There is just so much one can do to avoid untoward occurrences from happening, and no more, it seems. Our sleek little silver Honda coupe with its neat sun roof that our granddaughter so much likes is no longer in the immaculate condition it represented yesterday morning. Five years old, with eight thousand kilometres, never driven in the winter, oil changes meticulously looked after, it now awaits bodyshop work.

Fine mechanically, but relatively superficially, given what could have occurred, in its bout with a GMC monster-SUV, cosmetically altered. It's painful to look at, actually. I'm just supremely grateful that my husband wasn't physically harmed. Remediation will happen, the insurance paid for by the driver of the SUV will legally look after that end of things.

Always careful where he parks, never between two vans or SUVs, for example, and never minding how far he has to walk once parked, to his destination, things happen anywhere. And invariably, it seems these relatively minor and extremely irritating collisions occur in parking lots. He had gone out yesterday morning to run a few errands close by - to the bank, the library.

And that's when the driver of the SUV, without checking behind her, gunned the motor and backed out so swiftly that it gave no time for avoidance, and the right, passenger side of our little car was smacked. I was at home. Wondering why those two errands were taking so long. When the telephone rang and my husband informed me he was at the local police station, arranging for an accident report.

Later he filled in details. Like the gratitude expressed time and again by the woman who also kept repeating how sorry she was, for my husband's calm demeanor. For not shouting at her, raging and cursing. How much she so very much appreciated that. A mother of three teens, she will have quite the shame-faced admission to make to them, about her own lapse in vigilance and judgement.

Judgement because she was unwrapping a shawarma she had just zipped into a store to acquire for her lunch. Her attention focused on eating it, instead of whether or not the way was clear for her to exit her parking space so blindly, and rapidly.

This well-cared-for-vehicle, our little silver Honda is meant to be a hand-over to our granddaughter when she begins her first year of university year after next. She will be living in residence, and that too will be a gift from us.

Later, we went for our usual ravine walk and came across good-natured, sloppy, goofy, hairy Charlie. Her human companion described what he'd just experienced with her. Come home from work to find her in obvious discomfort, refusing to put her left front leg down, hobbling along. Close scrutiny revealed an ingrown nail that had split. An emergency visit to the local veterinarian clinic led to an operation to extract the nail.

Details aside, our ravine-walking friend was poorer $535. But Charlie was in excellent spirits, romping about in the ravine, and that was what mattered. As for our little silver car, the preliminary cost estimate is around $3000. And it too should be as good as new.