remembrance

Yesterday at work, we all received small black ribbon pins in memory of four of our employees (from a different sector) who were killed in the recent plane crash in New York. At 10:20 in the morning, we observed a moment of silence in their honor.

During this moment of silence, I was reminded of another time when I was given a ribbon to remember someone who had passed away.

When I was in 8th grade, I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. Every few weeks, I would go in for a night or two to have an I.V. treatment (something like chemotherapy). One day while I was sitting in my hospital bed whiling away the hours until it was time to go home again, I glimpsed a boy walking into the room next door who looked familiar. Over the next few hours, I saw nurses, doctors, and family members going in and out of the room frequently. I particularly remember the boy's Dad. At one point, he came out into the hall holding a mask over his mouth. He lowered the mask and smiled at me.

It must have been the next morning when I saw the boy again. Only this time he was being wheeled out of the room in a wheelchair, looking like he'd been through a war. That was the last time I ever saw him.

The following Monday at school, the hallways were full of whispers. I could only understand that something bad had happened to someone. Finally, there was an announcement from the Principal. A boy named Jason had taken ill over the weekend. He had acute Leukemia. There were complications with his treatment and he passed away on Sunday.

I don't think I realized right away that this was the boy I had seen at the hospital. I didn't want to believe that I was the last of his classmates to see him alive.

What I learned later was that some bleeding in his mouth (possibly triggered by tightening of braces - the memory is a little bit foggy here) had tipped his doctors off that there was something not quite right. This led to the leukemia diagnosis. He needed a blood transfusion, which I believe is what was happening in the room next door to mine. For reasons unknown to me, he was then transferred to a hospital in the city. There is where they discovered that the transfusion had caused a clot in his brain. He had been scheduled to start chemotherapy the very next day, but sadly, he never made it that far.

A few days after the announcement, all of the students at the Junior High were given little cream-colored ribbons in memory of Jason. I pinned mine on my backpack, which is where it stayed all year, and all through High School, too. When I looked at it, I thought of that young boy I had seen at the hospital. But even more often than that, I thought of his Dad, and the brave smile he had given me from the hallway that day. His family was going through Hell, and he still found the strength to smile at the stranger in the next room.

the house

It's been almost 2 years since my Dad retired, and about a year for my Mom. In this time, they have, like most retired couples do, thrown around the idea of selling their too-big, too-hard-to-care-for house, and moving into something smaller. Perhaps a little 2-bedroom house in town with a little yard, or maybe a townhouse in one of those retirement villages, or possibly even a house far away in a much warmer climate, where my Dad's hips and knees won't bother him so much, and he will never have to snow blow another driveway ever again.

In my mind, this possibility has always been a "someday" kind of thing. On some distant day that I don't have to think about, my parents will move out of the house they've lived in for the past 20+ years. There will be a teary goodbye, all the neighbors will come over with their best wishes, and maybe we'll even bury a time capsule. Right next to the circle of cement at the top of the driveway that used to hold up the basketball hoop, but my Dad was never able to dig up because it went too deep, and maybe he didn't want to anyway since it has the hand prints of me and my brother and the paw print of our old dog Emily.

But it seems that "someday" is coming much sooner than I had hoped. They plan to put the house on the market either this Spring or next. They've already had two people come out to give them a recommendation on how much to list it for, and they've begun the staging process.

A few weeks ago, I was devastated to learn that my Dad had gone through half of the enormous bookcase (that he built) in the living room and given a ton of books to Goodwill. I got mad at him for not asking me if I wanted any of them, which I know was completely selfish and bratty. But I think that what I was really feeling was the sentimental attachment to the house and all the objects in it. Even though the books belonged to my parents, I felt like they had just given away a part of my life. The process was starting - the process that would end with them not living there anymore, and me having no reason to drive out to my old neighborhood anymore. The next day, my Dad called me up and told me he was sorry for upsetting me, and that he wanted me to be there when they went through the other half of the bookcase. As guilty and ridiculous as I felt for blowing up at them, I felt happier that they decided to include me in this process of change. And after the second book purge, I came home with a box and a half of great old books that either I'd loved as a kid (the Tolkien Bestiary), sounded like an interesting read (a biography of Jack Kerouac), or were just really cool (a leather-bound Atlas from the WWII era). The other night when I went over to their house for dinner, I found a couple more boxes of old stuff they wanted me to go through before they threw it out, sent it to Goodwill, or put it in the "garage sale" pile. This time it was kids books that had been in a bookcase down in the basement for who knows how long. Even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, I decided to keep quite a few of these old books, for various sentimental reasons (one of them was a personalized story about Mother Goose given to me by my Grandma, who passed away last year).

I am going to accumulate more "stuff" during this move than is physically possible to fit into my apartment. I know that my parents will only be taking one living room set with them when they move, so they've offered the second one to me. My Mom has also mentioned giving me the dining room set. And to my shock, they lately offered me the antique record player that we've had for as long as I can remember. Even in the house before this one.

The thing is, I'm not sure if hanging on to things from the house is going to make it easier or harder for me to accept that they're selling it. That house embodies my family. It was my uncle's construction company that built it. When it was just a hole in the ground, my Dad, brother, and I brought a maple sapling that we'd dug out from behind the garage of our old house, and planted it in the far corner of the backyard of the new house. It's a big, healthy, beautiful tree now, but for a long time, you could still see the crooks in the trunk caused by it's rough beginning. During construction, I used to make things out of the scraps of colored wires left on the floor after the electrical work. I remember the first thing I ever put in my bedroom closet - a My Little Pony corral - and I don't think the room even had walls yet. My little brother only remembers living in this house.

Saying goodbye to this place is going to be difficult, to say the least. We built that house in 1987 and it's always been home base for me and my brother. The place we knew we could always come back to. I visit my parents at least once a week, sometimes more, rarely less. I know that that won't change if they move, and my brother and I will be just as welcome in the new place, but will it feel right? Will it be home? And if they do decide to move out of state ... well I just don't know what I'll do on Wednesday nights anymore.

welcome class of '97

Saturday started off like any other day. I was lazy and took my time showering, and I spent the majority of the day in my bathrobe. I pampered myself a little bit, due to the nature of the upcoming evening. I shaved my legs, put on some nice-smelling lotion, and painted my fingers and toes. Bright red. Cause that was the mood I was in. And it would look nice with my outfit. I watched a little TV, had a late lunch, and made the final choice as to what I'd be wearing. Black. It somehow seemed appropriate. After putting together all the finishing touches, I was exhausted. But no rest for the weary. The night had not yet begun. I threw my camera in my purse and grabbed my overnight bag, and I was on my way to pick up J. She looked lovely in a wrap-around dress, also black, and metallic-colored flats due to the brace on her knee. After getting settled in my car, we made our way out to the burbs. One stop to pick up the other J, we'll call her J2, who was wearing black also. I either made the right decision in my choice of wardrobe, or the wrong one, depending on how much I wanted to stand out from the crowd. We finally reached our first destination of the night, Pub 222 in the home burb, where we met up with K and C, and a classmate named A who we hadn't seen in 10 years (duh). After a quick pre-party drink at the Pub, we made our way to the main event.


My Ten Year High School Reunion.


Driving up to the banquet hall, we could already tell that the location was going to leave a lot to be desired. But this was not so important, as we were there to see the people. We walked into the entry hall, were given our name tags and memory books, and it began. Walking into that room filled with familiar faces, people I hadn't seen in so long, people who I wasn't sure I even had anything to say to, it hit me like a wall. It was surreal. The turnout was not even close to half our graduating class, but still, the mass of faces floating before me brought back a rush of old memories. I was at a school dance again. And there were still cliques. Though in retrospect, perhaps the people I viewed as being in cliques were merely feeling the same anxieties as the rest of us and preferred to stick with the people they knew best. Maybe they weren't cliques so much as groups of friends. Maybe there was someone there who saw my group of friends as a clique. One of the first people to come up and talk to me was P. P was a girl who I knew in HS and was friendly to, though she was a bit of a charity case. I wouldn't say we were friends per se, but like I said, we were friendly. After we exchanged the initial pleasantries, she introduced me to her husband as "One of the few people in high school who I actually hung out with." I don't really remember any "hanging out" but in a weird way, I was flattered. However, I had to be the one to break it to her that her HS crush, who was not in attendance, was married. Not that it mattered, she being married herself, but still. Nobody likes to hear that. I spoke to several people throughout the night who I was really glad to reconnect with. R was a girl I'd known since 4th grade when we were in Girl Scouts together. She is doing well and just got married a few months ago. J3 was a very nice girl who lived nearby me in HS, and who is now married with twin boys born this past February. It was great to see that K, another old girl scout friend, hadn't changed at all since high school. E looked the same as he did in HS (and college), but he had come out of his shell quite a bit, which was good to see. And the theatre people, J4, W, M and J5, it made me really happy to see them there, though I wished more of those folks had shown up. T (and C), A2, T2, T3 (and L) - it was great to hang out with them, though I had never lost touch with them to begin with. And then there was B. B was my crush all throughout senior year. When I first saw that he was there, it was like I was in high school all over again. I wanted to go up and talk to him, but I was nervous, just like I used to get all those years ago. I didn't know how to do it. Did I walk right up to him and start talking? Or did I casually make my way over there, chat with some people surrounding him until I caught his eye? It turned out that I didn't need to do anything at all. I was walking past where he was standing, on my way to grab my camera, when he made an odd movement and brushed my arm. He turned to see who was there, and voila, instant conversation. We talked about where we lived and worked, and what we thought about the turnout at the reunion. He mentioned his concern that a lot of people would be all "domesticated" while he wasn't yet. We discussed the need to have roots, and the fact that our parents all still lived in the town we grew up in. We talked about the one date we had had in high school, which happened to be the shining moment of my senior year (though I'm not sure he knew that). It was a nice conversation. And man, that guy is just as gorgeous as I remember. :) You know, I could reflect on our conversation all day, but I'm sure that would be a deathly bore to anyone reading this, so I'll move on. Prior to that night, I was wondering what kind of music would be played, and it ended up being ... interesting. The beginning of the night was all music from the 90's, when we were in school. And yeah, it was all pretty bad. Then they switched to dance music ... and it continued to be pretty bad. But I had a good time dancing anyway, and after my three whiskey-and-cokes it became that much more fun. The night began to wind down and we tried to figure out where to go afterwards. T2 mentioned a party (which B and his friends were going to as well). Since I never got invited to those parties in high school, this sounded like a swell plan to me, so I followed T2 and E up to the neighborhood to try and find the house (nobody seemed to have an address). After a futile search, we gave up and called a friend who was at a bar, and went to meet him. Turned out the party must have been nonexistent, because all of the people who were supposedly going ended up at this bar instead. Chatting with E and T2 at the bar was a nice end to the evening. At the relatively decent hour of 1:15 a.m. I packed up and made my way to my parents house to crash in my old bedroom, in my old bed. It seemed an appropriate end to an evening filled with nostalgia.



The main conclusion I drew from this evening was that aside from a couple of individuals, I already keep in touch with the people who I cared most about in high school. The majority of the people at the reunion, for me, it was enough just to see their faces again. I didn't even need to say anything to them. I mentioned in a previous post how I saw this reunion as an epilogue to my time in high school, and it really was. And now that it's over, the credits are rolling, and I can leave it all behind.

forgotten things

Do you ever have those moments when you remember something that you'd forgotten you'd forgotten? Like something you see or hear unearths a memory that you hadn't even thought about since it happened? It's almost like finding a video that you didn't remember buying, but you pop it in the VCR and think, "Oh yeah, I remember really liking this movie."

Well, that's happened to me TWICE in the past 24 hours.

Yesterday I was riding home on the El after having traded my Lollapalooza ticket in for the obligatory wristband, and I was reading the program booklet. I came across one band's bio, in which the author made a comparison to the band Pavement, and I immediately stopped reading. Pavement. I don't know much about that band, but I suddenly remembered that I used to know someone who was a huge fan. Who was that, I wondered. It was a girl who lived in my dorm Freshman year of college, she had really short hair, a Southern accent, and became pretty good friends with my roommate. Her name escaped me, and still does. But I hadn't thought about that girl probably since the last time I saw her in person. Prior to this recovered memory, if I'd run into her on the street and she insisted she knew me, I probably wouldn't have been able to place her. Unless, of course, she reminded me that she was a Pavement fan.

The second forgotten memory resurfaced just a little bit ago this morning. I was reading a blog where someone was recounting a tale of getting her wallet stolen, and I thought to myself, Man, I'm glad I've never had my wallet stolen. But then another memory came to me that I hadn't thought about in years. I may have never had my ACTUAL wallet stolen, but I had some things stolen out of my purse a few years ago when I was at my previous job. I worked at a gift shop, and we were doing inventory. The home office hired a company that came in and used little scanny things to record all of our inventory, after we'd already counted most of it and labeled all the boxes in the back with everything that was in them. One of the women who was with the inventory group looked a little shady right off the bat. And soon enough, we caught her stealing pieces of candy as she tried to separate herself from the rest of the group by going to the other side of the store to work. My manager and I knew about this, but we didn't want to tell the woman's supervisor right away. I don't recall what the reason for this was. But anyway, a little bit further into the process, I went in the back room to get some cash out of my purse to get a drink or something. To my horror, I'd left the locker unlocked, and when I opened up my purse, I discovered some key possessions were missing. My cash was gone (there was only $11, but still), my credit card was missing, and two checks had been torn out of my checkbook. I made a bee line to my manager and explained to her what had happened, and given the earlier situation with the candy, we were pretty sure we knew who had done it. Now we had no choice but to confront the supervisor of the inventory troupe. He took our complaint seriously and did a search and interview with all of his employees. Nothing turned up (of course, she would have stashed the stolen goods first chance she got). But since we'd also told him about the candy incident, the woman was instantly let go. She wasn't allowed to finish the inventory with the rest of the group, and was made to sit outside and wait, since they'd all arrived together in a company van. I felt bad for her, but hey, if you steal stuff and you're dumb enough to get caught, then you deserve what you get. I spent the next hour or so trying to get in contact with my credit card company to cancel the card, and putting a stop payment on the two checks. It could have been much worse. The funny thing about this story is that a few weeks later, the assistant manager was going through a box in the back room and she suddenly calls me to come back there. She hands me a neat little package that she'd pulled from the bottom of the box - wrapped up in two blank checks was a credit card with my name on it.

from the memory bank

For one reason or another, something I was reading today triggered a memory from a few years back that I'd like to share.

Most of you reading this probably know that I have a younger brother. We have the kind of relationship that I consider to be typical of an older sister/younger brother combo. We didn't particularly get along when we were kids, and fought about stupid crap a LOT. We are VERY DIFFERENT. I cannot stress this enough. But as we've grown older (and wiser??), we've found more and more things to appreciate about each other. At the present, we get along pretty well, as long as we don't have to spend exorbitant amounts of time together.

Anyway, one summer when I was home from college (or possibly shortly after college, but before my brother moved away), I was driving home to my parents' house late at night, and I saw something that took my breath away. The main street near their home is called Silver Glen, and that night I discovered how it got its name. The road goes through a small, low-lying marshy area, and on damp nights such as that one, it tends to gather a little bit of fog. Add to that the full moon overhead and you've got one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in nature. The moonlight shone down on the thick layer of fog over the wetlands and gave it a mystical silver glow. It was magical - like nothing I'd ever seen before. I could see it as I approached in my car, and then drove right through it, emerging from the other side. My first thought was that I wanted to park my car and walk through the fog on the platforms built over the wetlands. But no, I wanted to share this with someone.

My brother is such a night owl that I was sure he'd still be up. And sure enough, I found him watching TV in the living room when I came home. I immediately told him to put his shoes on because there was something I wanted to take him to see. At this point in time, our relationship was in one of its in-between stages. He admired me mostly because I could drink alcohol legally, and I admired him because because he still had so much living to do. As he was getting ready to go, I could see he was getting excited about our adventure, even though he didn't know where we were going. I just hoped he wouldn't be disappointed.

So we drove back to the wetlands and I showed him the thing I found so beautiful that I just had to share with someone. I approached slowly and pointed out the fog and how amazing the moonlight looked reflected off the top. Then we parked the car in the gravel lot off a side road, and walked into the mist.

I am pretty sure that when I pulled my brother out of the house that night and told him there was something I wanted to show him, that he was expecting some kind of underground, thumping, rollicking, drunken party or something like that. I know that what I actually showed him must have been a bit of a disappointment. I'm not really sure that he appreciates the same things as I do, like finding beauty in nature. But my hope is that he could find the beauty in that moment we spent together, or at least that one day he can look back on that night and see it as a precious moment spent with his big sister, when all she wanted was to share with him something that she thought was special.

Red-Winged Blackbirds

Every so often I catch a glimpse of my childhood in the rear view mirror.

Wait. Stop. I don't really talk like that. Okay, start over.

Yesterday I was driving to my parents' house after work and saw a Red-Winged Blackbird and it made me happy. Why? Well, because when my family first moved into the house that I still lived in until very recently, there were a lot of empty lots in the subdivision. Actually, we were only the tenth house to be built, and now the place has its own zip code and Starbuck's. Okay, not really, but trust me, it's huge. So in these empty lots, my brother and neighbors and I used to play, building forts, climbing in dirt piles when houses would begin to be built, etc. We thought of these empty lots as extensions of our own yards. We referred to the two lots next to my house as "the field." It was great. Anyway, if you know anything about Red-Winged Blackbirds, you know that they don't build nests in trees, but in open, grassy areas. So as you can imagine, when our neighborhood was still in its development phase, there were tons of these birds living in all the empty lots. Moving there was the first time I had ever seen these birds before and I thought they were so beautiful - mostly black, but with patches of THE brightest red (and bits of white) on their wing joints. I loved them. However, slowly but surely, as the neighborhood grew, and the empty lots grew fewer and farther between, the Red-Winged Blackbirds started to migrate away from our community, to the places where they could still have the open fields that they so loved. Being a kid, I was probably too preoccupied with school and friends to really notice that they were leaving, but when I would occasionally see one, it would remind me just how many there used to be. And then, after a while, I didn't see them at all anymore. The area that I grew up in has changed so much since my family moved there, it is nearly unrecognizeable. When we built our house, we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was unincorporated, and the nearest main road was about two miles away, and was an empty two-lane highway connecting our town with the next one to the north. Traffic lights were unheard of unless you were actually IN town. In between the main road and our neighborhood was a sod farm, a creek, trees, and the occasional farm house. There were birds and animals and you really felt like you were out in the country. This is the reason my parents chose the place, as a matter of fact. And now? The two miles on the "country road" between the main road and our subdivision is solid houses. The speed limit has gone from an un-posted 55 to 35 mph. That former two-lane main highway I mentioned is now four lanes with a light every quarter-mile or so, McDonald's, Jewel, Target, Starbuck's, Kohl's, a thousand banks and gas stations ... and no trees. No cornfields. The unincorporated area in between towns has become a town in and of itself. There is no open road at all between our town and the next one to the north. You can't tell where one ends and the next one begins. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at all this. All in the name of progress, right? But do we really need another Target or Best Buy? Why wasn't it good enough to drive the extra 20 minutes to get to the one they built just down the road a few years before? That's the thing that I will never understand about suburban sprawl, or whatever you want to call it. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and had to drive at least 20 minutes to get anywhere! Heck, my high school friends never even wanted to come to my house because they said it was in "Iowa." So I drove everywhere. I'm used to it. I'm used to it taking time to get places. I feel guilty taking my car somewhere if it takes less than 5 minutes to get there. Am I the only one? Am I the only one who doesn't find it necessary to have a drug store 10 feet from my front door in order to live comfortably?

Ahh, I didn't particularly intend to go on and on like that, but I just got some thoughts into my head that wanted to come out I guess. But anyway, yesterday I was driving out to my parents' house and I saw a Red-Winged Blackbird in a grassy area between the main road and an on-ramp onto the highway. It was just a small area that hadn't been landscaped and still had the native grasses in it. It was only one bird, and as I sat at the stoplight, I just watched the bird going about its business and remembered how I used to do the exact same thing from my living room window. It brought a smile to my face, but also made me wonder if I am the only one who misses the Red-Winged Blackbirds. Probably not, but sometimes it feels like it.

Getting out the door

Since my past is so much more interesting than my present these days, I thought I'd share an amusing "day in the life" story from a couple years ago. Here goes ...

I was living with my parents (and brother) when they decided to put in hardwood floors on the main floor of the house. We had already been displaced for a day or two because of the fumes from the varnish, and had just come back to the house. My dad was not exactly happy with the finished product, so he called the guys again and asked them to put on another coat or two of the polyurethane finish. Supposedly, this would only take a couple of hours to dry and we would not be inconvenienced at all. The day the guy showed up to put the finish on, my brother and I were both at home and my parents were at work. It was pretty early in the morning when the guy called upstairs to let us know he was going to start. He needed to warn us because since we were upstairs, we wouldn't be able to get downstairs or out of the house until it dried. The wood floor began at the bottom of the stairs. So I thought, Well, it'll take a couple hours to dry and I'm not planning on leaving until later, so no big deal, I'll jut stay up here and take my time getting myself ready. I yelled back down to him, "Okay, that's fine." The guy seemed a bit confused, but I thought nothing of it and went about my business. Later, when he had finished working, he called back up to say he was done ... and that the floor would be safe to walk on in about 6 hours. 6 hours??!! 6 hours is not a couple!! I don't know where the person who told me "a couple" had gotten their information, but it was dead wrong. I tried to hide my surprise, but I was more than a little miffed. Especially since I had made plans to go to a movie with friends and had to leave in LESS than 6 hours. How the hell was I going to get out of my house?? Shortly after this news, my brother got up, and was faced with exactly the same dilemma. He also had to leave and had no way of doing so. At least that's what I thought. Apparently when we had the floors finished the first time, Butthead (my brother) had stayed at the house and had figured out a way to get outside without stepping on the wet floors. Our front door was at the bottom of the stairs, at a right angle from the bottom step, but the handle was at the opposite end, so when the door was open, it blocked the foot of the stairs, if you can picture that. So what Butthead did was reach over and open the door, then grab the top corner of the door and hang on while pushing off the bottom step, swinging himself out towards the open doorway and hooking his foot on the doorstep to pull himself all the way out. Sounds like a simple enough concept, but when I watched him do it, even he, a much younger, skinner, more muscular person than I, had some serious trouble and almost didn't make it. No way could I do that. I was (and still am) Out. Of. Shape. So I thought of another plan. When the floors were finished the first time, we had this board that we put up between the bottom step and the living room, which was across the entry-way (not a jumpable distance, in case you were wondering). I told Butthead to go to the garage and get the board and we could put that up for me to walk across. Unfortunately, he said that was impossible since he could barely lift the thing and it had taken essentially three people to put it up the first time, and even that had been hard. Umm, okay. Back to the drawing board. My next thought was actually kind of exciting as it's something I've always wanted to do. Since living in that house, I always figured that if there was ever a fire and I couldn't get out of my bedroom, in order to escape, I would go out my window onto the roof over the front porch and jump down to the ground. It was only one story, and the slant of the roof made it slightly less than that. So I told my bro the plan and went upstairs and onto the roof. Well, sitting up there with the actual intention of jumping was not as much fun as I thought it would be, and it's really quite a bit higher than I thought it was. Risking broken ankles to escape a fire is one thing, but risking broken ankles to get to a movie on time is another thing altogether. And not something I really wanted to test. So let's see ... a ladder!! I needed a ladder! My bro said he had used one recently to get back IN the house after being out late (sneak), but couldn't find it, so he attempted to get the big aluminum one down from the garage wall. I have no idea how my Dad does this, but apparently my bro was incapable of getting it down. But no matter, Butthead found the ladder he had used and brought it so it was directly underneath me. Unfortunately, it was UNDERNEATH me. As in 3 or 4 feet underneath MY dangling feet. And the wooden "platform" on the very top of the rickety ladder was cracked in half. Umm, no. Again, risking broken bones was not something I was willing to do that day. So, I was out of options. The only possibility that remained was to attempt the acrobatics that my brother had performed earlier with the front door. So I went downstairs, took a deep breath and decided to go for it. Butthead assured me that it wasn't really that hard and he thought I could do it no problem, but he'd be right there in case I needed him. So I opened the door, grabbed on to the top of it, and swung myself around so that I could hook my foot on the doorstep and pull myself out the door. Only problem was, once I got my foot hooked on, the door started to swing back INWARD and I was thisclose to landing in a crumpled heap on the still very wet floor and having the Wrath Of Dad upon me for ruining it. The only thing I could think of was to yell "Grab me!!" to my brother. He grabbed the back of my shirt and literally pulled me out the door before I could lay a toe on the newly finished hardwood. I DID IT!!! WE DID IT!! We made it out of the house!! I never thought I would be as happy to be outside my house as I was on that day. Then again, I never thought it would ever be as HARD to get out of the house as it was on that day.

A major obstacle was overcome, but my day did not get easier. It was quite a comedy of errors, actually. I wanted to call my Mom to tell her how long the floor was going to take to dry, but my cell phone went dead before I could say anything. I went to the ATM, but it was out of order and I had to go out of my way to find another one. I didn't know which showing of the movie we were going to because I hadn't heard back from my friends before I left ... and my cell phone was dead. When I got to the theater, I didn't see them, so I described them to the guy behind the ticket counter. He assured me that they had come in and were at the showing that was about to start, so I bought my ticket and went in. They were nowhere to be seen. I sat down, resigning myself to the fact that I'd be seeing the movie alone, but before the coming attractions had even finished, my friends came bounding into the theater only slightly later than they thought they'd be. At least ONE thing worked out well that day.

So at the end of the adventure, when I saw my family at dinner that evening, for once I actually had something interesting to say when Mom asked, "How was your day, sweetie?"