She's alive!

Now, usually, I use that to mean I only fell off the ends of the earth, or had a really hard time I've recently come back from.

Nope, not this time. This time, it's literal. My daughter is alive. Why is that a big deal? Here's the story...

Out of the blue, I get a real live phone call from my text loving, zillion words a second, daughter. I already know something is up. So, then, in that voice that means she knows I'm not going to like what she says, she says, "How are you mom? How's everyone?"

If you're a parent, or close to a child, that voice combined with that non-sequitor is bad. Very bad. But, I play along. Sort of.

"We're all fine. What's up?" I ask her. Then she starts with the hemming and hawing. "I'm fine, we're fine, um, yes, but I'm fine."

Now my mother's heart is going OH SH**. I'm trying to let her tell me her way, but it is hard.

"When we left the roads were fine," she finally gets out. Silence on my end. I knew it wasn't good.

"We were going to his (bf) mom's house for holiday things, you know. And, well, um..." I decide to help her when she stalls again.

"Where does his mom live again?"

"Spokane. So we, like, um,"

Okay, I have to tell you, she uses um to usually mean I'm being an idiot, or to stall giving me really bad news. Notice the ums? And I'm editing for clarity...

"We, um, the roads looked fine. But, um, we hit black ice. We went off the left side into the ditch. And um,"

Now, I'm ready to burst in with questions, but she had to go add the 'and, um' to her story. I'm positively speechless. There's more?

"See, Justin (bf name) told me to get out of the car. I know the cops usually say to stay in your car, but I got out." her words are rushing now. And she's still using this tone of voice that I haven't heard from her in years.

"And all of the sudden a truck is heading towards us. It smashed into the passenger side of the car, right where I was sitting!"

OMG let me tell you, my heart is no longer beating a staccato, it is frozen in my throat.

"You're lucky you weren't hit anyway," I finally choke out.

"We started running as fast as we could in the snow. So, yeah. I've had my holiday excitement for the year."

"I guess so! I'm glad you're okay. Where are you?"

"Spokane, we were just past..." names an exit close to Spokane.

"I'm glad you're okay," I say.

And as she starts to speak, her phone dies.

My daughter, she should go to law school. She loves to argue semantics. I don't know how much arguing she actually did with him. But the point is, she got out first. Probably saved her life. For sure saved her body from grievous injury.

Whatever happens from this point on, she's had her Christmas Miracle.

I was so relieved that she was okay that I spent the night editing little bits, and playing twitter big bits :D I'm back to editing, and already tired :( Need sleep, and caffeine. But I'm happy with how the editing is going. Still have over 100 pages to go on current page count. Probably be closer to another 150 before I'm finished. Sigh.

Funny thing is, before I broke my glasses, I liked editing. Now it's harder than it used to be. :) Well, back to the editing process and trying to be a good mom and alpha female...