It's now been a week since my wife's close call.
I would tell you it's been a long week. I can't even imagine what it's been like for her.
To be honest, I'm not exactly what you would call a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. What I do is work. The rest of this "empathy" stuff I could probably stand to improve in.
But when it comes to work, I would be lying if I told you I do not look a bit differently at news stories after the scary incident involving my wife last week.
As I note in my weekly print column today, I have written and edited that line in thousands of stories about accidents or mishaps.
"Two women received minor injuries."
That's the way it played on any number of Washington-area TV stations, all of whom did stories on the out of control car that grazed my wife before slamming through a store-front window and not coming to rest until it hit the back of the store.
Yes, it's a miracle that no one - including my wife - was killed.
I still can't believe that no one who was in that store was struck by the car.
My wife was not as lucky. She was walking on the sidewalk outside the store when the car roared up onto the sidewalk, grazed her while running over her foot, and leaving her sitting in a pile of glass after ramming through that front window.
I can pretty honestly say that if my wife was two steps in front of where she was, she might not be here.
As it is, she suffered a broken big toe, as well as myriad cuts and bruises.
But a week later, she's still having trouble getting around, has not yet returned to work, and is a little fearful of being out in crowds.
We also once again are delving into the nightmare of insurance and health coverage.
I've learned a few things over the last week - not the least of which is that we remain extremely lucky.
I've learned I have a long way to go in terms of separating work from life. I'm not good at it, and at times like this, when I am needed on the home front, I come up small. It's a personal fault, one I need to work on. The newspaper business - more so now than ever - has a tendency to take over your life, if you let it.
There are lots of people - my wife among them - who will tell you my life is out of balance. I guess it goes with the territory, but it's the only way I know how to do it.
We're also - for the second time in a year, delving into the nightmare of insurance coverage, claims and forms.
I did learn one thing. In the emergency room, we gave them all of our health insurance information. What I did not know that in this kind of instance, because it involved her being struck by a vehicle, it falls on your auto insurance, not health policies. Of course, that did not stop the first notice from Anthem, our health insurance provider, from showing up right on time Saturday, despite assurances from our auto insurance folks that all the bills would go to them.
Hey, it's supposed to be 70 degrees later this week.
Things are looking up.
I think.
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