I don’t know how to make this story sound any more adventurous than it really is.
A few days ago, I begged the ex-husband to give me the camera we had bought when we were together, because let’s face it, DSLRs look really cool when you go trekking. Besides, we bought it for me, anyway. He graciously offered to let me keep it (at which offer I jumped) but I said no thanks, I’ll return it once I come back from the trip.
So now that I’ve been back for two weeks, I had to return the camera to him. Today.
The camera bag is HUGE. And I already carry a large-ish, fit your world in it kinda handbag to work, along with a reasonably large lunchbox that doesn’t fit in my handbag anyway. So you can imagine how frustrated I was with all the bags.
I decided to sort things out, so I picked a really small sling bag (only for today) that barely had enough space for my wallet and a pen. Okay, it’s tiny. That way I could handle the other two packages easily.
I was wearing a grey formal dress that ends two inches above the knees and rides up a little when I sit down. It’s perfect when you want to look hot professional. So I was feeling particularly good when I found the perfect parking spot right in front of the office. I got out, picked up my three pieces of luggage baggage bags. I locked the car, and this presented a problem. I had nowhere to put the car keys. They wouldn’t fit in my wallet-on-a-string, and I couldn’t have put it in the lunchbox. It had to be the camera bag! I slid the key into the outside pocket.
A few hours later, the ex-husband showed up. I went down, not before I had spent some time “powdering my nose”. I went down, handed the bag to him, casually made conversation about how awesome my workplace is, and then he left. With my car keys.
Ten minutes ago, I got up, announced that I was leaving, picked up my stuff, and walked to my car. Then, I realized that I didn’t have the keys. This, btw, is at least 4 hours after the ex-husband reached home. He lives 1.5 hours away.
And I have no choice but to wait for the shuttle service to drop me off to the nearest Metro station. And in the morning, cajole the fiance into taking a 10 km detour to drop me to where the ex-husband works, wait while I retrieve my keys, and then drop me to my office.
Anawnimiss 
This story reminded me of something funny that happened to me last month.
I was switching cars with my wife because her’s is a Hybrid and gets twice the gas mileage of mine and I was going to be driving about 90 miles to an event that night. I loaded all my stuff in her car and was ready to go. Went into the house to say goodbye and then went out got in my car and drove off. About 5 minutes later just as I was merging onto the freeway I realized I was in the wrong car.
It took about 20 minutes to get off the freeway and back around to my house which at the time seemed like a huge amount of time. But mostly I was just angry at myself until I remembered something I’d heard recently. It was a statement that we form habits as a way to preserve energy. Our brains have evolved to use habits to cut down the amount of mental processing needed in our daily lives as a way to conserve energy. So being a creature of habit is an evolutionary advantage. 🙂
We are creatures of habit and when you take us only slightly out of our routine funny things can happen.
Thank you for sharing this story.
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So much for fuel efficiency, ha! Being a creature of habit can be so inconvenient sometimes!
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A question: Why did meeting up with your ex make you so flustered? 😉
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I know what you’re thinking, missy! And that’s not it. Truth is, our marriage falling apart gave me the courage to actually start being who I wanted to be. Also, I’m not going to miss any opportunity to rub that in his face. I’m shallow that way, you know! 😉
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