Three More Shades of Grey

     All things considered, I guess I should be grateful I wasn't hit by a semi.
     This happened last night right around the corner from our house at 6:07 last night. Don't let the pictures fool you. It was actually a lot darker at this time of night and thereby hangs a tale.
     I was about to make a left hand turn at a three way intersection, a turn I've successfully made literally thousands of times in the nine plus years I've been living in this neighborhood. After carefully looking both ways on a very rainy night, I finally judged it safe to turn and a second later, I saw a dark grey SUV loom about five feet from my car.
     As you can tell from the damage, I got T-boned and luckily suffered nothing more than bruised ribs and a headache that won't seem to go away (I didn't go to the hospital since I hate the place and I was just there. More on that later). The reason I didn't see the woman who hit me was because she was driving with her headlights off. Since it was raining heavily and my driver window marred with rainwater (I didn't open it because I didn't want to get soaked), I got hit by a dark grey SUV with the headlights off on a dark, grey road on a dark grey rainy night. If this woman was trying to blend into her environment, she couldn't've possibly done a better job.
     All the same, the cops judged me to be the one at faulr because, since she was on a straightaway, I impeded her right of way. They seem to be blithely ignorant of the fact that if she'd obeyed another state law that mandates using headlights both after sunset and during a rainstorm, I would have seen her from a distance and not impeded her progress.
     Since the local towing company has a racket going on with the police, they towed my car back to their junkyard on the other side of town miles away so that, after towing and "storage" charges (AAA suddenly doesn't want to get involved when you're REALLY in desperate need), I had to today pay them $150 in ransom to get my car back in my driveway. (AAA said they'd reimburse me but I'll believe it when I see it). I found out the cops are trying to stick me with this when I filed a claim with my insurance company.
     Bottom line, old Betsy's totaled, we have no car and I was about to make a cardiologist appointment at the local hospital to have Mrs. JP's congestive heart failure checked and treated. RIP Betsy 1998-2018.
     I privately made a call to several friends for help and, while I acknowledge that no one owes us diddly, the response wasn't quite as large as we'd hoped. I need at least $1000 for another used car so I can get covered under the Lemon Law. Seriously, we are in the direst need perhaps in the nine years we've been living here. We still need to do food shopping, laundry (we're the only ones in the building who don't have a washer-drier hookup) and, most importantly, my fiancee has a serious heart condition that we need to get treated immediately (I had her in the hospital's ER getting checked out about four days ago).
     Obviously, anything you kind folks can do will be more appreciated than ever because right now, if I had to spend $1000 on a car tomorrow, I'd wind up having to use our rent money for next month.
     Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll resume our lunacy at the southern border and everywhere else as programmed.