Road to Nowhere
Okay, let�s just get this out of the way: I am a moron. An idiot.
I am a detail person. Details are my life. My job is nothing if not detail after detail. My life is nothing but details. One slip, one change in plans, and the whole stack of cards come tumbling down.
Saturday was, I thought, the day we�d been invited to a baby shower/house warming party for friends expecting a child next month. I spent the morning packing up baby things to give them, making a pesto pasta salad, gathering up bathing suits and towels and extra clothes and pull-ups and yadda, yadda, yadda.
Crammed everyone in the car all sun blocked to the hilt, car bursting at the seams. I even had toll money (in nickels but, hey, the machine can count nickels)! I stopped for gas (and died a little at the price) and we were off.
Forty-five minutes later, we arrive in front of the house.
And it�s dark.
The curtains are drawn.
There doesn�t seem to be anyone home.
I pick up the invitation and notice, apparently for the first time, that the party is NEXT WEEKEND. The 26th.
Fuck.
When I�d last talked to the host, she�d mentioned the 19th and asked about my availability. Yes, I said, that day was free. When I got the invitation I didn�t look closely enough at it or, I did but my brain told me something very different than what my eyes were (not) looking at.
Well done, dumb ass.
So, I apologized to the family unit, �Let me express my profound apologies, Family Unit, for my utter stupidity. Let us not speak of this again.�
They took it pretty well. We stopped in the drug store on the way home so I could get beer and Dusty could get a coloring book. Red was happy to go into the store and wreak havoc. I think she thought this was our intended destination so she was good.
I scrounged up another fifty cents in nickels and we headed home.
Nothing like a futile 2-hour drive to make the day, huh?
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The rest of the weekend was good, though. Dusty and I picked apples from the apple tree and made applesauce. It�s quite good. We also made apple cobbler.
On Sunday, before it got too hot, we watered the flowers and laid down newspaper to kill grass for our fall garden retaining wall projects. I put rocks down on the newspapers. Red decided to contribute by picking up rocks and throwing them here and there. One landed on my big toe.
Which is probably no more than I deserve.
