This one’s for you Mom, the woman who blessed me with her sense of direction . . . Happy Birthday!
I really shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house. My GPS either doesn’t like me or isn’t very good at her job. Invariably we end up somewhere other than where we are trying to go. It only happens when I’m driving, but I know it couldn’t possibly be user error.
The other day the boys and I planned to go to the SPCA to look at dogs because, as we have established, I am insane. The current plan is to get a dog the same day that we move into our house because I want Josh to be around to help make the final decision and the day we move in is the only day that he’ll be able to do it. We could wait, but that means waiting until the kids are in school and since this is all for them, gosh darn it, they better be around when we bring this thing home from the shelter.
I had BSPCA already tagged in my favorites in the GPS so I selected it and off we went. Over the bridge and through the desert . . . hey wait now. We didn’t go over this bridge when we went to church or the animal shelter last time. And why am I seeing signs for Sitra, which is near the resort place where we went to swim? That is not near the animal shelter . . . I zoom out and see that I am nowhere near where I’m supposed to be going, even though I swear I programmed it correctly at the beginning.
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| started at orange, SPCA is somewhere near the other orange spot, but we drove to a completely different part of the island (pink). |
The boys suggest selecting “Church” instead, since it’s in the same area. We’ll be able to find our way to the SPCA once we get to church. Great. I can do that. So we backtrack and start heading in the right direction.
We’re seeing familiar landmarks and know we’re getting closer when the phone rings. It’s a friend who has run out of gas on the other side of the island and needs me to go pick her up.
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| I have to figure out how to get to Amwaj, while she’s stuck standing in the heat on the side of the road with her 2 kids. |
Since she’s new too, I know that I am (unfortunately for her) her only hope. But how to get from where I am to where she is? I have no clue since I barely know where I am. I get off the freeway and try to turn around, but in the roundabouts and things I end up going further into the city and am not making much progress. I have to get back to the freeway. What would be marked in the GPS that would get me headed in that direction? I scroll through the favorites and see “Lulu’s.” Oh, good! Josh must have marked it the other night when we were there with the kids.
We start driving, I call Josh and tell him my change of plans and thank him for marking Lulu’s. He says he didn’t mark Lulu’s. Maybe I did and I don’t remember? How else would Lulu’s get in my GPS? Wait, where are we going? None of these city choices on the freeway are going in the right direction. It’s like wanting to go to San Francisco and the only signs are for Sacramento, Walnut Creek or Pleasanton. Where is this crazy thing taking me?
I’m on the phone with Josh, telling him that I’m crazy lost and the GPS he bought for me is possessed. He tells me I need to zoom out to see where I’m going and then select the right place on the map and go there. He doesn’t understand that I don’t get maps. At. All. Even after looking at these map pictures and drawing all over them, I only slightly understand where I was/am. Being in my head and driving around is like one big surprise after another. I imagine where I’m going and then I come upon a landmark and realize the picture I had in my head is totally reversed and I’m heading exactly opposite of where I thought I was.
I may have started screeching that I couldn’t zoom out because I had the phone in one hand, was trying to drive with the other hand, and couldn’t pull over because I was on the freeway, but he couldn’t hear me because it was chaos in the car with all the kids trying to tell me where to go.
Oh, and the Lulu’s? It was one that I had marked when we first arrived — when a friend drove me around the island and pointed out landmarks. Too bad this Lulu’s was nowhere near where I needed to be. But we got there, pulled over and told the GPS to take me to the airport since that’s near where my friend was stranded. She did her job and got us back on track and we eventually made it to rescue my poor melting friend.
All 6 kids crammed in the backseat and we went to find a gas station.
They didn’t have any gas cans so they pulled some empty water bottles out of the trash and filled them with gas. They rinsed them out with gas first (swished it around and poured it on the ground) to make sure they were “clean.”
Did you know gas was bright pink? I didn’t either.
The first bottle had a crack in it and started to leak so they had to use a different one.
Ospreys flying overhead! I’ve never seen one in person before — these were really low because they were coming in to land. (They are the jet/helicopter hybrid planes)
A crush of kids in the back seat. 5 kids in a space for 2 since Camille was in her car seat.
Pink fuel!
After our rescue mission we didn’t end up making it to the SPCA that day. Instead we went to lunch with Josh on base and we cooled off for a while in the base movie theater. We still plan on getting a dog this weekend. After getting a dog I’ll probably be too busy to go anywhere, but at least I won’t get lost every day. Yesterday after running errands I pressed the ‘Home’ button on the GPS and couldn’t figure out why she was taking me this crazy roundabout way home. I finally got tired of driving in the exact opposite direction of where I thought we needed to go so I stopped to see what she was doing. She was, in fact, taking me home. To Oman.
