red goose chase

This morning, I stopped on the way to school to get gas.  When I got out of the car, I took my whole wallet with me, and put it on top of the car for safekeeping.  I filled the car (nearly $40- ouch) and drove off, already thinking of ways to fake my way through a literature class I hadn't done all the reading for.

About a mile later, I glanced at my bag and realized it had no wallet in it.


So I made the most ridiculous U-turn in history and zoomed back to the gas station, looking at the gutters all the way, trying to see if my large, bright red wallet was anywhere in sight.  It wasn't along the road, or in the gas station parking lot; the attendants hadn't seen it either.  By then I was pretty upset. I went to school, and--in full panic mode--tried to get in touch with my bank to cancel all my cards, because that's what a reasonable person does.  The stupid automated menu kept confusing me, and the call disconnected, so I threw my hands up in defeat and went to class.

My literature class is interesting, but it lasts 2 1/2 hours and is in a miserably cold room.  Today it sucked more than usual, because I had no wallet.

On the way home, I stopped at the gas station once more, to the same results.  Resigned to an afternoon of phone calls, I left and went to pick up the kids. 

Kids secured, I went home.  I had just barely pulled into my driveway when I got a phone call from a number I didn't know.  Guess what? Someone had seen my wallet on the side of the road, and would I like to come get it? Um, yes!  I was over the moon that some perfectly nice person was holding my financial life safe for me to come retrieve. I plugged the address into my GPS, and off we went, kids happily snoozing in the backseat.

My GPS is stupid.  It didn't recognize the address, and gave me some other address as the closest possible one, and I just went along with.  The street it wanted me to take was completely closed off--there was an overturned semi, loads of emergency vehicles and cops, I assume it was very bad--and I tried to find an alternate route, but the stupid GPS took me in a giant circle. Lame.  Desperate, I called my dad and asked for help.  He plugged the address into Google Maps (or something) and talked me through it.  Turns out that the place the GPS was trying to take me was about 5 miles away from where I actually needed to be.  TomTom, I have it out for you.

Anyway, I got there ok, picked up my wallet, and drove home.  The kids woke up just as we pulled up the second time.

So I lost 2 hours of my day today because I was silly and forgot my wallet on top of my car.  Thankfully there's a happy ending--I could've lost a lot more time, not to mention had a whole lot of red tape headaches trying to get all my cards and stuff replaced.

And the moral of the story is- leave the effing wallet in the car.