Names and Musings on Paying Attention

The good news is that I saw Stealth and Alabaster swimming around in the big pond this evening and they came up to eat with all the big guys just like they'd lived there all their lives.

The bad news is that I'm not getting a lot of responses for names for the koi that I talked about here. I really would be grateful for lots of interesting, funny, or quirky names. I'd help you if you asked.

We went to Louisville this weekend to visit the baby of the family and her wonderful family. We had a short but sweet visit and it makes me wonder why we don't go more often even though it is a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive.

We come home on I65 and Sunday, when we got near Lafayette, I65 was closed. This caused a big traffic backup, a time consuming detour, and all in all a very big inconvenience.

Then, on Monday, I did a Google search to see if I could figure out why we were SO inconvenienced. A mother driving a car Southbound crossed the medium and hit a mother driving a car Northbound. The Southbound mother's 5 month old baby died of massive head injuries because their car overturned and the mother was helicoptered to the hospital with the same type of injuries. The Northbound mom and her family suffered injuries but none so serious.

We will probably never know what caused this accident but a lot of us will speculate. Maybe there was a malfunction in the steering mechanism of the car, maybe the lady driving suffered a seizure or fainted, or maybe she took her eyes off the road for just a second or two.

And we've all done it! I wrecked my firstborn's car years ago because I was looking at a map. I had checked ahead and it was clear but I looked at that map just a split second too long and when I looked up I saw what I couldn't have anticipated..a car stopped in my lane on an interstate highway. I didn't have time to check if it was clear so I could change lanes and visions of a multi car pileup flashed through my head if I took the chance. So I braked hard to try to minimize the impact and I hit him.

So I've done it and I'll bet you have too. I'll bet you've texted while driving (very carefully of course), looked for a phone number on your cell, or reached back for a child's book, paci, sippy cup or whatever else was needed to keep that child happy. And you did it very carefully.

But you never know. So let's never, ever take our eyes off the road again..even for a second or two. It's just not worth the risk. Even though when we do it, we really don't believe there's that much risk at all.

And I can't believe that I complained about the inconvenience.