Friday, March 01, 2002

 

I had a scare yesterday. James had the van, so I had to strap Xander's car seat into the tiny Pulsar. It is difficult to fit it into the back seat, so I had to put it in the front (no air bags). I wasn't used to him being right there next to me to look at and I was distracted. The second time I peeked over at him, I glanced back to the road and found the car dangerously close to the edge of the shoulder. That particular section of road had a deep gully with no railing. After I righted the car, while my heart was settling back down, I noticed a Police car coming toward me from the opposite direction. He, of course, hit his lights and I slowed down and pulled over at a pull-out.

So, after being scared wit-less, I had to suffer the humiliation of admitting to this officer that I was making eyes at my baby while I was driving. He said that he thought my baby would appreciate it more if I'd stay on the road and told me (as if I didn't already now) that that gully was deep and that it would have swallowed my little car and I could be hidden down there for days. I said, "Yes, sir, I know," as politely as I could and tried to convey just how much it had rattled me without being fake. I gave him my license, expecting a ticket, or at least a warning. At one point in the conversation he had leaned closer to me and asked if I was okay. I wondered why he asked me that. I told him I was just a bit shook up over being that close to driving off the road. He gave me my license back and told me to drive carefully. I assured him I would.

As I pulled back on to the road, a cynical voice in the back of my mind said, "It would be just my luck if I had some of my lunch left on my face." I took a chance to glance in the rear-view mirror and sure enough, there was a large dollop of bar-b-que sauce from my sandwich. No wonder he'd looked at me so closely. He might of thought that was blood on my lip. Now I can see the scene through his eyes. A few toys and diaper bag thrown in the back, baby seat strapped into the passenger seat, a woman driving wildly and a spot of what looked like possibly blood on my lip. With all the domestic abuse in the world, he may have thought I were a victim. But Xander seemed blissfully happy in his seat, so maybe that had assured the officer that things were generally okay.

Within about five minutes I had gone from fear to embarrassment, to guiltiness and then back to embarrassment. Where's a large hole to crawl into when you need one?

This came at such a bad time when I've been trying to erase the words 'stupid', 'dummy' and 'idiot' from my vocabulary when referring to myself. I have a terrible habit that when I make a mistake I will verbally call my self one of those demeaning words. I've read that many times the self-esteem of the parent will be reflected in a child's self-esteem. I don't want Xander to grow up saying those things about himself. Besides, it's not true that I'm those things. I may be clutzy, and definately absent-minded, but I'm not intellectually challenged.

I could go on and on there, but let's just leave it at that.

I'm daring myself to do 4 things during the month of March:
1) Read or study my Bible daily
2) Eat less and healthier everyday
3) Do some form of exercise 6 days a week: Minimum of 5 push-ups and 10 sit-ups and go for a walk everyday that the temp is over 60 degrees.
4) Some writing related activity 6 days a week: Writing, editing, or reading about writing. I'm going to try for actual writing once every three days or more.

I think these are 4 simple things that I can do everyday. Hmm...that makes an acrostic...my March R.E.D.S. dare. ;) I'll keep you posted. Right now I'm off to work on some writing and that will be two out of the four done for today.

Dawn posted this at 1:23 PM.

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