The Missing Checkbook

I was getting frantic.  I hadn't seen the checkbook for over a week and was beginning to think that it was lost and not just misplaced.  I spent the last two days tearing up the house searching.  As a result, my laundry room has never looked better.  Good news!  The checkbook was not under the washing machine.

It wasn't in the spare bedroom closet either.  Or in the freezer.  Not in the dresser drawer or under the bathroom sink.  Nix on the bookshelves (although I emptied them twice just to be sure.)  Not in the boxes of Christmas ornaments.  Jerry helped me search for several hours the other night.  I figure I have about twenty-five man hours invested in this project all together.  Still no checkbook.

The last time I could remember seeing it we were in Charleston.  I began wondering, would we drive back to Charleston just to get our checkbook?  How far would you backtrack to pick up a lost item?

                                                 *  *  *

When we were traveling back from Orlando a couple of weeks ago, we hit a storm system that was spawning tornadoes.  We'd planned to drive straight through, but considered the weather and stopped just at the edge of Savannah.  There was a cluster of chain motels there and we just picked one and slept there.  Nothing special, just an emergency place to stay.

In the morning we got up early and left.  We had breakfast in Savannah and it was during this meal that Jerry asked, "Did you grab the pillows?" I hadn't and so then we had a little dilemma.  Do we go back and get them or not? 

I really like my pillow.  It's goose down and broken in.  I feel about it like a four-year-old feels about her blankie.  I am attached to it, but I don't necessarily want people to know.  I hated to leave it behind, but Jerry's determination to get from "Point A" to "Point B" as rapidly as possible is legendary.  I harbored little hope that he would drive ten minutes in the wrong direction to retrieve it. 

Calling the motel was a good idea, but neither of us could remember what the name of it was and we hadn't gotten a receipt. I reasoned that it was still early and maybe the maids hadn't even cleaned our room yet but Jer didn't want to bother driving that far if they'd already thrown our pillows away. 

Jerry was calling random motel chains, asking them "Are you the motel by the Cracker Barrel?" when I realized I had stuffed my pillow into my suitcase.  The urgency of the trip back magically dissolved for me now that I knew my own pillow wasn't at risk.  Funny how that works, right?  I hadn't mentioned my news yet to Jer, but he sensed that something was different in my attitude. "Whatever you want to do, honey."  I said sweetly.

When I finally told him only his pillow was left in the room, he surprised me by deciding to go back anyway.  Apparently he likes his pillow as much as I like mine.  It was worth the extra twenty minutes' drive just to know that we would have our own pillows to sleep on when we got home.

A week or so later I was trying to make my friend who works at a B&B laugh by telling her the pillow story.  She did smile but then she told me an even funnier  one.  A snarky couple stayed with them for a couple of nights and when they left, the maid found a pair of men's underwear and a pair of socks in the bureau drawer.  "What should I do with these?" she asked.  It had been about forty-five minutes since these guests had departed so my friend said, "Throw them in the dumpster."

Wouldn't you know about fifteen minutes later the man called and said he was coming back for them?  The women were both flabbergasted!  How much can a pair of underwear and socks cost?  The gas they were going to spend to drive back to the inn probably would have covered the price tags of replacements and then some. 

The women quickly did a dumpster dive and recovered the articles, slightly worse for the wear.  Breakfast scraps had been thrown in on top of the underwear, so they now had Hollandaise sauce decorating the front panel.  The innkeeper scrubbed them the best she could, stuck them in a plastic bag and just handed the whole mess to the man when he arrived.  "Don't even ask," she told him.  

He'd added a hundred and twenty minutes to his drive in order to retrieve his pair socks and a wet pair of underpants.  It's a crazy world.

                                                   *  *  *

Sam "driving" the van.

So, would we drive four hours one-way to retrieve our checkbook?   We won't need to find out this time because I found it outside in the recycling bin.  Like I said, it's a crazy world.

Astronauts

We went to the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando yesterday.  Whereas this might not be a dream destination for the ladies in the group, the guys were pretty excited about it.

First we watched an IMAX film on repairing the Hubble telescope.  It was in 3D.  I always thought 3D was kind of cheesy, but this was really cool.  Maybe it was where I was seated, the geometric center of the theatre, or maybe technology has just advanced since last time I saw anything 3D (The Disney production "Bees.")  Anyway, things just kept hurling at me throughout the 45 minute presentation and it was fun.

When I see shows about space, it creeps me out - so vast and amazing is the subject.  Earth is beautiful! Pictures of our blue planet fill me with wonder but when I see worlds so far away that I can't even grasp the distance, well, I just am awed.

I must have "spaced out" because next I found myself getting my "astronaut i.d. picture" taken to ride on the launch simulator.  This is so not me.  I hate loud noise, I do not like being mechanically shaken and sometimes I find being inside small spaces a wee bit confining.  Still, there were a lot of elderly grannies and small children in line with me so I didn't want to be the one to freak out. 

When we got to the front of the line, the attendant said we'd be the next group to go in.  This meant ten minutes more for me to focus on fear, not a good thing.  A rather large man behind us nervously asked if he'd be able to catch the 6:15 bus if he waited and he was assured that was not problem.  At this point, a guy appeared with a kid of about five or six in his arms.  The child was crying and shaking, clearly frightened by whatever it was we were about to do.  The attendant gently talked to him until he calmed down but she couldn't convince him to go back in.  His violent reaction fueled my fears.

As we waited, the attendant told us that last week there was a malfuntion.  They had to close down twice and it took half the day to fix the problem.  My overactive imagination placed me inside the simulator, trapped for hours.  This probably was not the place to allow my mind to wander at this particular juncture either. 

Finally we saw a movie about what we would experience.  They stressed FODs (foreign object debris) and how things could come out of your pockets and pose a threat to others.  They asked that you place things into lockers provided. Problem was, I never saw any lockers so I began worrying about my hat and sunglasses.  As I'm obsessing about that, we passed lots of large signs warning us about the dangers of FODs.  Then we stood on yellow lines in front of a bank of doors.  There was another short video the gist of which was 'there's no shame in leaving now if you don't feel this experience is for you.' 

At this point I seriously thought about bailing - and so did my son-in-law - but peer pressure kept us both glued to the spot.  They opened up the doors and in we went, strapping ourselves in tightly.  Jerry suggested that I sit on my floppy hat which I did and then, necessity being the mother of invention, I tied my sunglasses to my pants using the drawstring on the waist.  I was good to go - nervous, but good.  Then the lights went down.

As I'm taking a deep breath to calm myself, that big, nervous man from earlier jumped up and started screaming, "I can't do this!  Let me out!"  My husband (Mr. Type A) tells the guy he'd better sit down and strap himself back in or he's gonna become a human FOD.  Mr. Panicky doesn't listen though and begins banging on the door of the simulator screaming.  This further agitates Mr. Type A who has visions of Mr. Panicky landing on us sometime during the next six minutes.

Fortunately this wasn't the Space Center's first rodeo.  The ride was stopped, the doors were opened, the fearful fellow bolted out of the simulator.  The attendant came in and asked the guy's companion if he didn't want to get out to check on Mr. Panicky?  Apparently the answer was "no" because  he didn't get out.  She also sweetly asked us if anyone else wanted to exit.  Both Brent and I wanted to, but peer pressure is a powerful thing and it kept us glued to our seats.

The simulation was loud and our capsule did move but never did we actually go upside down.  It was really quite tame when compared to my imagination.  As we exited our craft, we had to walk around Mr. Panicky who was dramatically splayed on the floor just outside the simulator.

I decided to buy our space i.d. pictures as a great souvenir of overcoming fears.  While I was standing in line, I heard an attendant asking a man behind me if he didn't want to look at his prints.  It was Mr. Panicky himself.  "I bailed," he said. "I don't deserve my picture."

My son-in-law, the brave astronaut