Just One of Those Days (in a good way)

I don’t know what it says about me that I can glean profound wisdom from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Draw your own conclusions. But in that loving homage to John Hughes, a minor character makes the statement, “In the end, the universe unfolds as it should.”

Last week seriously blew. I mean, total crud puppies. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that by Wednesday evening, after screaming at my daughter in the car and making my son cry, I went into my closet, closed the door and sobbed for half an hour.

Today, the universe made itself right. Of course I’m oversimplifying—it’s a literary device.

I left the house this morning with a list of errands and a half tank of gas. From the moment I stopped in to Bruegger’s to fill up my bottomless mug of hot coffee (half cinnamon cream swirl, half decaf) the day just seemed to unfold in front of me like a red carpet. When I reached the school to drop off Gavin, the busses had already left and there was no traffic jam. I turned left out of the school parking lot (usually a test of anyone’s patience) with no trouble. Traffic was light, the roads were good, and I made it easily to my first stop, PRISM. I was in and out in no time and hopped back into my car.

I considered stopping at Home Depot in St. Louis Park for one of the errands on my list, but then thought, “I’ll just keep going north. I’m bound to run into another Home Depot on my route.” So it was 100 northbound to 694 and over to Silverwood Park in New Brighton to pick up some ceramic tiles my Girl Scout Troop had painted a few weeks back at an arts festival. Probably the only snag to my whole day was looking through them and realizing one was missing. But I had wisely stayed in the parking lot to check through them and was able to run right back in. They didn’t find it right away, but would call me when it turned up.

Back to 694, now westbound, with a final desired destination of my brother’s house in Uptown. No real direct routes from that point, so I figured I’d “use the force” as my husband is fond of saying. I had seen a Menards off Central Avenue, but really wanted to go to a Home Depot. On a whim, I skipped the Central Avenue exit and took University. There was a Home Depot. And a Holiday gas station. And a Cub Foods. Three of my errands within 1 block.

When I walked into Home Depot, there was a greeter who asked if needed help finding anything. I held up a plastic bag containing a destroyed piece of the inside of my toilet tank. “Plumbing,” I said. “Aisle 10, halfway down,” she said. I was holding my needed replacement in about a minute and a half. AND double A batteries were on ridiculous sale and we happened to be out of those. Through the self check-out and back in my car in moments. Then to Holiday, to pay at the pump and fill my tank--gas was ten cents cheaper here than closer to home. Then over to Cub for a couple items. On the way in I watched a lady mail a letter and went, “Oh yeah, I have that Christmas card for Deb to put in the mail,” which I did. Then inside, I saw that they had a ridiculously good sale on clementines which, just yesterday at church, my daughter was raving about and saying, “Why don’t you ever buy these?" Into the cart. And I needed shredded cheese and, look!, it’s on sale for, like, a nickel! (okay, $1.50 a bag. Still fabulous!) and they had a perfect cat toy for Perry for Christmas, and the right kind of hair-bands for Jack-Jack (there will be an upcoming blog about the cat who plays fetch) and it all came to less than 20 bucks!

I still had plenty of time before I had to meet Pete for lunch so I continued my southward meander hoping to run into a Target. No dice, but I got a lovely tour of Northeast and as I crossed the river into downtown and saw the clouds hanging low enough to partially obscure the tops of skyscrapers, I suddenly missed Dan. He LOVES downtown Minneapolis and this was a stunning view. I had a surge of happy memories of all the time we spent traipsing around the skyways when we were first dating.

I reached uptown about 20 minutes before I had to pick up Pete so I swung into the Wedge Co-op to see if they had the Inositol I needed. They didn’t, but who doesn’t love just walking in to the Wedge! After a few deep inhalations of the wholesome air, I wandered back to my car and called Pete. He was ready early so I swung by his place and we were off to Green Mill for lunch.

Mmmm. Greek Salad. Despite my love of olives, I hadn’t eaten them in the five years I’ve been on my food plan so I had to make a call to find out how many I needed to count as a fat. I got someone on the first try who knew off the top of her head. Suh-weet.

Had a lovely lunch with Pete and then dropped him off. Needed to head homeward, now, and, again, no direct routes, really. I slid down Lyndale to Lake Street and shot west. Ah! I’d stop at the Knollwood Target for my last errand! Right on my way.

Target was a zoo, but I seemed to have no trouble navigating. I thought, “I should just check to see if boys pajamas are on sale.” Gavin’s are all completely trashed save one set. At first it seemed like no dice—the girls pajamas were on sale, but not the boys. Hmm. But around one rack I spied a cardboard display rack of pajama sets on clearance and I found two sets of perfectly serviceable boys cotton pajamas for—I am not making this up—$1.25 each. I picked up a pair for Eiledon, too. Then it was off to the toy section.

I just needed to find Eiledon a stuffed animal. It was the very last item on the Christmas list (the pjs were just a bonus!) The stuffed animal aisle was fairly well ransacked. I wanted to find her a wolf—that’s her new favorite animal. They had a wolf Webkinz, but we hadn’t gotten Gavin a Webkinz and then there would be this whole “Well I don’t like what I got because SHE got a Webkinz” and so on and so forth…

Finally catching on to the ridiculous smooth sailing of my day to that point, I thought, “I’ll just go over to the special holiday section. I’m sure the right thing for Eiledon will just present itself.” I spied the stuffed wolf’s head over the top of another cardboard display. It turned out to be a husky, according to the tag, but it was extremely wolf like. And there were 2 left. So I and my wolf and my three pairs of $1.25 pajamas checked out and headed home.

I arrived twenty minutes before Eiledon got off the bus. Just enough time to stash the goodies, unpack the groceries, walk the dog and heave a sigh of contentment. Seriously.

I only hope this was the universe righting itself for last week and not a down payment on some future fiasco. I just won’t think about it.