A Safe Place

This a segment of our garage with a segment of our little car in it.

You may wonder why; trust me. It will all come to make sense. Or perhaps not. It makes sense to me...which is not necessarily indicative.

Monday (yesterday) dawned far too early, given that the powers that be felt it necessary to turn 4:00 am into 5:00 am over the weekend,because 5:00 am is apparently just not quite horrible enough on a Monday morning. And you know, I actually tried to be a good sport about it. I mean, yeah--I whined and complained and ranted...but that's a pretty good sport in my book, considering I had to get up when my body was thoroughly convinced that it was 4:00 am, and I further had to go try to comprehend chemistry (I often wonder who's bright idea it was to write that book in esperantu, or whatever strange language it's apparently in...but that's a post for another day). And, given that even finding my way to school seemed like more challenge than I could handle....well, I think ranting and whining was pretty sportsmanlike on my part. I didn't send packages of garbage to all the lawmakers with the promise of more to follow if they didn't repeal Daylight Savings Time, right?

So, back to Monday morning. I got up, I worked out, I showered, I found more or less matching clothes. I'm pretty sure the undergarments were on the underneath. I don't know if my socks matched...that seemed like far too lofty a goal. But I had my backpack and I had my purse and I had my water bottle and I had....no idea where my keys were. I always place them in the ceramic bowl in the kitchen so I won't lose them, but they were not there (proving my wisdom in having such a bowl since, clearly, once they weren't in the bowl they were, in fact, lost). I remained calm (ran around swearing and tearing my hair out...same thing), and mentally went through what I'd been wearing when I came home from Debi's the day before: jeans (checked the pockets, no dice--or keys, for that matter), a long sleeved tee with no pockets, and a cardigan with no pockets. My socks didn't seem to have pockets, either. I checked the next most obvious place: my purse. Again, no keys. At this point, it was 7:20 am by the actual clock, 6:20 am by my body clock, and apparently half past something insane by my mental clock--my mental acuity simply flipped me off, turned over, and went back to sleep. I needed to leave for school about five minutes prior to this moment.

Mr. K woke up then, for whatever reason (I'm fairly certain that my frantic tearing apart of the house had nothing to do with it, although the whimpering may have been an issue) and together we searched my purse five times, every coat on the coat rack (including coats of his that I've never worn), every drawer in the kitchen, the garbage pail, the sofa, the computer room, the ingnition of the car, the floor of the car, both seats of the car, my purse again, and the car two more times. It was now about 10 minutes past "I have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near school on time." and about 2 minutes past "I'm completely doomed". By this time, I was starting to wonder if I had mysteriously teleported home the day before and wondering further if it was too early to call Debi and see if she had my keys....or my car (I was a little afraid, at that point, to check and make sure it was there).

In desperation, I asked Mr. K for the keys to his shop, as I had gone in to see him and the other testosterone party boys before coming in the house the day before. I figured it was unlikely I had laid the keys down on one of the assortment of truly fascinating types of Ick that my hubby dutifully collects out there, and I was right. But tracing my steps seemed like a good idea....or rather, the only thing I could think of, other than "my bed is so soft and I fit so well in it and why am I outside in the cold and the dark when the world is clearly intent on pinning a kick-me sign to my back?", which seemed unproductive. It was as I was walking into the garage that it suddenly came to me. I had come back from the testosterone boys and stopped to take my things--knitting bag, camera, purse, water bottle--out of the car. But my hands were full, and I had no pockets....so I set the keys on the nearest handy surface:

No, not in it--hopefully even I'M not enough of a nutcase to lock my keys in the safe. No, I placed them on top of it. If you look closely at the top photo, you'll see that the safe is right next to the car. The car that I looked through with a fine toothed comb at least three times. The car that you can get in only by walking past the safe.

I hate you, Daylight Savings Time. Seriously.

I'd like to say that the day got better from there but, really, what are the odds? In truth, I scraped up the toe of one of my favorite black boots, slammed the end of my ponytail in the car door, tried to rush out of class with my backpack upside down, dropped my diet cream soda so that it was cleverly transformed into a sweetened volcano, and found that I'd lost 8% from a biology test where I was simply asked to name 15 structures an air molecule must pass to get to the bloodstream...and then marked down for not picking the same exact 15 the instructor chose, even though he admitted we had no way of knowing which 15 he had in mind. I could have written "it goes through the tube-y thing, and then the flappy thing, and then that icky sort of pink thing" and not done any better or worse. It was not my favorite day.

But it wasn't all bad. I came home to this in the back yard:

I was a little surprised, given the day, that she didn't try to trample me or vomit on my shoes or something, but she remained quite sweet and lovely......

...apparently having not gotten the "mess with Ms. K day" memo.

The moral of the story: If someone tells you to make sure you put your keys in a safe place, you tell them Ms. K found the safe to be the very LAST place she thought of looking. A bowl place or a purse place would have been muuuuuch better.

And my quote for the day (because I thought it might be cool to start having these, and will probably continue to think so until I find myself totally unable to think of one and then I'll wonder whose stupid idea this was. We're safe for now): It's always okay in the end. If it isn't okay, it isn't the end.