Sorry I haven't been able to make
another big post, guys. I was about to explain why that's sort of
difficult now, but then I thought it would make a pretty funny post by
itself :)
So I have a lot of pain right now in my arms and hands, pretty much constantly, stemming from the herniated discs in my spine (one in my neck, one in my back between my shoulder blades) and these in turn stem from an accident I got into while on the job as a princess. Here's how it happened:
I was in my Chevy, driving to my boss' house to meet up with her for a kids' party. I usually don't, I head straight to the party itself, but she needed help with the hostess stuff, so I was gonna jump in the van with her and another princess (the party called for Cinderella and Beauty) and leave my car at her place. I was about five minutes from her house, heading up a 45 mph road with no stop signs or lights in my way, when a woman came blasting down a side street, blew her stop sign and t-boned me right in the driver-side door at about 40 mph.
She pushed me out of my lane, across the road shoulder and fully onto the adjacent town green. Since the front axle on my car took a ton of the impact, my car remained relatively intact, although the driver door was totally smashed in and the impact was hard enough to deploy not only my airbag, but the passenger-side one as well. The car was in roughly one piece, but it was totaled beyond repair.
The woman's car, on the other hand, went from a tiny Mitsubishi to HALF a tiny Mitsubishi. The front end of her car practically exploded on impact. I was thrown sideways in my seat, slipped out from under the chest seat belt and landed face-first in the passenger seat, after hitting my head on the seat divider bar. I woke up in a car full of smoke and tried to get out of the driver-side door. It was so smashed in that it wouldn't open more than about three inches, and I stuck my fingers out the space between and wiggled them, because I was dazed and couldn't comprehend the door not opening. Also couldn't breathe because of the smoke.
I looked out the window and saw the car that had hit me. The woman was staring at me from her seat, PHONE STILL IN HER HAND. Yep, she'd been driving while on the phone.
You have to feel sorry for this woman and put yourself in her place. You were talking on the phone, you were two miles from your house on a road you've traveled many times. You're distracted and miss the stop sign for what could be the first time in your life. A car looms in front of you, there's a screech of tires and a terrific crash. You just realize your own negligence has caused a terrible accident and totaled two vehicles. The other car is filling with smoke, the driver you hit isn't visible, possibly passed out or dead. Suddenly, a small hand emerges from the door, pathetically curling around the door frame and trying to push it open. A face appears in the window, bruised and dazed.
IT'S FRICKIN' CINDERELLA.
Jesus CHRIST, did you just hit a PRINCESS? Isn't that a felony or something? Is it too late to hit the gas and make a highly illegal run for it? Do you even get a TRIAL for killing a princess, or do you just get charged with treason and executed??
I could see the woman's mouth fall open as she got out and stared at the place where the front of her car used to be.
"That's why you buy American!" I screamed through the three inch opening of the driver door. I was in no mood.
I crawled out the passenger door and stood there, shivering in the very cold winter winds, while she ran over. Her first thought, after making sure I wasn't dead, was to bitch about how the car was in her father's name and he was gonna TOTALLY KILL HER. My first thought was to look in the back seat to see if my Rapunzel wig and costume were OK (I had a second party that day), because if not, I was TOTALLY GONNA KILL HER.
The policeman's first thought, when he arrived at the scene and met the babbling woman who was going on about how her dad would be furious, was to tell her that if she had hit me about six inches further back along the car, away from the front axle, she would have TOTALLY KILLED ME. I have two relatives who got in extremely similar accidents. One was in a body cast afterward and one had six broken ribs. So I was very, very lucky.
Anyhow, long story short, this happened:
Weird day. I was just relieved the little girl's party wasn't ruined. I called my boss five minutes after the impact and told her to come pick me up to go to the party, which I was DETERMINED to do because I had a concussion and didn't realize a bruised Cinderella with spinal damage and a dirt-stained dress was not exactly going to go over well. Also that I couldn't leave my car in pieces across the town green to go to a birthday party. Luckily the woman ordered two princesses, so the party wasn't a total loss, and the little girl was told that Cinderella's horse threw a shoe on the way there and she couldn't make it. The mom was understanding. And another princess was able to cover my Rapunzel shift. That's the problem with being a party princess...you can never call out sick to work, because if you do, some little kid's birthday will be ruined. It's hard to get a replacement princess up and ready on short notice. So my boss has a rule that if we even THINK we may be feeling like we might get sick three days before a party, we let her know and she has someone ready on stand-by. But car accidents are another beast altogether.
I did months of rehabilitation and physical therapy, and now have a vicious regimen of heavy-duty painkillers to deal with the aftermath of limb pain, back pain and headaches, although we're still waiting to see if I'll need spinal surgery. But it makes drawing difficult for more than a few hours, which sucks cuz I'm kinda committed to this whole drawing a graphic novel thing for Kickstarter (in fact, the whole reason I started the project was to get money to live on, since I had to quit my day job because I couldn't do any heavy lifting anymore). So some days, it's just not in me to do more drawings and typing after my regular work and art commissions.
But I don't want you to think I just said screw it to the thread and I'm not going to finish it, cuz I TOTALLY will. And if you have a request for a silly princess party drawing for me to draw and post here, please tell me, because this is the most fun I've had in months and I'm really glad this thread has gotten so many responses :D
I hope this doesn't come off as a pity post, cuz I really have nothing to feel sad about. I was AMAZINGLY lucky I didn't suffer more injuries or was outright killed. If she'd been driving anything other than a tiny japanese car, or god forbid she had an SUV, I might not even be here. Plus I luckily had switched my car insurance to full-torte a few months before...without that, I wouldn't have had the coverage for treatment and physical therapy, or any medications. And I've been super lucky to have fans that contributed to my Kickstarter to pay my living costs for a few months in exchange for a graphic novel. :3: So things could be absolutely a whole lot worse, and I'm glad everything has worked out relatively OK. Also I have an awesome attorney, so hopefully we'll at least see some compensation for my out-of-pocket expenses and the new used car I had to buy to replace my old one.
Also, please don't hit princesses with your car. They're people too. Fancy, ballgowned people.
So I have a lot of pain right now in my arms and hands, pretty much constantly, stemming from the herniated discs in my spine (one in my neck, one in my back between my shoulder blades) and these in turn stem from an accident I got into while on the job as a princess. Here's how it happened:
I was in my Chevy, driving to my boss' house to meet up with her for a kids' party. I usually don't, I head straight to the party itself, but she needed help with the hostess stuff, so I was gonna jump in the van with her and another princess (the party called for Cinderella and Beauty) and leave my car at her place. I was about five minutes from her house, heading up a 45 mph road with no stop signs or lights in my way, when a woman came blasting down a side street, blew her stop sign and t-boned me right in the driver-side door at about 40 mph.
She pushed me out of my lane, across the road shoulder and fully onto the adjacent town green. Since the front axle on my car took a ton of the impact, my car remained relatively intact, although the driver door was totally smashed in and the impact was hard enough to deploy not only my airbag, but the passenger-side one as well. The car was in roughly one piece, but it was totaled beyond repair.
The woman's car, on the other hand, went from a tiny Mitsubishi to HALF a tiny Mitsubishi. The front end of her car practically exploded on impact. I was thrown sideways in my seat, slipped out from under the chest seat belt and landed face-first in the passenger seat, after hitting my head on the seat divider bar. I woke up in a car full of smoke and tried to get out of the driver-side door. It was so smashed in that it wouldn't open more than about three inches, and I stuck my fingers out the space between and wiggled them, because I was dazed and couldn't comprehend the door not opening. Also couldn't breathe because of the smoke.
I looked out the window and saw the car that had hit me. The woman was staring at me from her seat, PHONE STILL IN HER HAND. Yep, she'd been driving while on the phone.
You have to feel sorry for this woman and put yourself in her place. You were talking on the phone, you were two miles from your house on a road you've traveled many times. You're distracted and miss the stop sign for what could be the first time in your life. A car looms in front of you, there's a screech of tires and a terrific crash. You just realize your own negligence has caused a terrible accident and totaled two vehicles. The other car is filling with smoke, the driver you hit isn't visible, possibly passed out or dead. Suddenly, a small hand emerges from the door, pathetically curling around the door frame and trying to push it open. A face appears in the window, bruised and dazed.
IT'S FRICKIN' CINDERELLA.
Jesus CHRIST, did you just hit a PRINCESS? Isn't that a felony or something? Is it too late to hit the gas and make a highly illegal run for it? Do you even get a TRIAL for killing a princess, or do you just get charged with treason and executed??
I could see the woman's mouth fall open as she got out and stared at the place where the front of her car used to be.
"That's why you buy American!" I screamed through the three inch opening of the driver door. I was in no mood.
I crawled out the passenger door and stood there, shivering in the very cold winter winds, while she ran over. Her first thought, after making sure I wasn't dead, was to bitch about how the car was in her father's name and he was gonna TOTALLY KILL HER. My first thought was to look in the back seat to see if my Rapunzel wig and costume were OK (I had a second party that day), because if not, I was TOTALLY GONNA KILL HER.
The policeman's first thought, when he arrived at the scene and met the babbling woman who was going on about how her dad would be furious, was to tell her that if she had hit me about six inches further back along the car, away from the front axle, she would have TOTALLY KILLED ME. I have two relatives who got in extremely similar accidents. One was in a body cast afterward and one had six broken ribs. So I was very, very lucky.
Anyhow, long story short, this happened:
Weird day. I was just relieved the little girl's party wasn't ruined. I called my boss five minutes after the impact and told her to come pick me up to go to the party, which I was DETERMINED to do because I had a concussion and didn't realize a bruised Cinderella with spinal damage and a dirt-stained dress was not exactly going to go over well. Also that I couldn't leave my car in pieces across the town green to go to a birthday party. Luckily the woman ordered two princesses, so the party wasn't a total loss, and the little girl was told that Cinderella's horse threw a shoe on the way there and she couldn't make it. The mom was understanding. And another princess was able to cover my Rapunzel shift. That's the problem with being a party princess...you can never call out sick to work, because if you do, some little kid's birthday will be ruined. It's hard to get a replacement princess up and ready on short notice. So my boss has a rule that if we even THINK we may be feeling like we might get sick three days before a party, we let her know and she has someone ready on stand-by. But car accidents are another beast altogether.
I did months of rehabilitation and physical therapy, and now have a vicious regimen of heavy-duty painkillers to deal with the aftermath of limb pain, back pain and headaches, although we're still waiting to see if I'll need spinal surgery. But it makes drawing difficult for more than a few hours, which sucks cuz I'm kinda committed to this whole drawing a graphic novel thing for Kickstarter (in fact, the whole reason I started the project was to get money to live on, since I had to quit my day job because I couldn't do any heavy lifting anymore). So some days, it's just not in me to do more drawings and typing after my regular work and art commissions.
But I don't want you to think I just said screw it to the thread and I'm not going to finish it, cuz I TOTALLY will. And if you have a request for a silly princess party drawing for me to draw and post here, please tell me, because this is the most fun I've had in months and I'm really glad this thread has gotten so many responses :D
I hope this doesn't come off as a pity post, cuz I really have nothing to feel sad about. I was AMAZINGLY lucky I didn't suffer more injuries or was outright killed. If she'd been driving anything other than a tiny japanese car, or god forbid she had an SUV, I might not even be here. Plus I luckily had switched my car insurance to full-torte a few months before...without that, I wouldn't have had the coverage for treatment and physical therapy, or any medications. And I've been super lucky to have fans that contributed to my Kickstarter to pay my living costs for a few months in exchange for a graphic novel. :3: So things could be absolutely a whole lot worse, and I'm glad everything has worked out relatively OK. Also I have an awesome attorney, so hopefully we'll at least see some compensation for my out-of-pocket expenses and the new used car I had to buy to replace my old one.
Also, please don't hit princesses with your car. They're people too. Fancy, ballgowned people.