The anniversary gift I haven't talked about yet...

Last Monday was a special day...my 10th Wedding Anniversary.  I left work a few minutes early, to go place an order for pizzas at our favorite pizza place, Apollos Greek Restaurant.  On my way to Apollos, my cell phone rang...it was my wife, calling to wish me a happy anniversary...or so I thought. 

Instead, my wife was calling to tell me how she had 'maybe' not been paying attention while backing her car up after picking my daughter up at her 'Girls on the Run' class.  As a result of the 'maybe' not paying attention, she hit the front, left corner of her car on metal post sticking up out of the corner of a grassy area, broke her headlight, and snagged her front bumper a bit.

I'm usually a fairly sarcastic person...and tact is not one of my strong traits...but occasionally I get it right.  In this case, recognizing that it was in fact my 10-year Anniversary, I was able to clamp down my initial reaction which was to say that there was probably no 'Maybe' about her not paying attention, and make sufficiently sympathetic noises.  At the time, my wife was pretty emotional...and me jumping on her mistake in an aggressive manner would not have made things better.  I told her I was happy that her and the girls were all okay, and let it go at that.

When I got home, the damage was worse than I had pictured it to be in my mind. 

Without the tape in place, the bumper was sagging to about two inches off the ground. 


Sigh...what could I do?  I went in with the pizza, gave her a hug, and told her it was okay.  Wasn't about to ruin my anniversary worrying about an accident that didn't involve another car or injuries. 

As the week went on, it became clear that the damage was such that we would not be able to drive the car to Portland for our weekend trip...even taped up, the bumper was not going to survive 400 miles at 75 M.P.H.  That meant we would have to take the F-150, increasing our fuel bill by about 50%.  Grrrrrrrr.  But, once again, I was not able to vent about it too much...I mean...did I want to start our kid-free weekend off on the wrong foot? 

No, I didn't...and as previously stated, we had an AMAZING weekend, so I obviously made the right decision. 

Now, to the present.  The accident happened almost a week ago, it kind of feels like my window to bitch and moan has closed.  Today, my wife brought the car in for an estimate to fix the damage, and we were given two quotes...one to fix the physical damage, and call it good, and and one to actually repaint the area.  In something of a coincidence(if you believe in coincidences) the bill to fix the car came in within 1% of the MSRP for a new PTR-91.  If we went with the painting option, it was going to be almost $2500. 

Damn.  That was a bit more than I was hoping. 

Luckily, my wife's birthday is next Tuesday...I hope she likes her new front end.