duck-shaped pain

It was really unpleasant, I have to say. I'm glad I didn't, and I'm sure you're glad, too.

I went out to get the mail this afternoon. My mailbox, for reasons I have never figured out, is on the opposite side of the street from the house (there isn't a house across the street from my, just a field sometimes full of bored-looking horses). So a trip across the street is required to get anything out of the mailbox.

So I get the mail, and look both ways before crossing the street again. I notice a car is coming, so I wait. Then I notice this car is coming -- very fast.

I live on the sort of long, straight rural road that makes people feel like they should drive down it as fast as possible. Great speeds have been reached on this road -- I once did 90 on it, back when I thought that might be an interesting thing to try out. But anyway, all day you can hear people barreling past the house at great speeds, sounding like angry, 10,000-pound bees.

Because of this, I stopped going to get the mail for awhile after I broke my leg. I was too slow-moving and it was too difficult to be absolutely sure no one was coming. So, why risk it?

Eventually, I got faster, and resumed the usual mail routine. Still, I can't really move too fast right now.

So -- I notice this car travelling really fast. Then, I notice, it's not going straight -- it's headed towards me. At a high speed.

Oh shit, I think. I'm going to be hit by a car. There isn't much room to get out of the way, but I do the best I can. All, the while, the car is still coming at me. I am completely freaking out, by the way.

It comes close -- very close -- but at the last possible second, it turns a bit, missing me. The car slows down, and I see that it's full of teenage boys and their girlfriends [1], who all start to laugh and point and jeer at me, which finally culminates in the appearance of The Finger.

They speed off. I cross the street, still freaked out by what happened.

I mean, for a few seconds, I thought whoever was behind the wheel had lost control of the car, or was distracted somehow. That was bad enough. But to realize that someone was doing it deliberately is even worse. I can't even comprehend doing something like that myself.

Since the accident, I keep feeling like something like that's going to happen to me. After all, the incident where I broke my leg was so sudden and random, so why couldn't something else like that happen again? Crossing the street, driving around, even just walking -- all these have some element of anxiety attached to them right now. I feel like the Perfect Target sometimes, because I move so slowly.

I've been getting better about this, and thinking less and less about what might happen to me. I really didn't need to have this happen.

And, after all that, I didn't even get any good mail.

Some of you might be wondering what happened to the other day's sweet potato. The original plan was for it to become soup, but since it was almost 100 degrees here today, soup didn't sound very appetizing. I needed to use the sweet potato for something, however, since they go bad pretty quickly.

So I ended up baking it for two hours in the oven until it was nice and soft. Meanwhile, I took a bunch of tomatoes from the garden, and chopped them up. I also chopped some onion, a bunch of garlic and one of the jalapenos I managed to grow. I put them all in a pot with some canned pinto beans and cooked them for an hour. When the stew of sorts was done, I took it and poured it over the mashed sweet potato. It was extremely good. I had it with some mesclun I picked up at the store today, and had excellent peaches for desert. Also, chai, which I finally managed to find.

Stuff like that nearly negates almost being hit by a car, but not quite.