zeborah

So I'm leaving early for church to have time to pick up my violin from my parents' place and get there early since I'll be the only violin in orchestra this week. <click> goes the lock on my door and about twenty metres down the road I think, "Wait, did I remember to put my keys, bus card, and wallet back in this bag after I went shopping on Friday night?"

No, I didn't. But never fear, I keep a spare key in a specific but obscure corner of the garden for just this sort of situation!

Except it wasn't there. It wasn't even under the rather heavy caking of dirt and moss that's built up where it's meant to be. Maybe it got washed away in the heavy rain we had(!), or disturbed when the lawnmower guy last came, but I can't find it in the weeds nearby either. Maybe one of my family borrowed it and forgot about it. Maybe some stranger spent hours poking around my overgrown garden and found it, but nothing's missing from the house....

Fortunately my father keeps a spare spare key for me, and I had left *really* early for church. So I walked briskly half an hour to my parents' place. Luckily a couple from church spotted me and drove me the last little bit, saving me five minutes and helping me catch my breath. Mum let me in (normally I'd let myself in) and I grabbed the violin and got to church just in time for the service.

After which I borrowed Dad's spare key and $20 to do my weekly grocery shopping on the way home, as is my routine. I walked about ten minutes until a bus slows down beside me: "D'you want a ride to Raeward Fresh?" It's the bus I always catch so of course he knows where I'm going, and even when I say I don't have my bus card with me he says to hop in. (The bus company doesn't happen to lose any money by this, because if one travels to and from work Monday-Friday as I do, the weekend is free.)

So he drops me off right outside the shop (instead of at the bus-stop), and there I see a colleague from another department at work. Nectarines are on special so I get some for me and she gets some for her cockatoo, then we go our separate ways through the shop but end up getting to the checkout at the same time. (I've kept a running guesstimate of a tally and tell my favourite checkout girl, "If this isn't less than $20 then I'll have to leave the apples" -- it comes to $19.80.) And my colleague offers me a lift the rest of the way home which, weighed down with groceries, I gratefully accept.

To do tomorrow: get a new spare key made. And figure out somewhere else to put it, though I really liked the last place. :-(