our car is repaired at least.  More on that later.

Yesterday felt busy, but it really wasn’t so much.  The big outing was to get Agent Murphy new shoes.  (He’s grown a half shoe size in just under 3 months.  They say this pair should last 3-4 months.)  And Mr. Tldz is on call and had to handle a few things.  But we wrapped up the day with a lovely date night dinner of leftovers.  Really excellent.  We made a nice dinner on New Year’s Day – marinated steak, carrots vichy, and a green bean-mushroom dish.  New recipes, except for the carrots.  Last night we finished off the steak.  Still very good, and the green beans really benefited from sitting.  We’ll remember that.

We’re feeling like slugs, today, though.  Still in our jammies.  I guess we’re not making it to Mass.  Hmm.  Hopefully getting there on New Year’s morning counts for something…