Just outside of Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho, I saw a huge raccoon in the road. I swerved to go behind it, but the critter turned around and ran right in front of my car. THUNK! THUNKETY THUNK THUNK! I felt bad for the poor little guy, but I didn’t stop. A few miles later, my car started making weird rattling noises, so I took a nearby exit to check out the damage. As soon as I got to the stop sign, my car died and wouldn’t start again.

I got out and saw fluid pouring out from under the front of my car. When I looked under the front of my car, I saw a little bit of fur stuck to my bumper, some bumper damage, and some bent metal. I also saw that my exhaust system was hanging down. Who would have thought a raccoon could do so much damage?

I called Meg to ask what she thought I should do, and she suggested that I call AAA and get an emergency tow. They signed me up for coverage and took me to Glenn’s Ferry. There were two motels there, one of which was open, so I stayed the night and got up early to survey the damage. The AAA guy had dropped my car off at Main Street Garage, so I had the owner, Jimmy, take a look at my car. One look was enough for him to decide he wasn’t equipped to handle the damage. I called my insurance company, Pemco, and they said I needed to have my car towed to a body shop in Boise.

Boise! I had wanted to get about an hour past Boise the night before. Apparently it was not to be. The tow truck got me to Boise at about 1 in the afternoon and took my car to Parks Royal Body Works. The owner, Matt, took the front of my car apart and told me the compressor for the air conditioning unit, the radiator, the bumper, and the metal parts holding the radiator in place all needed to be replaced. He was super nice, doing all the negotiating with Pemco, getting parts overnighted from Portland, putting his guys to work on my car right away. I was hopeful that I’d be on my way by Friday evening.

Well, Friday evening came and Matt had some bad news: They fixed everything they thought needed repair and then tried to start my car. Nothing. They pulled out a spark plug and looked underneath and saw fluid where there shouldn’t be fluid. Matt said that indicated that the head gasket had gotten overheated and warped, letting radiator fluid into the engine. He had the car towed to the Honda dealership to have work done that his shop couldn’t handle.

So I’m sitting here at Cabana Inn (very cheap downtown Boise motel) on Saturday morning waiting for word from Honda on some kind of timeline for repairs. I had expected to be home by now, getting ready for Christmas cheer with my family. Meanwhile, it has snowed a couple of inches here in Boise, and a quick look at Idaho’s DOT website shows that roads are icy all the way to Utah. NOAA has a winter weather alert on all the roads I would be driving on to get home. I’m really hoping that being home for Christmas won’t only be in my dreams.

p.s. Some facts on raccoons: National Geographic claims that North American raccoons only get to about 23 pounds at most, but I swear the one I hit was way bigger than that. People in Chicago claim they’ve seen huge raccoons that have bent steel window bars to get into houses, and a woman in Pennsylvania had a pet raccoon that weighed 75 pounds. So obviously coons can get bigger than NatGeo says. The one I hit wasn’t 75 pounds, but I’d be willing to bet that it was more than 30. National Geographic also says the critters hibernate during the winter. I wish. I don’t know if coonskin caps are fashionable in Idaho, but there should be a good-sized pelt by the road near Glenn’s Ferry if anyone wants it.

Poppy bought a bike in Hoenderloo (near Hoge Veluwe) and rode it back to Rotterdam last weekend, so she had the wheels to join Molly, Jonathan and me on an easy ride to Den Haag by way of Delft. We got to Den Haag pretty quickly, so we decided to go to the Mauritshuis Museum, known for housing Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring. We saw a long line of people and assumed they were waiting to get into the museum, so we took our place in line to go through a metal detector and have our bags x-rayed. Ummm, we were wrong (not for the first or last time of the day). Apparently, we happened to be in Den Haag on the day that many of the national monuments and museums are open to the public for free. We waited in line for 30 minutes to tour some legislative chamber, or something of the sort. After our 5-minute tour of some unknown place, we decided to ask someone where Mauritshuis was so we could see what we came for.

After an hour or so of contemplating art, we went to the beach near Scheveningen. Jonathan thought the North Sea looked inviting, so he stripped down to his boxers and jumped in. Poppy, Molly and I passed on doing that. We wandered along the beach for awhile, ate ice cream, and ran into Greta purely by chance. Greta had come to the beach by train, so we made plans to meet up in Rotterdam and go out to dinner. We thought it would take us a little more than an hour to get back. Not so.

The network of bicycle paths in the Netherlands is fantastic. You can bike all over the country, mostly on paths reserved for bicycles and scooters. Here’s the big but: The signs are really confusing. We followed the signs pointing to Rotterdam and thought we were getting close when we saw a sign that said it was only 19 kilometers away. We rode for quite awhile in the direction of Rotterdam and then saw another sign — that said it was 19 km away. I suspect the signs may just direct unsuspecting cyclists in huge circles. We took a few more wrong turns that took us through some beautiful countryside and eventually got back to Rotterdam, but I think we probably rode quite a few more kilometers than 19.

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to climb towers, so I was delighted to discover that the tallest tower in the Netherlands is the Domtoren in Utrecht. The tower used to be part of a church, but during a huge windstorm in the 17th century, the middle section of the church collapsed, separating the tower and the part of the church that remained standing. After climbing hundreds of stairs, we got to see the carillon bells playing. The Domtoren’s bells play every hour via an automated mechanism. Basically, it’s a gigantic music box: A huge metal drum with posts sticking out of it rotates, moving levers that make the clappers strike the bells. Our tour guide said the tune is changed about four times a year. Twice a week, a man plays the bells for about an hour by pounding on levers with his fists. Here’s a video of the bells. It’s kind of hard to see the drum moving and the clappers hitting the bells, but hopefully you get the idea.

When we got back to Rotterdam, we were feeling super hungry (we did a lot of walking and climbed a lot of stairs), so we went to an eethuis near our hotel. According to Trent, eethuises serve Dutch comfort food. It was indeed comforting; the wiener schnitzel was just what I needed. To top off the meal, while the owner of the place was making our dessert, he came out and asked us, “Who has the biggest mouth?” Everyone pointed at Poppy, and while she was laughing, the owner popped a spoonful of amaretto sauce into her mouth and left it there. Good food, good times, great day.

Using only the little pink toolkit that my dad gave me for Christmas, a hammer, a towel and a hair dryer, I fixed (somewhat) the dent on my own. Here’s how I did it: I used the tools from the little pink toolkit to remove the rear bumper from my car. Then I took the bumper inside my house and heated the dented area with a hair dryer (so the plastic would be more pliable), covered the dent with a towel (to protect the plastic from the hammer’s sharp edges), and banged on it with a hammer. Using the little pink tools, I reattached the bumper to my car. I didn’t have quite the right tools or training to completely smooth out the dent, but at least now the clips can keep the bumper in the right place. Not bad for an hour’s work.

It was probably karmic retribution for the time I traumatized my friend Alana’s son, Ryland, after he proudly introduced me to his menagerie of stuffed animals. “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and see their eyes glowing red and saliva dripping off their teeth?” I asked him. I still don’t know why I said that. Last year the elementary school gave my mom the school records for me and my siblings, so we got to see what our teachers thought of us. The kindergarten teacher I always thought adored me wrote, “lacks impulse control.” Maybe some things don’t change. Anyway, poor little Ryland was probably about 9 or 10 at the time I planted suspicions about his stuffed animals in his mind, and he burst into tears at the thought of his friends transforming into scary monsters while he slept. He had to sleep with his parents that night. It took a lot of convincing on Alana’s part to get him to believe his pandas would just snuggle with — not devour — him.

Last week I interviewed Alana’s daughter for one of my classes, so I went to Alana’s house for the first time in a few years. Ryland didn’t recognize me at first, but after a few minutes he asked his mom, “Is Maren the one who made me cry that one time?” Alas, yes. Fortunately, Ryland hasn’t needed years of therapy to develop into a pretty well-adjusted 12-year-old and crazy good Rock Band drummer. But still, what kind of person says that kind of thing to a kid?

So, back to my night. Finally around 4 a.m. it started raining and drowned out the tapping sound outside my window, so I was able to go to sleep. And when I looked outside this morning, I saw that the rain had washed away all traces of the dead babysitter, too. I hope I fall asleep faster tonight.

I probably never would have thought of participating in the Big Climb if my sister Celia hadn’t died of leukemia almost a year ago. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that there’s a bit of hero worship going on when I talk about her. Celia was a terrific person, the kind of sister anyone would love to have. I did the Big Climb in her memory. But I felt more of a sense of loss than accomplishment at the top of the 1,311 stairs I climbed in the Columbia Center. I felt like Celia should have been climbing with me, but we’ll never have that chance. I was glad to see posters of leukemia and lymphoma survivors posted on many of the floors in the Columbia stair well, but I couldn’t help feeling a little resentful. Why didn’t my sister make it? Why was her poster “in memory of” rather than “in honor of”?

Supposedly time heals all wounds, but this one feels as raw as it did that day last May when my dad told us Darren was going to take Celia off the ventilator because she had a blood clot in her brain and the doctors couldn’t detect any brain function. That day I thought there was still time for a miracle — but the one I wanted didn’t happen. God took my sister without asking my permission or anyone else’s. I still can’t think of a good reason why. But I firmly believe that Celia is still being her wonderful self and helping others find more purpose in their existence.

Climbing the Columbia tower was hard, especially because I hadn’t done any training for it. I had thought about climbing the stairs on the Fremont side of Queen Anne hill — 15-20 times up the 80 stairs should have been decent training — but I let general grad school busyness get in the way. Even with my flabby, untrained legs, I would do back-to-back Big Climbs every day for the rest of my life if it would bring my sister back. It won’t. But I’ll try to keep climbing. Maybe one day I’ll be strong enough and make it high enough to get to where Celia is.