My Lifetime Journey
by Dotti

September 2008

The greatest thing you have is the 24 hours in front of you.
The past is gone; the future is distant.
Today you CAN succeed.
Set a goal you can achieve in the next 24 hours.

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I do want to address the issue of my Before/After rollover photo on my main page. I have received a couple of emails stating that those photos should NOT be there since I've gained some weight back. I disagree. I have never hid the fact I've gained some weight back - NEVER! I may not have addressed it but pictures have been posted on the Message Board and on my page (hiking pages, etc) that indeed show my extra weight. I've earned the right to have those photos there. I DID that Journey and WILL do it again. Those photos are MY motivation to get back to GOAL, to where I was for 3 1/2 years. I hope that those photos are also good motivation for all of you to reach your goals too. It can be done! I've proven it as has many of you. We can never have enough motivation to keep on keeping on.

Jump onboard everyone! You can do it too!

I'm rooting for you!

September 12, 2008 - First I'd like to say "thank you" to all who have emailed me asking how I'm doing.  It's been a long time since I've updated my Journey back to Goal. I'm usually not very good at talking about myself but I'll try and keep this up to date. I will be doing a monthly page, like this one, every month.  Under my accountability chart I'll post messages and personal notes about my Journey and my life. 

On June 16th of this year I started back on my Journey back to Goal. Unfortunately, my head wasn't fully in the game, if you know what I mean.  I wasn't back to journaling every day and I was sorely lacking in the water department.  I still managed to lose a couple pounds.  On August 7th, I started my bi-weekly, one-hour training sessions with a trainer at my gym.  It was the best thing I ever did! Along with the training sessions, I do 30 minutes on the elliptical and 1 hour of water aerobics.  I am finally in a great gym routine and I have to say, I'm feeling great.

Along with my gym routine, I am journaling every day, staying OP, getting all my water in most days and I have more energy than I have had in a very long time.  I am strong on Program.

I will try and catch you all up on what's been going on in my life. I was in a car accident on Wednesday, Sept 10th. I thought it better to let Al describe the accident since I was kind of out of it at the time.

Dotti had a car accident and we spent 4.5 hours in the ER to finally get her seen. (She is okay!) She may have separated some ribs, or maybe it is only a strain of something on her ribcage. (That injury was caused by her seatbelt! If she had not been wearing it, I would bet she would have been up into, if not through the windshield!) She also knocked her right knee pretty good on the dashboard. The car was hauled away by an AAA tow truck and we have no idea how badly the car is damaged. I was only interested in getting Dotti seen to. Tomorrow we will be doing the insurance stuff and getting together with the dealership to see if the car is fixable or not.

You never saw someone move so quickly as I did when I got the call from Dotti this morning, with her frantically telling me she was in an accident and to get down there as quick as I could.

When I first arrived, this is what I saw. Police cars and two ambulances. Dotti was still in the car and the other driver had on a neck brace and the medics were attending to her.

Dotti was in a state of shock when I arrived, and I was not far behind after seeing all the mess around the accident. She had not yet gotten out of the car, and I was afraid she was pinned, but she was just waiting for me before beginning her self-check on how badly she was hurt. I got in the passenger side and spoke with her and tried to assess the damage to her. The car I didn't care about right then, I just wanted to make sure Dotti was okay.

Dotti seemed to be doing fairly well, so we both agreed that she would try and get out of the car, with my assistance, and make sure she could stand and walk. She did well with that, but found she had rapped her knee on the dashboard and the safety belt had really done a number on her ribs, and also bruised her across her upper chest.

I don’t know about the lady who was the other driver, and who was cited for failing to yield the right of way and was hauled away in an ambulance. I think she was okay, but it was hard to tell for sure. I asked the policeman if she was okay, and he said he didn't know.

The other driver didn’t think or look or something when she turned, but she just made a left turn in front of Dotti and all Dotti could do was slam on her breaks. But that did next to nothing because she was still going 35 or 40 when the collision happened.

Our car struck the other and the points of initial contact were the middle of our bumper (and grill, and hood, and radiator, at least from what I could see) and the corner of the front passenger side of the other car.

When Dotti hit, she of course was going straight. She had a green light and was merely passing through the intersection. The other car had not quite gotten to the fully perpendicular orientation to our car when contact was made. She was well into the left turn, but not heading quite straight into the crossing road, when the nose of the car blocked Dotti’s path. Dotti’s car just quickly came to a halt, not moved left or right or turned in any way by the contact. The other car was knocked around and came to rest almost parallel to Dotti’s car. The final configuration had the front of our car almost dead center in the middle of the intersection fore to aft, and running centered in the right hand lane of a four lane road (2 lanes in each direction), and the other car was at about a 30° angle to ours, with its right front tire just in front of our bumper and (apparently undamaged!) left headlight.

This is the position that the two cars ended up in. Notice how our car is only damaged dead center, with both headlights still intact. The other car had to hit with its corner right in the center of our car to do that. And then it was spun around by the impact as you see it.

If you just looked at where the cars came to rest in the end, you would have thought they had both been going the same way and the other driver had been leading Dotti’s car by only a few feet and then merely tried to change lanes, from the left lane into Dotti’s right lane, and just ran into Dotti. But the damage tells the real story; they were originally going in opposite directions and the other driver, while making a left turn, crossed one whole lane, before obstructing Dotti’s path in the second lane of traffic going in Dotti’s direction. She just barely got into Dotti’s path before being struck.

Since Dotti had a green light, and she was going the speed limit, she was taken completely by surprise by this illegal maneuver. I have no idea what the other driver was thinking. Perhaps she saw that she had a green light and thought she had a free ride to make a left turn. But she obviously didn’t even look, or she would have seen Dotti two lanes over coming along spritely.

Our car mounted on the tow truck. Our license plate had fallen on the ground, and so the policeman picked it up and put it inside our car, so it wouldn't be lost.

Sorry for rambling so much but I am still worked up about it, and it has been 11 hours since the accident. Mainly I feel relief that Dotti is okay. Cars can be replaced, Dotti is irreplaceable. It could have been much worse. I am content.  ~~Al

I cannot relive yesterday and tomorrow isn't here yet,
so I will just deal with today.

ø¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸¸,ø¤º°Wishing You Success°º¤ø,¸¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸ø

Success is...achieved and maintained
by those who try - and keep trying.