Yesterday as I was driving home with Liz, we were hit by retread. I was driving Rob's car, the visually lovely but uncomfortable to be in 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Of course we saw the retread before it hit us. Liz and I could see it bouncing from car to car as it was a pretty big piece of rubber. It rolled off one car, the car in front of us swerved slightly but there wasn't any room for us to move left or right so we just watched as it plunked into the hood and rolled up and over the top of our car.

Liz said, "You're being awfully calm about this." She leaned forward to see if she could survey the damage (it had rolled up the passenger side of the car).

Tracy: "Well, there's not much I can do about it."

I am a worrier. I can't help but worry about all sorts of silly little things going on in the world, in my life, in the neighborhood, on TV. But when it comes down to it, there's some things that I can't let bother me -- like when my car is hit by tire debris.

It wasn't until I dropped Liz off at her house and she was able to look at the damage then give a nervous giggle when describing what it looked like to me (it was too windy and icky for me to feel like hopping out of the car myself) that I began to fret about it. Fortunately, Rob is a good guy. He listened to me describe what happened, went out and looked at the car and then let me put my little head on his shoulder because it had worried me to come home and tell him.

The car's not very comfortable, though, and we had talked about maybe trying to get a different car. I wonder if we can pass off that tire tread spiraling up the passenger side as "detailing"?