It was such an otherwise perfect day....

Yesterday was bright blue skies and sunny and perfectly September-ish(just like the fateful Sept. 11 nine years ago, in fact) and I spent much of the day with Miss R, doing errands(grocery store, pharmacy), poking around(but not buying anything--we were good this time) in our favorite consignment shops around town ( Chameleons and The Phoenix ), and then lunch at El Fuego (very fresh & tasty Mexican fare).
When we got back home, we baked an applesauce spice cake together. Of course, all this mother-daughter closeness was possible because the "boyfriend" was working all day. Otherwise, I would have been doing all this alone.

Then I left at 6:00 to meet my sister and her friend at the commuter parking lot(for carpooling) nearest to our house. I drove up with them to the Brooklyn Tea and Coffee House(so cozy inside and out) in Providence......
..... to see Robin Lane --a musical blast from my past whom I hadn't thought about in years and years(my sister happened to notice the announcement that she was playing at the Brooklyn and got tickets for me because she remembered I had her 2 albums back then and was a fan--isn't that sweet?). She attained some local fame from out of Boston in the late 70's/early 80's--and I saw her open for the Kinks at a concert in 1980. A little background info from the Music Museum of New England site:

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Lane found her way to Cambridge in the late 1970s after a whirlwind introduction to the world of music through a great deal of hanging out with Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, which led to her singing backup on Neil Young's "Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)." The move East saw her form the hit band Robin Lane and the Chartbusters and sign a multi-record deal with Warner Bros. But raising a family came first, and Lane and her red Fender Mustang guitar stepped out of the spotlight for a number of years, mostly writing songs for others. She came back in the mid-1990s with a batch of pop, rock, and country tunes on her 1995 album Catbird Seat, reformed the Chartbusters for a couple of years, and now lives in Western Massachusetts, where she performs "living room concerts" in people's homes.
(by Ed Symkus-
Music Museum of New England)

The concert was very intimate--like being in some one's kitchen(there are actually kitchen tables in the Brooklyn). Robin must be about 60 now, but her voice is as warm as ever, and I even got to chat with Robin before and during the show(she tells a lot of stories and interacts with her audience throughout her performance) and she even complimented me on the necklace I was wearing(an old post-war Germany stainless steel and green Bakelite beauty that my mother had since the 1950's and I have been wearing sine the 80's).This was the big hit from 1980('81?) and the 11th video ever shown on the then new MTV. Supposedly, this song was also recently featured in the movie "Grownups".

So...there's enough music trivia.
Now, let's get to the bad part of my day. Whaaa....
After the performance was done, we left the city at around 10:30 to drive back home, and were approaching the entrance to the lot where I had left my car when we noticed a tow truck, and police car and some people standing in the lot. Then I saw my husband(!) standing there talking to the police and I immediately knew something had happened to my car.
Turns out, it and the green truck I had parked next to, had been hit(and damaged badly) by a car on the road that passes the lot(we were parked facing the road). It was a "hit and run" that the owner of the green truck actually witnessed because he was just getting a lift back to the lot as the car "jumped the curb"(his words) and smashed into his truck, and then the impact of that made his truck smash into the left driver's side of my poor little Ford Escort wagon. What a coincidence that the accident would happen just as the owner of the truck got back to the lot and saw it happen before his eyes?

He and his friends actually chased the car down once they realised the driver of the car(a young woman) was not stopping and continued on down the road(was she drunk? Had she been texting and driving? How did she just veer off the road like that, smash into other cars and then keep going like that?).

But they could not get her to stop--they said she was driving only 25 miles per hour(obviously her car must have sustained some damage, too) and looking straight ahead. So, they went back to the lot to examine the damage, called the police and I got there in my sister's car shortly after the police and tow truck(because the truck was damaged far worse than mine--at least mine was still drive able) arrived. From the license plate on my car, the police were able to look up my phone number and get a hold of my husband to get him there.

So now in the daylight of the next day, my car looks terrible(the front grill, front bumper, rear view mirror and passenger side ),

and we need to contact our insurance tomorrow(this hit-and-run driver, whom luckily the owner saw do it and knew her plate number so the police could get her, better have her own car insurance paid up because she is going to be having to pay for some damage otherwise), but know that this could have been far, far worse.

But, no one was hurt(not so sure about the driver who hit the vehicles, but at this point I am not so concerned about her...gggrrrr....), and I even can drive my mother's car until this is all sorted out(don't know yet how safe my car is to drive and whether we'll be getting a new one) since she will be away in Germany and Greece for the next four weeks.
Still,even though my old Escort is hardly the greatest car in the world, I like my car(it has gotten me where I need to go for the last ten years with never a problem, and has even climbed steep mountain roads), so it pains me to see it all banged up like this.