Back to Reality

As of today, summer is officially over in our little part of Northern Virginia heaven. 
That means everyone is baaaack, school is in session and traffic is horrible.

So the moment our school carpool mom arrived to pick up my daughter, I was out the door, behind the wheel and on my way to work.  8:05am, to be exact.

I managed to get out of our neighborhood in just a few short minutes.  Even the longer drive up to a major parkway leading to several of the bridges into the city wasn’t too bad.  I made my crawl toward the bridge that would carry me into the city in an acceptable amount of time.

And that’s when I remembered: I left the oven on; the bottom oven, to be exact.

I was positive.  Absolutely.  Certain. 

Rather than taking my usual exit onto Roosevelt Bridge and its lovely view of the Kennedy Center and Georgetown on one side and monuments on the other, I veered like a Nascar driver onto an exit back into Virginia. I struggled with my bearings and careened down Route 50 and the disruption of massive roadway construction improvements being paid for no doubt with what little is left of stimulus money. 

Frustrated by the mess, I pulled off route 50 onto a road I knew – without realizing the part of that road I was going to travel was completely foreign to me, even after more than 30 years in the area.

*&$!  Traffic was at a slower than slow crawl.  I was lost.  And it was now 8:45. Time for the Red Cross.

The GPS Lady cooed confidently, “Take the next right, than make an immediate right….”

Ok, lady, I’m with ya….

“In a quarter mile, make a slight left turn,” she coached.  With a heavy sigh of stress relief, I’m feeling a bit deja vue-ish as things start to look more familiar.  “…and in one mile, make a right, then another right....”

Yes!  Home, James -- I mean, Jane….

Confident that my house would not burn down now that my return was imminent, I called my office and explained that I would likely be in around 9:30.  As I walked to the front door of my small castle, Shasha peered at me through the window and happily wagged her tail.  I raced up the stairs and, of course, the oven was…off. 

This blog is called MrsSedd@Sixty for a reason.

Labor Day’s over. Time to get back to work, people!  Until tomorrow….