"I'm just happy to be here!"
That little sentence flowed from the mouth of the most precious soul as I stood in line at a pharmacy with my daughter. The utterer of the most simple line of existential gratitude was a tiny woman whose face bore the lines of hard living and experience.
"I'm eighty-four years old," she chirped at me with all the enthusiasm of a early rising tyke on Christmas morning.
Of course my face went into a twenty-five gigawatt smile, but if I had known how the rest of my night was going to progress, I would have replied, "Me too ma'am, me too."
You see, Friday night I had to run into Coeur d'Alene and take care of a multitude of errands. CDA as we tend to call it around here, has experienced a massive population boom. I try to avoid going there as much as I possibly can because our infrastructure wasn't designed for the volume of traffic that now cavorts about, not to mention the people doing the cavorting are a bit, well, special in the manner in which they travel to and fro.
My first stop after sending my kiddo off to have dinner with her dad and help him run his youth shooting sports program at the CDA range was to head to the mall and pick up a birthday present for one of our dear friends. As I was leaving, I pulled into the lane that was to head straight across the highway. Next to me was a left turn lane and across the opposite direction going traffic lane was McCrackens, oops, I mean McDonalds (My dad has called it McCrackens my whole life, please forgive the error...heh).
Anyway, this man in a gigantic, full size Dodge pickup didn't want to wait to get into the turn lane and barreled across the oncoming lanes to get into said lane. The problem was the turn lane was already full down to me. He sorta misjudged his length, turning radius he needed, and available space and just like that his bed was blocking the entire oncoming lane.
Interesting.
Then, the lady behind him, not to be out done, thought she would shove her hatchback in right behind him. The angle in which the turn needs to be safely executed means that you need to account for the fact that you will need more space to safely make the angle and have room to straighten out in line. These Hurry Harpies must have been texting or experiencing post Quarter Pounder ingestion sensations because they did not have enough space to do any of those things, so I ended up in a precarious position.
I was surrounded by traffic on all sides, and the Dodge derp was still blocking oncoming traffic. I knew if he got hit his entire front end was going to sling shot into the front of my car because physics. Plus, Hatchback Harriet was, and I am not exaggerating, six inches from my front quarter panel. I mean, I could see the pickle bits in the woman's teeth for Hamburglar's sakes!
"Please change, please change, please change." I willed the traffic light under my breath.
Thankfully the light heard my plea and changed, and as I bolted away I smiled in thanks.
But that was not to be the end of my Friday Night Foray.
After wrapping up family errand stuff, I ordered my son a couple pizzas at Pizza Gut as a little celebration for him finishing up basketball tryouts. Plus, stuffed crust is kinda awesome. After picking up the cheese gut bomb in a box, I had a fifteen mile drive ahead of me that at this point I have driven countless times. Before I even got out of town I had to hit the ditch because a state trooper was chasing a guy and since we have literally no shoulders to pull over on in Idaho, let's just say getting out of the way is sometimes an off road adventure.
I wasn't even back on the road for ten seconds before I had to swerve into the oncoming lane of traffic because a man suddenly appeared in front of me waving a flare. The blazing phosphorous baked my retinas, but I was still able to make out a truck sorta angled in the road with it's flashers on the sharp corner I was coming too.
By this time I was more than a bit perplexed. Like, what the heck was going on?
But I had a steaming hot pizza to deliver to a tired athlete and I really wanted to slide into my cozy fleece jammies and watch a baking show, so I gritted my teeth and kept driving.
As I crested Seasons Hill the biggest four point buck I have seen in a while flew between the oncoming car and I and missed my front right quarter panel by less that a foot.
I swear that he flipped me the bird too, insolent beast!
After the deer miss, I was really starting to get concerned about the prospect of me making it home unscathed. I mean, thus far I had dodged the odds, but so many encounters felt a bit, well, surreal.
I rounded the corner down from Season's Hill and the glare of freshly lit flares blasted into my eyes. Once again my entire lane was blocked by a disabled truck, his huge snow plow blade was blocking the whole lane and there were people, in the dark mind you, running around ON THE HIGHWAY!
Somehow, with everything that I had already navigated fresh in my mind and my endocrine system firing on full blast, I had the clarity to get through that mess too. I will admit to groaning loudly when my offspring called and asked if I could grab him some Gatorade (Dude has been doing basketball tryouts while recovering from a cold), but still, I'm his mom and obliged.
I pulled into the parking lot of our town's only store. The store has a gas station and laundry mat to the far south side of its parking lot, and you have to drive by those buildings to get to the parking lot. As I turned off the highway and was proceeding toward the lot, a huge, rusty, creepy white van barreled toward me on my side of the road.
I steered my car over farther to the right, thinking that this guy maybe just wasn't paying attention and would figure out his error.
Nope, he just doubled down and kept coming my way.
Well little did he know that I have been in lots and lots of those back and forth battles with shopping carts in stores, I always double down on the getting out the way action and I held my ground.
With just feet to go before he smashed my car, he diverted back to his side of the road.
As I walked out of the store, heart still pounding a bit, I glanced up at the clear, crisp sky.
The moon beamed down on me, gigantic and glaring.
"I'm just happy to be here!" I chirped back.
Oh geez, what a time of it you had! Would make me want to never leave the homestead ever! Glad you made it back, and your vehicle, in one piece.
It was definitely an extravaganza lol! Not that I want to leave the homestead too often anyway, but trips like that really reinforce that sentiment!
Hope you are having a most awesome day😊
!PIZZA
I gifted $PIZZA slices here:
@generikat(1/15) tipped @goldenoakfarm (x1)
Please vote for pizza.witness!
That definitely was an overdose of bizarre-ness all in one day. I, too, am happy you are still here! I don't understand why people are in such a hurry. Did the out-of-staters bring their rushed lifestyle along with them to Idaho? I have learned to drive through yellow lights now, because it's better than getting rear-ended by somebody behind me who was planning to get through that yellow light, too.
I stared thinking that the odds of you making it home unscathed was about the same as navigating an asteroid field LOL
KITTEH!