the first step is admiting you have a problem...

My name is Jennifer, and I am a bad driver. There, i said it. most of you have driven with me and know this, but i am finally willing to admit it to myself and my insurance company. The best example of this was when we lived in SLC. I was leaving work one day, had the windows down and the sunroof open and as I was driving out of the parking lot I started fiddling with something in the passenger seat. All of a sudden I heard a loud crash and looked up to see smoke - it was like someone shook a container of baby powder. I heard someone say, "are you ok?" and looked through the sunroof to see a guy peering down at me. Apparently I sort of crashed into a light pole (it totally jumped out at me!!!). I was going so slow that I didn't even have my seatbelt on and didn't feel the air bag deploy (because of where I hit the pole, both airbags deployed) Both of my arms had burns on them from the air bags...it was crazy. Sweet Chris, never yelled.

Fast forward to yesterday. As we were pulling out of our neighborhood on the way to my parents, abby says she has to potty. I tell myself that we can make it to the gas station, but then decided i don't want to take both girls into the station...so I pull down a side road and then off into a gated gravel driveway, let abby do her business, use all the water in the diaper bag to rinse off where she peed on the van, got her in the car seat and we are on our way! Note here: we just got a mini van on sat and although I learned to drive a mini conversion van, that was almost 20 years ago and it's just totally different. SO, I backed up, things were good and then I realized that my tires were slipping. The van has a back up camera and I looked at the picture - I saw grass, i figured i was good...until i got out and saw that my back tires were in a ditch and the bottom of the van was high centered in the mud. NOT GOOD! call my dad, no answer, house, no answer, call my uncle's cell, no answer...PANIC TIME!! think hard about uncle's house number, my aunt answers - whew! Uncle Jerry gets on the phone, i figure out where i am and tell him, they find my dad and my rescuers are on their way!!! And sweet Chris Ricker, just said he was glad we were ok. The worst part was that I was running on fumes and had to keep the a/c on, both girls were crying, abby was FREAKING OUT! but we had a good time trying out the back seat till the men folks came to rescue us. Anyway, I never liked driving when i was a teenager, i loved it when someone else would drive my car. Now I realize i should have gotten in more practice.