What a memory is worth

Sometimes I really hate, hate, hate! living in the city.

Sometimes I really hate not have a steel-trap memory.

I really, really hate having memory problems in the city. That is always a recipe for disaster.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Not hotter than blazes, yet sunny and warm enough for an outing in the AC-less Ark. So I had an inspiration. We would take a longish trip in lieu of naptime and hope the Fellers get some shut-eye in the car. Since it was a gorgeous, mild day, we could get away with this in the no-AC Ark without sweating off our private parts. I called a friend of mine whom I haven't seen in ages (you know the story-she has kids, I have kids, life happens and suddenly it's been a year or two) and who lives about an hour's drive away. She said she had no plans and would be home all day. Perfect!

We only have one garage door clicker, and yesterday Hubz had it. So I unlocked the side door, pushed the garage up button and noticed the Ark needed refitting with car seats because all the others were of course in the other car. Naturally. Then I noticed the three spare car seats needed resizing. Those darn kids!--always growing. What an inconvenience. Of course, one of the spare car seats was one that required tools to resize to pry up the strap holder from its slot and then loosen the strap itself from its knot. As I was prying and pounding and cursing my way to a perfect fitting car seat, Hubz called to ask me to call the cell phone company to inquire if anyone had been using the lost cell phone and if we needed to worry it was not just lost but stolen. Okay, not a problem. Add that to my mental list which now included: adjusting car seats, loading car seats (and scratching the shit out of my arms in the process, I might add--you think the manufacturers could smooth down the plastic that you have to pass the car seat belt through!), retrieving the car seat from the front porch (No, I have no idea why it was on the front porch--it just was--don't ask) to install it into the car, then digging through the mountain of bills for the cell phone bill to get the customer service number, calling cell phone company, etc. Can you guess what my problem is here? Yes, somewhere along the line, CLOSING THE DAMN GARAGE DOOR was deleted from my mental list. In this neighborhood, that is perilous.

I completed the items that had made it to the ol' brain and loaded all the Fellers, the potty seat, juice boxes, extra underwear for the fellers, my purse and The Girl (okay, I did not have to load her, only call out that the bus was leaving the station about 20 times) and hit the road. We had a wonderful time. It was great to see my friend.

Fast forward to 8:00 PM after the long drive back. I parked the car in front (the garage is in back--we'll get to that momentarily), unloaded, three Fellers from car, begged The Girl to carry something in, draped and somehow fastened various bags and my purse to myself in some parody of a pack mule, grabbed some little hands and headed for the door, somehow fished out my key and got us all in the house where I turned on some cartoons for the Fellers. Then I went back out to move the car.

I stuck the key in the lock. Hmm. Oops. Not locked. That's funny. I guess I forgot to lock it. Open the door and to my surprise the F-in Garage Door is Wide F-in open. So I unleashed a string of curses at my faulty memory bank while surveying the damage. Sure enough, Hubz' and Big J's bikes, the most valuable things in the damn garage, were gone. Shit!

What a f-ing waste. I hate, hate, hate! f-ing thieves. It is not like this is Robin Hood here. We are not the rich (and even if we were, stealing is reprehensible, I don't care who is doing it and who it is from). Stealing our shit is going to really put us back. Our insurance deductible is so high, it isn't even worth reporting, but we have to have a bike for Big J. He uses it all the time to get to practices and friends houses, etc, when we are not available to drive him. So, Hubz basically was gone all week, worked all week to replace those two bikes, and I feel like an ass for daring to leave the house to visit a friend because just look what happened. Damn.

So ends a great day at Abode MacBoudica.