What a Tuesday!

Hello gang. I got to thinking that with my being gone, I'm not sure ECU has that one person on campus that seems to have trouble follow her. You know, Murphy's grandchild, "if it can go wrong, it will..." This morning was quite....hmmm....what's a good word? Frustrating? No. Disheartening? No. Adventurous? Not quite, but we'll go with it.
(Jared, warning...this will require some reading...hahaha)

I thought I would share my Tuesday morning story with you all. While it was happening, it was not the least bit funny, but once I made it to my office, I had to laugh. :-)

When I woke up, I just knew today would be an awesome day! I woke up at 6, and it was raining hard and thundering (my favorite way to sleep) so I reset my alarm for 7. (This is not a story about being late for work, the extra hour of sleep was the good part! hahaha)

So, I work downtown. My parking permit is for a garage a couple of blocks down the street from my office building. And yes, it is now storming worse than it was at 6 or even 7. No worries, I have an umbrella. Once I got to the parking garage, I got to thinking that I didn't want to ruin my work shoes (some black flats if you want a visual). Lucky me, I have some flip flops in my car. New ones from Old Navy. So i put those on and put my work shoes in the Old Navy bag, gather my lunch, purse and umbrella and set off.

When I make it to the street and the cross walk I realize a couple of things: 1. my feet are already soaked, but I don't really care. (when else do you have an excuse as an adult to walk in the rain and get your feet wet?) and 2. man, that's like a river there on the road.

And it was, sort of. There was water rushing down the street. The "creek" was about 4 feet wide (no lie). As I'm standing there waiting for the red flashing DON'T WALK to turn into that white light up man running...er...walking, a car goes by and....yep...drives THROUGH the "creek". I am soaked from about the thighs down. I look down at myself, then over to the business man that just walked up. He saw it happen. He looked at me in a compassionate way and says, "oh! and now we have to jump across that." Thanks, sir. I hadn't already contemplated that very thing. As you all know, I'd be lucky to just have that much of a leg span on a dry, sunny day with my Air Jordans on. Yes. Thank you, sir.

So the "run for your life" light comes on, and I do attempt the jump (with umbrella in one hand; purse, bag of shoes and bag of lunch in the other). As I am in mid-air, my right flip flop comes off. (Now is when in the movies it would turn to slow motion...) As I land (in the middle of the "creek") I turn in time to see my shoe floating down the road. Nooooooooo......Good-bye shoe. I stood there in the middle of the road for about 30 seconds trying to figure out a way to get my shoe. But short of dropping all my possessions and diving for it, there was nothing I could do. I slowly turned around to see a car waiting on me to get out of the road. Sorry, ma'am.

All this and I had another wide "creek" to cross on the other side of the 4 lane. I'm not jumping. My pants are already wet anyway. So I walk through. Once I'm safely on the other side I have a decision to make: do I walk to work (2 blocks) with one shoe or do I put on the work shoes--and ruin them? I opt for the hobo look.

This walk is generally a beautiful walk as it is the block that contains the Water Gardens. Not so beautiful today. As I passed the mini-physical plant operations of the Water Gardens, all the workers are huddled in the control room with the door open. They seem to be having a meeting. As I approach, they all stop, stare, then notice the one shoe. They whisper. What am I to do but smile and wave with my handful of purse and bags?

I continue on to my building. Almost there. One more street to cross (another "creek", albeit a much smaller one). Then our security guard sees me and comes out with his huge umbrella. He walks me up to the building and noticing my soaked pants says, "You need a bigger umbrella." I assure him that would have made no difference. He then notices the shoe. The one shoe. He says, "Uh...what happened to your shoe? Is that the only one you have for the day?" I told him the other one floated away. He just looked puzzled. When I got inside the foyer of our building and began putting on my nice shoes, he just shook his head. I told him, "This will be funny once I get upstairs. I just know it." We both laughed.

Sure enough, once I made it up here and told this story to my coworkers, it was funny. As we're all in stitches, my supervisor asks (very innocently) "Why didn't you call one of us to drive down and get you?" (See, three of our staff work 7:30-4:30)
My reply, "Yeah. I didn't think of that until JUST NOW." As I stood there soaked we all laughed again.

What a morning. Luckily, one of my suite-mates likes the temp to be about 63 degrees at all times and our secretary just bought me a space heater. It works quite well in drying out pants and sweaters. And feet. And bad moods. :-)

I know this ended up a little long, but wanted to write it so that you might picture me telling it to you.

I miss you all so much! I hope you have an awesome Tuesday.
Love,
Sue