the scariest thing EVER.

Yesterday, I come home from work. I'm tired, because my pal Sha was in town, and I decided to escort him to the Chinatown bus a few blocks from work at 6am. Then I worked for twelve hours, on little sleep. Not a good call. The mouse that's taken up residence in one corner of my room kept us up chewing on a plastic bag.

So anyhow, I show up and there's a show at our house about which nobody has informed me. I realize this when three manarchists on our front steps fail to move aside as I bring my bike into the house. Sigh. Ah, well. I'm not too terribly concerned as I'm on the third floor and there's reasonable sound insulation, but it's still punishingly hot.

I think to myself, "Self, we should take us a nap." set my cell phone alarm, climb into bed, and ten minutes later, the phone rings. Oh, it's Elly! I answer and say hello. Silence. Then, voices that are decidedly NOT Elly's are *screaming* in the background. There are crying voices, panicked voices, little kid voices, and no Elly. I keep saying "Hello?!?" at the top of my lungs, and keep listening until the phone hangs up on me. I call back to a jammed signal. I freak out and call Molly and Catherine, both of them roll to voicemail. WTF? I leave messages that they should tell me if Elly's OK. I keep calling Elly's number, and eventually she picks up and says "I was just in an accident. Can I call you back?" Needless to say, I couldn't sleep after that.

So as it turns out, she's OK, and the carload of people who ran into her are (we think?) OK, but the whole incident was more than traumatic for all involved, especially being on the anniversary of Katrina. Her car and theirs are not in good shape, though, and she's a little more than freaked about the whole thing. As was I. Our friend Ingrid eventually called to give an update as she was trying to sleep some. We spoke today and she sounded in better shape. What we realized happened is that her phone somehow auto-dialed me either during or right after the accident so she didn't know the phone was on, but I was busy hearing everything about it.

Yeesh, man. Being several thousand miles from people you care deeply about is hard enough, and I seem to do plenty of that...hearing them get into accidents is too much.