Well, tonight was supposed to be the night my Dear Husband arrived home from his long business trip. Sadly, his plane from Australia was delayed by 4-1/2 hours (yes, 4-1/2) because it had a broken windshield!? (My mind immediately tries to imagine reasons a perfectly good airplane gets a broken windshield...it hit a California Condor at 30,000 feet? Errant Pterodactyls? Meteorites?) Anyway, they fixed it and took off and made it to Los Angeles, where he originally had a 5-hour layover which he thought might be so long that he would be able to arrive early enough to get an earlier flight home. Ha! Of course not. Since it turned out to only be a half hour connection, he missed it because he had to go through customs and security all over again.
So, since he was flying First Class (the client was paying) the airline kindly put him up in a Hilton near the airport until he can catch his midnight flight out of LA, which has to go through Chicago, and he won't arrive home until 9:45 a.m. tomorrow. So, one more night on my own with the dog and cat...and my favorite TV station, Discovery Health. I think Mystery Diagnosis is on tonight...can't wait.
Today I did a good deed and took my 86-year-old aunt grocery shopping. I had taken a vacation day today just because I couldn't stand another day at the Big Corporation, plus I had a dentist appointment in the morning at 8:50 a.m. At least I thought I had. On my way to the dentist, late as always, I called to let them know I was running late, and the assistant told me she didn't have me down for an appointment! Luckily she was able to fit me in about an hour later so I just went then instead. So I had gotten up earlier than I had to on my day off, but no use crying over spilt milk.
After the dentist I headed over to my aunt's to take her shopping. She recently gave up driving her car because she had been having strange spells that her doctor decided must be TIA's (transient ischemic attacks - mini strokes that luckily have no permanent effects). This was very fortuitous in its own way (not the TIA's but her giving up driving) because my mother, who is nearly 88, had totaled her own car by running a red light about a month earlier and had no car. She received a payout from her insurance company and had been nagging me to take her to buy a new (used) car with it. I had been stalling because I wasn't so sure she should be driving at all, but she told me that she would stop driving "only when I pried the keys from her cold dead hand," so I kind of got the feeling that she would drive whether I wanted her to or not.
As it turned out, my aunt's stopping driving nicely dovetailed with my mother's situation so that my mother is now driving my aunt's car, and I don't have to take her car shopping, which "is a good thing," as Martha would say.
So my aunt and I headed off to the Clifton Mall to go to Staples (she wanted a file cabinet) and Stop 'n Shop. We arrived, parked in front of Staples, and went in and got the file cabinet she wanted. Of course it is heinously heavy and is in a knocked-down-flat state in a box, so I know DH has to come over to my aunt's and put it together for her, which he will be thrilled to do the day he gets back from Australia, I'm sure.
So we bring it out to the car and I manage to get it out of the cart and slide it into the trunk of the car, laying my keys down to do it, and talking to my aunt simultaneously (you see where this is going, don't you?). I then gave a sigh of relief once it was in the trunk, slammed down the trunk, and then we were about to go to the grocery store when I said to myself, "Hmmm, where did I put my keys?" After a few frantic moments I ascertained the keys were:
a) not in my hand
b) not in my pockets
c) not in my purse
d) not on the ground.
Nope, the keys were in the trunk of the car. I had managed to find the ONE WAY you can lock your keys in a Saab. You cannot leave them in the ignition and lock the doors. You have to lock the door with the key when you get out of the car. But, if you lay them down inside the trunk and close the trunk, it automatically locks. Now mind you, we could have this set so that it didn't automatically lock. But we don't.
I called Saab and asked them their advice. They said "Do you have Triple A?" I smiled proudly and said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do!" They said Triple A could help me. So I called AAA and they said they could indeed help me and they'd send somebody there in about half an hour.
So my aunt and I went into the Stop 'n Shop, did the shopping, and I came out just as she was finishing up and met the guy at the car and he managed to get into the car using a couple of wedgie things and something that looked like a really long coathanger that had been stretched out, and then we were able to get into the trunk from the inside of the car and get the keys.
So no harm was done, no vast expense was spent (I did tip the guy a hefty sum out of my gratitude but it was nothing compared to what it would have cost otherwise) and no cars were damaged in the process. All in all, a successful outing.
After stopping at my aunt's for some tea, I headed home and walked and fed the dog. It was shortly thereafter that DH called to let me know about his new arrival time. Hmmm, maybe that means I still have some time to do one or two of the things I said I would do while he was gone. Like maybe clean the dining room.
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