A Series of unFORTUNATE events

Friday night Justin headed off on a Scout camp out. He had to take the Dodge (our new car) since they needed the car space. Saturday morning I loaded the kids up in our Civic and dropped them off at the babysitter and headed to the church for some Stake Relief Society Training. Let me emphasize the fact here that I NEVER drive the Civic anymore-seriously. I think I have only driven it maybe 3 times since we bought our new car in January. I am usually the one with the kids, and the Civic is unreliable so we only drive it when he have to be using two cars. Anyway, I had a very nice meeting at the Church. Justin got home from his camp out shortly before my meeting ended so he went and picked the boys up from the babysitter. I decided to just head straight over to the library book sale I really wanted to check out instead of coming home first. So I jumped onto the Marsha Sharp Highway that would take me over to the other side of town. I was just minding my own business (driving about 65 mph) when all of a sudden my car veered out of control into the next lane. In the next instant I saw a white car go speeding past (witnesses say he was probably going about 100 mph). It was then I realized, "I've been hit!" My first thought was don't hit the truck next to me, or any other cars on the road. But it quickly became obvious that I had zero control over the car. After my attempts to regain control failed, (it all happened super fast but I like to believe I used the skills my dad always taught me about turning the opposite direction) I started spinning circles around on the road. While spinning around  recklessly  I kept thinking, "You're going too fast, you are going too fast. Break, find the break, you need to slow down." But there seemed to be a disconnect between my head and my foot and I couldn't find the break. And I kept thinking, "clutch, brake, clutch, brake, find the clutch, no just push the break, will that make it worse? I need to find the clutch, brake!" You get the idea. Of course this whole thing was only a matter of seconds. Then I spun off the road and started sliding down the barrow pit at which point I also started thinking, "You are going to roll, you're going to flip, here comes the roll, nope not yet, oh here it comes, nope still just sliding." And then in what seemed to be the same instant I found the brake and my car came to a stop. I'm pretty sure I just stopped-not because I found the brake.

You can see my skid marks in the dirt. The car was COVERED in dirt when I finally stopped, couldn't even see out the winshield.

I took a second to take a deep breathe and register that I was fine. While it was all happening you find yourself waiting for that moment when things turn from bad to worse; but luckily in my case they never did. And as soon as I realized that I was totally fine I was pretty calm. Sure my heart was beating fast and my hands were a little shaky and all that but I wasn't freaking out. My next thought was to turn off the ignition so my car wouldn't blow up. Seems kind of funny to me now, but that was really my thought process. I realized there were already cars stopped and people getting out and coming over to see if I was okay, so I got out of the car and assured everyone that I was fine. Really, I was fine. And I was. The airbag didn't even go off, and I hadn't hit my head or anything. My only thought was to call Justin, he would know what to do next. I told the nice ladies that I didn't know the number for the police, but that I was just going to call my husband. At this point we thought the guy had just sped off and kept going but as we looked more closely, we realized that he had in fact, lost control himself after hitting me and crossed over the barrow pit into oncoming traffic and hit cars over there. Quite a mess. One of the ladies was already on the phone with the police while I called Justin and told him I had been in an accident but that I was fine. He called the babysitter back and asked if they could come over and watch the kids while he rescued me : )
Then it was a bit of a waiting game. I visited with those who had stopped as we tried to piece together what happened. The ambulance and firetruck went to the accident on the other side of the freeway first because there were more cars involved and they had been hit worse than me. But one of the fireman and a police officer walked over to me to see if I was okay. I assured the fireman that I was just fine, really; and he left and went back over to help the others. I did ask him about the others because I really wanted to know if everyone was okay or not. A cop came over and talked to me briefly, then went over to the other side to find out more of what was going on, and then he came back and did the usual driver license, insurance card, what was my story, looked at the damage, etc. He even told me that I was probably the calmest person he'd ever seen who had just gotten in an accident. That's me, Ms. Calm and Collected; why can't I stay that calm when my kids splash water all over the bathroom?
It was about this point that Justin showed up. Poor Floyd (the name of our car) was not in  drivable  condition so they put him on the tow truck with all the other cars from the accident. We got the car seats out and my personal stuff...it was kind of sad to just walk away and leave him there. Floyd has been with us since the beginning-and we have done a LOT together. That morning I had thought, "Justin would be sad if Floyd died today while I was driving him. I would get to be his last ride, not him." Little did I know that would come true. 
There wasn't a ton of damage done but definitely some damage. We don't know at this point what is going to happen. We think it will mostly depend on if the axle got bent or not. Cause we can drive it around with a bashed in side. Problem is the car was pretty much on its last leg anyways. So do we use the money to fix it up just to have it die in a few months and then still be out a car? Or just let them total it and give us money for what its worth and move forward from there? We don't know since we don't know what the insurance will give us at this point. Luckily the guy had insurance. Unfortunately we had dropped collision on that car and just had liability on it so I don't think we will get anything from our insurance.
But for now we are counting our blessings, namely: I was driving the Civic, which I never do, so it was our old car that got hit and not our new car, I was by myself so the kids were not hurt at all, I walked away totally and 100% fine-I am not even sore today, I didn't hit anyone else while spinning on the road, I didn't flip the car, it wasn't my fault.....I am just very blessed and very grateful.
I did come home and need a nap after all that excitement. And I did make Justin drive me to the library that evening so I didn't miss my book sale. I wasn't quite ready to get back on the road myself. And today when things worked out such that I had to drive home from Church I just needed a quick moment to tell myself that I would not get in another accident. All is well and we are very fortunate.