It's been one of those days. One of those terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days.
It all started innocently enough: a good friend suggested a fun outing. A local ice cream place was offering free ice cream cones today. So we packed ourselves up, strapped the kids in, and made the trek. We arrived, and they weren't open yet. Not for another hour.
So we decide to have lunch. The mall in which the ice cream place was located had a fun, kid-friendly place to eat complete with a play area!! Lance eagerly hops out of his stroller, starts to climp inside the tower, realizes he can't see me anymore, and freaks out. I have to climb up this toddler-sized tunnel and rescue him. I feel like a big old beetle trying to squirm through an antfarm.
Time to eat; Lance doesn't want to stay in his high chair but wants to sit on the booth next to me. OK, no problem, let's ask the waiter for a booster seat instead.
He climbed right out of it, over, under, on top of, and around, me. Made it impossible to carry on any kind of conversation with my two friends.
The check arrives! Thank goodness, let's get out of here, swipe my credit card, sign the receipt, pack up the diaper bag.
My keys have disappeared.
This is not good; I am at a MASSIVE shopping mall which is in fact a tourist attraction, I am over half an hour away from my house. Am I stuck??
Well, no, praise be to Lord Almighty that I have a spare key in my purse. This in itself is a miracle; I never carried my spare key before; it always hung on the peg by the door. When we moved, I stuck the key in my purse, and thankfully, it was still there. I would also be able to get into the house because I know the code to open the garage, but how embarassing to call my landlord less than a week after moving in and beg for a new key?? I dread making this phone call.
I ask every restaurant employee if someone turned in my keys. I leave my phone number at the front desk. I ask the guys at the cell phone kiosk if they've seen my keys. We beg the employee who is climbing around the play area to clean up after a kid who peed inside of it to look for my keys, the sweet man does so, but finds nothing. We scan the parking lot. We go into a neighboring restaurant, inquire if anyone turned in some keys, I leave my phone number there too.
Friends and I head out of the mall back towards the ice cream shop for our free ice cream, since it should be open by now. I'm not in such a good mood. There's a little black cloud hovering over me. I get my ice cream, offer some to Lance, he's not interested. I head back to my car, hoping against hope that my keys are inside of it. When we arrived at the mall, Lance needed to be changed so I plopped him on the front seat and could very easily have set my keys down on the car floor.
Grumble, grumble, bad words, they're not there. I walk back toward the ice cream shop where friends are keeping Lance entertained. I report that my keys are still gone. They give me appropriately sympathizing looks and assure me it will all be OK.
After friends finish their ice cream, we all head back to the cars because both babies (Lance and my friend's kiddo) are ready for their naps. Friends take a turn looking in my car for my keys. They don't find them either. One of the friends says, "Let me take a look in your diaper bag." I say, "Go ahead, I looked in there three times. Knock yourself out."
Wouldn't you know it, she found them??!! There they were, that whole time, in the bottom of my diaper bag, underneath a white plastic thingy that I had mistaken for the bottom of the bag, so I didn't look underneath it.
I felt immediately and terribly remorseful for leading my friends on such a wild goose chase and for being in such an unpleasant mood. Friend #2 is moving away in a month, so what could have been a fun afternoon turned into a miserable search with a grumpy stick-in-the-mud. (Me.)
My mother and sister must be laughing at me. Ever since I can remember, my mom has teased me for not finding things that I think have gone missing. One of her favorite phrases is, "If it were a snake, it would've bit ya!"
(So uh, Natalie? Please don't tell Mom about this...)
Oh and by the way, I injured my back a few days ago doing laundry, so any time that once would have been dedicated to blogging was instead dedicated to laying down on an ice pack. I've got a lovely bruise from where my chiropractor had to dig so deep into a muscle to get a knot out. So that's why I still haven't brought you pictures and stories of the move.
One of these days I'll get my head screwed on right.
Until then, I promise to always carry a spare key in my purse, and the next something goes missing, I'll ask Friend #2 to come find it for me.
