Sep

Okay, thus far the year 5767 is not going so well. On our way to the Rosh Hashanah family service and Taschlich, Sami & I were in a car accident caused by some idiotic woman talking on her cell phone and not paying attention.

Our synagogue is next to a church, and someone was getting married there this afternoon. SO, in addition to the heavy traffic turning in to the synagogue, there was additional traffic turning in to the church. It was EASY to see (presuming of course that one actually notices things in the external environment while driving) that people were stopping to turn left. Two cars in front of me, someone stopped to make the left turn into the church. The car behind it stopped. Then I stopped. The car behind me also stopped, or at least was stoppING. However, the woman driving the car behind that apparently had better things to do with her time than notice the traffic around her – she slammed into the car behind me, which then slammed into me. The cop who came to investigate told me she was probably going at least 40 miles an hour when she hit us. Luckily, because I WAS paying attention to the other cars around me, I had allowed plenty of room between me and the car in front of me, so while my car did get pushed into the one in front of me, it didn’t really damage her car at all, just a small scuff on her back bumper.

My van was not so lucky – here’s a picture:

It’s worse than it looks – the whole back of my van was crushed basically all the way up to the third seat.

More importantly, Sami was not so lucky – there’s a HUGE knot on the back of her head. We went to the ER and had her checked out. She passed all the neurological tests, but will have to be watched closely for several days to make sure she’s okay. We’ll go to her pediatrician on Monday for followup.

Here’s the kicker – the bitch who caused the accident NEVER ONCE came over to check on Sami. Sami was sobbing hysterically, in pain and totally terrified, and the sorry skank couldn’t even be bothered to see if she was okay. What kind of sorry lowlife acts like that?

As for me, still in shock…

  

Sep

Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) began tonight, and normally I wouldn’t be blogging, but this was weighing heavily on my mind, so…

When I arrived at my synagogue tonight, I went to drop Sami off at the children’s area (Eli was sick, so he and Craig stayed home and it was just Sami and me). Posted on the door was a security notice. This notice informed me that in the event of an attack, the children would be evacuated to the cemetery on the back of the property, and parents would need to go there to look for them.

An attack?!! Nothing was said officially, but of course rumors abounded that one (or more) of the local synagogues had received bomb threats. I have to admit, I was kind of distracted during much of the service – I kept thinking about how terrified Sami would be if anything like that happened. The sermon (which was very good, by the way) was on family, which only made my ruminations deeper.

In addition to being anxious, I also felt, and still feel, very annoyed. How dare someone threaten my child, albeit indirectly? I don’t mean to sound naive – I know horrible things happen every day. But, seriously, it’s JUST NOT OKAY!!! I should be able to take my child to celebrate the new year without having to worry about some wack job trying to blow the place up with her in it.

How do people ever get to the point where they are able to persuade themselves that deliberately harming other innocent people is okay – and, in the case of some people, not just okay, but something to celebrate? How does the hate come to run that deep? There are people I hate, I admit it – not many, but there are a few. And, naturally, I feel like they deserve my hate. However, it would never occur to me to try to get them to change their ways by attacking people close to them. I mean, seriously, who does that?!! As I said before, it’s JUST NOT OKAY!!!

I don’t know, I guess I am naive…

  

Sep

I really try to avoid being overly political here, since this blog is mainly for our close friends and family members, many (most?!! %-) of whom have different political views than we do. Of course, I often fail in this goal, since I LOVE debating politics, and feel there’s nothing better than a good knock-down-drag-out with a wacked fundamentalist Republican. Especially since I am so very right, and they are so very wrong!

But seriously, and this may well appeal more to my Republican friends than my Demcratic ones – there is really something to this “angry religion” idea. I guess for me, the bottom line is, zealots of ALL types are bad news…