my almost lost wallet

Alex and I returned from our vacation last week. I'm still trying to catch up with my daily life. Why it's taking me so long to do that? I may never know.

I have to admit that a 6 day road trip isn't my ideal get away, but it was inexpensive and it had it's moments. We made it all the way out to the Grand Canyon, stayed there for a couple days and then headed back. We thought that we could go home through Yosemite, but snow had the roads closed. Without using deductive reasoning we decided to head to Tahoe instead, where it was snowing. I guess we get less bright when we spend 5 or more hours in a car each day. We zoned out a lot while on the road, but the Matrix kicks the Saturn's ass when it comes to comfort, and if we hadn't bought that new car we probably wouldn't have even taken the trip in the first place.

We started our journey on Saturday the 20th. No vacation is complete without at least an hour of me freaking out either right before departure or directly afterwards. This year's freak out was brought to you by the stupidity of me washing my wallet which I had left in a pair of pants. Before I realized the actual fate of my wallet I thought I had lost it. Better yet, I jumped to the conclusion someone had picked my pocket the night before and I would never see my wallet again. Alex tried to help, but there's just no reasoning with me when I'm convinced that I was more than just a victim of my own carelessness. I had it all pictured in my mind; how some dude just reached into my back pocket without me even noticing. And now he was buying all sorts of electronics and pricey gas with my credit cards. At least he didn't get any cash. But my tap dance card... there were still 2 classes on that thing, I was certain that he had just thrown it out. I was so mad at that guy for about 40 minutes. Until I went to remove my clothes from the washer. Then all my angst was transferred to a poor 8 year old boy who was tired of waiting for a washer and was promptly removing all my clothes from the washer and trying to put them in a dryer. I say trying because most of my clothes were on the floor. The filthy, filthy floor in between the washer and the dryer. It really bugs me when I see my wet skivies on that floor. I think I might have been a little harsh with the boy, but no one likes muddy undies. I told him to stop what he was doing, because he was making all my clean laundry dirty again and he would just have to wait until I finished moving my own clothes. And as I reached into the washer there it was... the wallet. Sitting ever so neatly on a pile of wet clothes. Credit cards, license and even the tap dance card were all in their correct places. That's when my fear and anger for imaginary pick-pocketer (and all of society in general) subsided and I started to feel regret about how I had approached the young lad. I finished loading the dryer and said "okay, all set, it's all yours, sorry I took so long." What made me feel especially bad was when I looked over to address the boy I noticed that he had retreated to the corner to look at his shoes until I was done with the washer.

I would like to take some time to publicly apologize to the following people:

The boy who would have rather been watching cartoons on Saturday morning instead of getting scolded by crazy wallet-washing woman while trying to do laundry for his family.

My Mom, for calling you just to tell you that I lost my wallet. For some reason I still think you should be able to fix these sort of things.

Alex, because I yelled at you for not looking hard enough for MY lost wallet. I know that's not your job, and I have no business yelling at you. ever.

And last, but not least, the imaginary pick-pocketer. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions.


more stories of our actual road trip to follow.....