Hello readers, forgive me for not posting in such a long time. Married life is busy!
I wanted to share a story from a couple weeks ago, not to be terribly insightful, but just to make you chuckle.
One Monday after I was done teaching, I decided that I missed David and wanted to take him something he'd like to brighten up his Monday. I decided on a Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate from the good ol' happy green circle since it was finally starting to feel a bit like Fall. I plugged the nearest Starbucks into my handy GPS and took off. Now, being relatively new to this area, I was relying solely on the GPS to get me where I needed to go. Little did I know that the Starbucks I was heading for was at one of the busier intersections downtown. Oh boy. I faithfully followed the GPS to the street where Starbucks was. I passed it once, turned around, and as I was coming back towards it, realized I was going to have to parallel park. Now, in my drivers test four years ago, I had to parallel park in order to pass. But that was in a roped off area of a parking lot with cones and not on a busy downtown street with real cars. I managed to "parallel park" in an empty spot. "Parallel park" as in as bad a job as I could get away with, about two feet from the curb and just out of the way of oncoming cars. I wasn't sure if I was in a metered spot or not, so I ran into Starbucks hoping I wouldn't get a ticket or get hit, for heaven's sake. I walked into Starbucks knowing that David liked the hot chocolate that had salt...somewhere. I walked up to the counter and here is the interaction that took place:
Me: Hello, do you guys have a hot chocolate that has salt on the rim?
Friendly Starbucks employee: ...On the rim?
Me: I know it has salt on it somewhere.
Employee: I think you're thinking of a margarita or a martini or something.
Me: (laughing) No, no, the hot chocolate with the salt.
Employee: The Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate?
Me: Yes! That's the one. I need a tall one and a tall Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Employee: Ok. Yeah, it's a little early for drinking. (being around 4 in the afternoon)
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
I waited for the drinks, praying the whole time that my car was ok and not ticketed. I got my drinks and raced out to the car, thankful to find it in one piece and perfectly legal, and was struggling to get inside my door without spilling the drinks or getting hit by oncoming cars. As I'm about to get into the driver's seat, I heard, "Excuse me a minute, ma'am." A man in his late twenties, early thirties, dressed in jeans and a nice polo, so clearly not a bum, walks across the street and starts telling me that he's stranded here downtown and it's going to take $26 more dollars to get to such and such a town (which is like fifteen minutes away) and blah blah blah. I was like, Really? I'm obviously trying to get in my car here with TWO cups of coffee and you're standing in a busy road holding a stack of dollars and trying to get me to add to it. So I said, firmly, I'm late for an appointment, I have to go. Which wasn't really a lie since this whole escapade was taking longer than I had expected and I didn't want David to be gone from work before I got there! (I later found out from my friend Diana that she's seen that same guy at a Walmart, trying to pull the same scam. Oh brother.) I got into my car, unparallel parked safely, and drove to the waiting traffic light, intended to turn left. The light turned green and I began to turn left, not realizing (because of the strange layout of this intersection and my unfamiliarity with it) that oncoming traffic was coming and that included a rather large school bus that was headed right at me! It was one of those moments where everything goes slow motion. Thankfully, I realized what I'd done and sped out of the way in plenty of time (I'm really not a terrible driver...you try driving in a downtown you've never driven in before!). I started to drive towards the road where I thought David's workplace was located. I turned left, as it looked slightly familiar, and began driving, keeping my eyes open for David's office. Little did I realize that I had turned on 1st Avenue South instead of 1st Avenue North. The whole time I was driving, I kept on trying to plug in the name of David's workplace into the GPS, but it wouldn't find it. I finally realized I wasn't on the right road and stopped to turn around in the parking lot of what looked like an auto parts store/mechanic's shop. As I was about to pull back onto the road, looking both ways, a car whizzed by me making that the second time I'd almost gotten hit that day. Sheesh. I pulled back onto the road and discovered that David had very wisely programmed "Work" into the GPS. Oh. On the right route now, things started to look alot more familiar. Unsure of which direction I was coming from towards David's office, if it was what I was used to or not, I tried to guess which lane I needed to be in to park in the company's parking lot. Guess what? Yes, I picked the wrong lane. So, I turned around, got in the right lane, and successfully parked (not parallel this time!). I made my way across the street and into the store, thankful to be out of the car and at a familiar location. I then asked the nice receptionist to call David up front as if he had a customer. After waiting several minutes, David came running up to the front, thinking he had a legitimate customer waiting on him, and found me, hot chocolate in hand and thankfully in one piece.
I laugh about that adventure now, and even though I made several driving errors that I would not like to repeat, I'm glad I was able to brighten David's day and do something special for my husband to make him feel as appreciated as he is. But I also learned, I won't be attempting downtown by myself again for a long time. :-)
