Okay, let’s start with the cute stuff!
Kittens!
This is what I saw out the bathroom window this morning.
I’m not sure which of the adult cats is in there, snuggling with Eyelet, Sir Robin and Havarti. It’s not Colin. Maybe it’s Mochrie? Well, whoever he is, he does enough a nap with the littles!
When it was feeding time, I got to see Sprout and her four ferals.
When I come back with the kitten soup, after putting out the dry kibble, Sprout always hisses at me. It’s been years, and we’re no closer to socializing Sprout in any way. I hope we have better luck with her babies, but the tortie and the calico in particular are a lot like their Mom!
Today was setting out to be a slightly cooler day with the possibility of rain this afternoon. All we got was some light cloud spit. The smoke is really bad today. I’m hoping the rain missed us and hit the wildfires, instead!
My husband had called in a prescription refill yesterday, that couldn’t wait until a Thursday delivery. One of his “controlled substance” meds that he can only refill when he’s down to 3 days of being out. So a trip to town was in order.
The pharmacy opens at noon on Sundays and I got there about 15 minutes early, so I popped across the street to a small department store that was open. I ended up getting a different type of sticky tape to trap insects that I’m used to. The old kitchen is so full of mosquitoes that when I go to get the cat stuff ready in the mornings, I can actually hear the whining of them, and I get surrounded by clouds of them. Thankfully, we have insect repellant now, so it wasn’t too bad this morning! We needed something to get rid of them, and I’m hoping this thing works.
I came out of the store just before the pharmacy opened, and there was a whole crowd of people waiting for the doors to open! Weird.
It didn’t take me long to get what I needed, and I was soon off to my next stop, which was the grocery store to refill a couple 18.9L/5 gallon jugs of water.
The grocery store parking lot was looking pretty busy, so I made a point of parking well away from the store, with no vehicles around me. With the large jugs to get in and out of the vehicle, I like to be able to bring the cart right up to the door to unload it into the space behind the front passenger seat. The space behind the driver’s seat is where we keep our hard sided and hard sided, insulated, reusable grocery bags. In the middle is where we keep the emergency kit and other supplies.
Yes, this is relevant. The main thing is, the only space for the jugs is behind the passenger seat.
I went through the store to see if there was anything else we needed, but only picked up a small package of stew meat and an energy drink for the drive home. So it wasn’t long before I was heading back to the truck with the full water bottles.
There was, of course, a large truck parked right next to me. One the passenger side.
The truck was facing the opposite direction, which means it drove through an empty parking spot to pull into the spot beside me. There was an empty spot on the other side they could have gone into, but nope. the biga$$ Silverado just HAD to park next to me.
I get to the back of the truck and assess the space for a moment. Then I grabbed the stew meat and went to put it in the bag with my other stuff, on the front passenger seat. There is a woman in the Silverado passenger seat, so she could basically just look down at me – the Silverado is quite a big taller than my Sierra! I put the meat and my energy drink in, then went to the back door on the passenger side. Did I have enough room to load the water jugs?
I opened the door and checked. If it opened all the way, it would be against the Silverado. If I left it half way open, I figured there was just enough space to fit a water jug through. I got the first one in fine.
While I was doing this, a guy came over and got into the driver’s seat of the Silverado. So I now had two people in the truck that could see what I was doing, and how little space I had between the vehicles. I figured they would move.
Instead, the guy started unwrapping his half a Dagwood sandwich and started eating.
Needless to say, I’m pretty irritated by this point, but whatever. I just and the second jug to put in, and then I could leave.
As I was settling the water jug into place, I heard a “tick” behind me.
Putting the jug in shook the truck enough that my door opened the rest of the way, and was now touching the truck.
I didn’t see if the woman even looked down to see if there was contact. I moved my door and checked them, but could see no damage. So I closed my door, then went to return the cart to the cart corral.
When I got back to my vehicle, the guy was standing between them, still carrying his sandwich, looking at his door. As I came around to see what he was up to, he looked at me and said that there was some damage.
My response was, so?
I mean really. The guy parked is biga$$ truck next to me, with tonnes of space he could have parked in, instead, didn’t move when he could see I was trying to load large, heavy jugs of water through the narrow space, and now he’s worried about a ding?
Then he said that he was going to have to file an insurance claim.
Really? For that?
My first thought, of course, was “scammer”. If he meant to intimidate me, it didn’t work. I just got more pissed off.
I told him, I deliberately parked far from the store so that there would be no one around me. He’s the one who decided to park right next to me. He made a gesture to the space, as if to suggest it was enough. Which it would have been, if it was just a person getting in and out. Not so much for carrying large water jugs and trying to squeeze them through the half open door. Particularly since, with the weight and awkwardness of them, I should have brought the cart right up to the door, not carry them from behind my truck, squeezing myself and the jug through that little space.
He then started going on about, what else can he do? He has to file a claim. This is an $80,000 truck. It’s a brand new truck. What else can he do? As he was talking, all I could think of was how smarmy he sounded. Smarmy and condescending.
And yes, I did flat out tell him at one point that he was being an a-hole.
At some point, I told him, you’ve got a working truck, and you’re worried about a little bit of paint? He got all huffy, asking me if I could see any tags or stickers showing that this is a “working truck”. WTF was he even talking about? My truck is a working truck, and it’s got no tags or stickers.
Then he went on again about how he’s going to file a claim, no matter what, and went to take a picture of my license plate, saying he was going to be giving me his information, etc. After all, what else could he do? It’s a $100,000 truck.
…
So we were going to exchange our information. Fine. He was going to get his registration papers. Okay. We’re at the back of my truck and I looked at my passenger side door.
Do you really want me to go get mine, and risk hitting your truck again?
Nope. He told me I needed to get them through the driver’s side door.
Right. He wanted this short, fat, middle aged woman to crawl over the console to reach the glove compartment from the driver’s side.
I scoffed and just went and got the papers.
No, I didn’t hit his truck with my door again.
So we took pictures of each other’s registration papers and driver’s licenses, using my tail gate as a table. I’d already taken a picture of the paint from my truck on his door – and of him, walking around with his phone and his big sandwich, taking pictures. Before leaving, I made sure to get a couple more pictures showing the space between and around our vehicles.
Then I got into my truck and started updating my family, before heading home. They left while I was still doing that.
Guess he didn’t need to sit in his truck to eat his sandwich, after all.
The family updated, I headed home and unloaded the truck by the house. Which is when I remembered to get a better look at my own door.
Sure enough, after a bit of searching, I could find a bit of grey paint from the Silverado on my door.
Which I don’t care about, of course.
Once everything was settled inside, I made sure to settle down and write an incident report while everything was still fresh in my memory.
Sadly, I’ve got a lot of experience when it comes to writing incident reports. Usually, it was for the police or the courts, though, not insurance companies.
I made sure to include my photos with the report. The photos of his driver’s license and registration papers as well.
Oh, my.
I really hope this guy doesn’t try to file a claim – for his sake.
First up, after looking at what his vehicle was, I did a quick search. The value, in Canada, maxed out at under $83,000. If he’s stuck to $80K, that would have worked, but he then upped it to $100K
Then I noticed who the owner was.
The truck was owned by, and registered to, a drywall company.
It really was a “working truck”. It’s not even his truck. The company itself is in the city, so he was probably an employee using a company truck… on a Sunday. In a resort town and hour away. With a woman.
The company doesn’t have a website. No email address. Just an FB page. Nothing has been posted on is since 2020.
Then I noticed his license. He’s from a town bordering the city, but what was that X under “restrictions”? Mine has a 1, since I wear glasses. Restrictions also includes things like “maximum speed of 70km/h”, “daytime only”, “hand controls”, “commercial class”, etc. I’ve never seen an X before.
So I looked it up.
It turns out to be a driver’s restriction “addendum”.
It’s used when someone has more restrictions than there is room for on the license.
A list and description of those restrictions must be carried by the person, by law, at all times.
Interesting…
Eventually, I took a look at the photo I took of the ding on the door.
The door of that precious, new, “$100,000” truck…
The first thing I noticed was the pair of scratches in the paint, above the ding I caused.
Then I had to zoom in because… were those… so many…
Chips in the paint?
Yup.
The first photo above is the one I took, untouched. The blue paint from my truck is in the “clean” spot, where he’d dragged his thumb across.
In the second picture, I used red to mark the scratches, and put a dot beside every spot that was clearly a chip in the paint. There were others that I didn’t mark because I couldn’t be sure if it was a chip, or road dust.
As someone who lives off a gravel road, I recognize stone chips in paint. Except the chips were really high up the door. I’m short. That’s a tall truck. Some of those dings at the top of the photo were almost chest height on me. Normal driving on a gravel road shouldn’t result in paint chips, that high up.
According to the registration papers, this truck has only been driving since the end of May of this year. Not even two months, yet. It’s also set to expire at the end of August, so it’s only registered for 3 months, plus a couple of days in May.
That’s a LOT of dings for just a couple of months driving – and that’s just in the area in my photo, on the passenger side door.
There’s also a smear that I am not sure if it’s a smear of dust, or if it’s a smear of paint or something.
Now, I did ding this guy’s car. I tried hard to keep my door from opening all the way, but couldn’t stop it while I was settling the water jug in place.
With the guy’s behaviour and attitude about it, any possibility of apologizing disappeared. Plus, I was already ticked that he’d parked so close to me, when there were so many other places he could have parked and not had anyone next to him, then didn’t move when he saw that I was struggling to get the water jugs into my own truck.
Of course, a polite, able bodied young gentleman would have offered to assist the fat old lady lugging 5 gallon jugs of water and trying to get them into a vehicle. Not that I needed it, but it would have been polite. I’ve certainly done as much for others, when the opportunity rose. At the very least, if he was so worried about the truck, he would have moved it before I started hauling over that second water just.
I somehow doubt that the company that owns the truck is going to think it’s worth paying the deductible to file a claim for negligible damage, while it was being driven by, presumably, an employee (not the owner, since the company name is a surname that isn’t his) using it for personal reasons during off hours.
Well, as my husband put it, if they do file, we’ll let the insurance company sort it out.
What a way to end my time in town today!
Thankfully, the rest of the day has been far less… interesting.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 