Body Shop Blues Becomes Body Shop Bliss

Life is returning to normal after not having my car for 10 days. Today was the first day I drove my car to work since two weekends ago. In other words, the first day back after Christmas vacation I had an accident in my carport that disabled my vehicle and I had to have it towed. So, January 4th was the last day I drove my car until yesterday (the 14th) when I picked it up from the body shop. The story of how I disabled my car is too long of a story to relate here. It's kind of embarrassing and I've been telling people every day for all this time, but just for the record, it has to do with not putting my car in park when I went to wipe fog off my car windows on Monday, Jan. 5. And I don't actually want to talk about it anymore. I just managed to bang up the door after it came into contact with one of the poles that holds up the tin roof of my apartment carport, and it had to be replaced. The rest of the story about getting the door is a long story I definitely don't want to go into, but I just want to say if anybody who lives in Topeka needs body work done, they should go to Tim's Paint Works. He will do such a great job and he is such a great guy with a great reputation and I highly recommend him. He is the best. I am an accident-prone person. I don't even like to rent cars because I'm afraid I will scratch them or something. I also don't want to raise my car insurance rates. I'd rather save for emergencies rather than pay some company every month who promises to pay for any and all that might go wrong with my vehicle. I am a capitalist, okay? I don't want to complain too much about people trying to get me to give them money, because paying people for their service makes the world go around. But I do get tired of insurance premiums and getting very little in return for them. It's great that I got reimbursed for the tow charge, but, honestly, the only reason to have car insurance is because it's required. It would probably save me a lot of money if I didn't have car insurance and just paid out of pocket out of my savings. But we live in the 21st century now, and everything has to be regulated. We have to discontinue pennies and we have to love AI and America is declining, and we are going to hell in a handbasket but the bottom line is I am convinced that gratitude is the best attitude and anything that happens that helps you develop that attribute is a good thing. I am grateful to everyone who gave me rides to and from work and to and from church all this time. I am so thankful to God knowing that we can "glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5). I also went to the gym for the first time since that last weekend of the break. That means I survived all that time without any cardio exercise. That was something else I worried about during that time because usually I get to feeling really weird if I don't go get a bike ride for three days, but I didn't experience that this time. I am going to assume that that is an improvement in something, and improvement is what we are after, after all, isn't it?