My mother lived in Mexico City for a while (she won't tell us why), and was on a bus or tram that stopped. She didn't speak enough Spanish to know why or when it was going to start up again, so she just got off and started walking. People were yelling at her, but, still not with the Spanish-speaking.

Turned out there were fallen power cables blocking the way, and she was stepping right over the live juice.

She decided to take Spanish lessons.

Her sister had an intruder threaten to rape and kill her. She talked him out of it. Her success was one of the reasons she went into psychiatry. The other reason was the corpse in the morgue that sat up at her.

I don't always know how to take her stories.

I think I told y'all that my favorite story like that is when Mrs. Emanuel heard teenaged Rahm come to cussing a blue streak and they interview her about it later and she says "Until that moment, I wasn't sure that he was my boy anymore...he was so very close to death. But I heard him curse, and I knew he was all there and that he was going to live." Which is fucked-up and heartwarming at the same time, isn't it? Especially since I told my own mom that after I read the article and she said "Sounds right to me."(and she's not even the family member from Chicago...that's my dad. Who only curses when he's extra-special hostile)

I suggest with alcohol. good lord.

I have many many many mundane stories that end with "....well, that could have gone terribly wrong." When the truck I was in flipped, my only thought was "Airline crash position or cover my head?" I still don't know which I went with.

Pretty sure if I go out by accident, only thing I'll be thinking will be on that level. Or "oh, well shit."

I have never had a near death experience. Semi- relatedly, Anesthesia works really oddly on me though, and although I have only had one surgical experience (wisdom teeth) I was actually aware and frozen during it. Novacaine also does not kick in for about 40 minutes after the injection, and it takes about 2 hours for advil to work. Anyway, I hope I never have "real surgery" and end up frozen and aware, because I am not sure I could take it!

Yikes Sophia, I would highly recommend being loud and vocal early and often with Drs. should you ever need surgery.

The ER keeps telling me I've had near death experiences.

Grace's first year to maybe 18-months were always near death experiences. I think the worst of it was when we were visiting she turned blue, and there was not a sound from any of the monitors that were on her and the ventilator didn't even stop venting her. The only reason she got bagged immediately was because we were there with her.

In hindsight, Grace and Noah's birth was pretty near death for all of us, though I guess I was too naive (gotta love ignorance) to realize it at the time and only knew about it as it pertained to me well after the fact in a convo with my ob-gyn.

And yes, it has changed my outlook on life.

And yes, it has changed my outlook on life.

How so? (If you don't mind saying....)

movers are scheduled to come give me an estimate for storage and the move - Tuesday 9am. WHEE!

See? It's a wonder I survived into adulthood:

Bad-ass cow terrorizes community, kicks the crap out of police car

Cows are generally thought to be relatively docile creatures: lumbering, slow moving grass munchers that aren't terribly difficult to round up.

But not a heifer in Evans, which, during almost 24 hours on the loose, repeatedly evaded capture. And it wasn't subdued until after a four-hour pursuit involving cops, veterinarians and an animal-control officer that didn't end until the fugitive was gunned down with two shots from a tranquilizer pistol.

"People may laugh," says Evans Detective Rita Wolf. "But it's a 750-pound animal. It could have done some damage" -- and it did, when it kicked the crap out of a police car.

Here's Wolf's recap:

"The first call we got was about 2:30 a.m. on the 10th, about a cow that had gotten away. We sent out officers, but it's an all-black heifer and not easily seen at night -- so we couldn't locate it the first time. Then, we got another call around 3:30, where someone else saw it running loose by Centennial Elementary, on the 1700 block of 37th Street.

"But officers were unable to capture the cow then, and it ran east toward the railroad tracks. A train was coming, and it honked its horn, and that made the cow jump back when one of our officers was in the vehicle. That's when the cow hit the front end of the vehicle and knocked off the bumper. And then it ran off, and they were unable to capture it again."

During the daytime hours, the cow laid low. But it was only biding its time.

"Around 6:30 last night, we got a call about the cow running around over by the Ridge subdivision, off the 3300 block of 42nd Street. They found it right away, but it kept running, and they'd lose it again. Then, someone else would call in and say where it was then. They were able to keep track of it, but they couldn't quite catch it."

As the hours wore on, the posse chasing the cow grew to include a Weld County animal-control officer and a pair of veterinarians. Finally, with the clock nearing 11 p.m., the group managed to effectively corral the cow long enough to hit it with two shots from a tranquilizer gun.

All told, the heifer "covered a lot of territory," Wolf says. "It wandered for miles. It went from one end of town to the other." But the effort was worthwhile, she believes, because of the potential for accident and injury. "If a driver were to hit it in the dark, when it was hard to see, it could have caused a good amount of damage to the vehicle, and possibly to the driver, too."

Instead, the person likely to suffer the most damage is the cow's owner, who was given an animal-at-large citation that could result in a fine. But that seems like a small price to pay for such a bovine bad-ass.