LJ: Yesterday, an adventure to remember

Yesterday turned out to be more of an adventure day than either I or Makal were expecting. As I headed out, I planned to grab his car insurance info for billing purposes, as the medical office neaded that before the appointment. Thinking I knew right where it was, it would be totally easy for me to grab it just as I left. Not so; the papers weren't there. Okay, I thought, they're probably in the bedroom. So, I head back there, and dig through all the recent papers and mail. Not there. That's fine, it's probably still in the car then (logical place to keep it!). So, I head out to the car. One problem: the doors are locked. Luckily, it is easy to open up the back of the car (an SUV/Jeep type vehicle), so I planned on doing that and climbing up to the front visor. Only thing is, the back won't open; the car accident bent the back bumper (which is metal) up at a funny angle so that the door on the back can't swing open. Umm, loverly. At this point I'm already 10 minutes late for when I wanted to be leaving, and now I needed to unzip the canopy and climb in that way. Unzipping it was easy, climbing in was fun, and the info was where I thought it was (that time...). Yet then, I had to close the canopy, which is actually much more of an ordeal. Sure, Makal can do it pretty easily, but he's also used to zipping up the canopy and is a fair bit stronger than I--plus even he has a hard time with it sometimes. It took me about five minutes of tugging, pulling, and cursing under my breath before it was all put back together again. Yes, it's later than I wanted to leave, but I still have plenty of time for the 20-minute walk down to the offices. So I head off.

I'm walking, grooving to my Walk the Walk playlist on my iPod, and remembering how walking down the street always makes me feel like everyone's staring at me. Seriously, is that all people do when they drive, stare at pedestrians? I finally gave them a reason when I was halfway there, tripping on someone's stupid green wire fence thing. You know, the little 8-inch high sections that you stake along the border in your yard, to keep things looking quaint. Except this stuff was green, so it blended in. Nevermind that I wasn't looking at the ground--people have always given me a hard time, saying that I look down when I walk--but the stuff was basically camoflauged and I wouldn't have seen it anyway. So I trip, almost falling, and think "Wow, I'm right at an intersection, and it's a four way stop. They all saw me trip." and turn around to see what I tripped on. There's that damn wire fence thing, and it's obviously crumpled and bent from other people tripping on it or running over it; at this point it's barely stuck in the ground at all. So I picked it up and tossed it in their flowerbed, well off the sidewalk. I keep going.

About 10 minutes later, I realize I went the wrong way. Instead of being ending up at the nearby Costco, I ended up at Walmart and an intersection full of commercial businesses. Great.

I turn around, looking at the time and thinking sure, I can still make it. I walk faster. This has all been down one road so far, and when I hit the intersection I had turned on to get there, I decided to stop back home and check out directions just to make sure I went the right way the second time. Google Maps tells me yes, I turned right when I should have turned left. I also think it was mocking that I didn't consult it beforehand, and thought I knew better directions than it did. I head back down to the intersection, and turn left.

This should take much less time than it took to walk down to the Walmart, as I can just barely see the street I need to turn down on the horizon. But by now I'm really pressed for time, my plan to leave early and arrive with plenty of time having been destroyed by stubborn zippers and wrong directions. I was about to cross the street, just after three cars passed, when the third car started slowing down. "Stupid car," I thought, "doesn't he see that I want to cross? Why doesn't he just go; I don't want to walk in front of him." But then he put his turn signal on, so I thought he would turn down the cul-de-sac. Yet the car kept going, slowly, past me. This is the moment I realized that it wasn't some "stupid car" but my friend Bdizzle. Joy! He pulled up along the side of the road and I ran over, being so greatful to see someone I knee with a car and immediately asking him if he could drive me down to Costco. As it turns out, he'd already seen Makal that day and had been sent to pick me up. I'm confused, but thankful to know that I'll make it there on time now.

He hands me his phone to talk to Makal, saying that he's been worried about me and they were both looking for me. I realized I was late, but was I really that late? I tell Makal we're just around the corner, and we were pulling up at the offices within a few minutes. I hop out, profusely thank Bdizzle for the ride, and head inside with Makal. Apparently, Bdizzle had given Makal a ride down there after they hung out for a bit, went to lunch and all that sort. But when they got there and saw I hadn't arrived yet, Makal wondered what happened and thought I might have gone the wrong way, knowing that I'm not one to be late when he asks me to be somewhere at a certain time, and that there are a lot of roads to get lost on in this area. So while he waited at the offices to see if I'd arrive, Bdizzle drove down the stretch of road, the same one I'd walked to the Walmart on, and called Makal back to tell him that I was not to be found there. That's when Makal started to worry, also knowing that there are a fair few dishonest people in the neighborhood and really not sure of where I was at this point. He was running around to different stores by his doctor's, looking to see if I was somewhere nearby and had forgotten the time. Later he told me that he was so worried he was about to whip out a photo of me and ask if people had "seen this girl". That's about when I called on Bdizzle's phone, and it was established that I was not lost after all.

Everything worked out fine; the office got his insurance info before the appointment, we had a few minutes to sit and talk and calm down, and the appointment confirmed that he was basically okay, needing time and basic care to get back to feeling tip-top. Makal also reminded me that I in fact do have a key to his car. Going the wrong way I can see, but I felt like an idjit for not remembering the key. Oy.

After all that, we met up with Makal's mom and headed out to where his dad is teaching at an outdoor school. His mom had called ahead and written down directions dictated by one of the property's caretakers, though we soon realized that that woman apparently had no real idea how to get out there. A lot of the directions we had to improvise, taking some of the info from the written portion and combining it with signs and logic ("There can't be a four-way stop along this road; we're driving next to a river!"). We ended up reaching the final fork in the road before our destination, and driving at least 5 or so miles down the wrong road before we decided that really can't be the way, turning around, and taking the other road. Now we know, but that was  still a lot of extra effort and driving to get there, and it ate into our evening. At least we got to see a pretty red sunset reflected on the water. :)