A spectacular Fail of a lunch break*

*Absolutely no birds were killed during the making of this blog post, regardless of how many stones I threw.

To quote some of the greatest philosophers of our time, the Animaniacs, let me begin with this:

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn Tell us the lesson that we should learn!

Today's lesson? Whenever I try to be clever, things turn out really badly.

Yesterday I decided to swing by Target during lunch to take back a couple items and try on some shorts and dresses for our vacation (which is this Saturday holy cow we are traveling from one coast to another with a toddler whose favorite occupation is running what are we going to do on a plane for that long please Lord take mercy on me and don't even get me started on the three-hour time difference I really don't want this to be a disaster In Jesus' Name Amen).

So Target. On my way there I decided to be clever and take a shortcut. Instead of getting off at my normal exit (Silas Creek to Stratford Road) I figured I'd go on past, hop on I-40, and take the exit that would spit me out mere yards from where I needed to be.

For those of you who know me in real life, and for those of you who have ever been in the car with me whilst I am driving, you already know that my relationship with my sense of direction is...strained. I mean, I'm Irish, okay? There's no point in using universally accepted directional terms (such as North and South) because I won't understand them. I need tangibles: Go to the big church with the large cross and turn left but if you reach the 7-11 you know you've gone too far, etc. My sense of direction and I, we've had our disagreements. In fact, one time in high school I decided to ignore my sense of direction altogether and instead navigate my way home from Carrie's house using only the position of the sun as my guide. And guess what? IT WORKED OUT BETTER.

While I was busy being clever yesterday, my sense of direction made other plans and told me to head west on I-40 instead of counter-intuitively going east. Naturally, when I go the wrong direction on the highway, the laws of space and time morph so that my minor error effortlessly expands into the realm of Colossal Screw Up: highway exits stretch to miles and miles apart instead of appearing in typical one-mile intervals, 10-minute trips turn into 30-minute ones, etc. Instead of ending up at Target within 30 seconds of the interchange, several minutes later I ended up in Clemmons, North Carolina—i.e. the next town over.

By the time I got back to Winston-Salem, I had scrapped the Target plan. Instead, I would swing into Sam's Club and pick up the second season of The Wire for Noah as a late anniversary present. But guess what? They were completely sold out. Of all seasons. Such was the level of sold-outedness that there was no evidence that they had ever offered The Wire for sale in the history of the store's existence as a retail space. The display had even been changed from the week before, when we got season one. Ergo, the Sam's Club plan? Fail.

After that I got some Chick-Fil-A—which I recommend as an instant fix to a crappy situation—and (for the win!) I headed on over to the babysitter's house to pick up Ethan a half hour earlier than I was expected. I arrived and lightly knocked on the door, but nobody answered. I figured that 1) They were back in the kitchen eating lunch or 2) Everyone was asleep. In the interest of number 2 being the case, I decided against knocking louder and instead would come back on schedule in a half hour. I returned to work, defeated.

All in all, I got nothing done, wasted several dollars' worth of gas, and spent my lunch hour wandering aimlessly around the Triad area. As a bonus, I still don't have any shorts, except for the pair from high school that say "Irish" across the butt and now wear more like underpants than outer-garments (we really need to get our dryer looked at because I SWEAR it's shrinking all my clothes that I still have from high school) and I know we're going to California but still. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a smidgen of self-respect left. In fact, I think the only amount of self-respect I have left is tied directly to the fact that my butt has not been exposed to the general public. So that's a definite No on the Irish shorts, not that there was ever really a question.