A Little Good Luck

As it happens, I didn't plan well during our last grocery shopping trip. With the holidays in the middle of the week, I somehow over calculated the number of times we would eating at friends or restaurants. The refrigerator was short by 2 days of meals.

Not a problem, around 6:30 last night, Seen and I just slipped into our coats and headed off to the local market for some back-up meal supplies. As we walked into the garage under our apartment, something seemed off. Our parking spot was a lot emptier than it usually is.

Our car was missing.

"Honey." I said as he walked up behind me, "Where's the car?"

We both stopped in our tracks.  There is a moment of slight disbelief when you realize your car isn't where you expect it to be, all cozy in it's parking spot under your apartment. We walked over to the spot. There was no broken glass. Had it been stolen?

It had been drizzling that morning, so Seen had driven us to the gym. I walked home after my workout, leaving Seen to pump up his muscles a bit more. Seen had come home about 45 minutes later. This happens a lot so neither of us really thought a thing about it.

"Did I drive back from the gym?" Seen was questioning himself. "Or did I walk?"

We go to the gym almost every day. We walk most of the time, drive when it's cold or rainy. Walking home would just be something either of us did on auto-pilot.

"Well, there's only one way to find out." I said, and we started walking towards the gym.

That morning, we had parked at a meter on a side-street. Since it was free to park there before 9:00 a.m., we didn't really give it a second thought, even though our town is notorious about giving parking tickets.  Now we were definitely discussing it.

As we walked the 4 blocks, both of us pondered how much we would owe in tickets. The general cost of parking at a meter is $2 an hour. You are allowed to park for 2 hours between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. It's free between 6 p.m. and midnight. If your car is there between midnight and 5 a.m., your car is going to get towed. It's a convoluted pretzel of parking. Still with me?

Our car had been at a meter for 12 hours. Easy prey for the parking cop in her golf-cart. In my mind, I envisioned stack of red and white envelopes tucked under the wiper blade. If the car was indeed there and not a) stolen from our garage or b) towed for being parked there all day.

Seen snuck into the street a little bit down the road and said "I see it!" Good news! Paying tickets is a lot easier than having your car stolen.  We crossed to where the car was parked, taking a deep breath before looking at the windshield.

It was empty. No tickets, no little red envelopes in sight. I actually hard blinked a couple of times, just to be sure I wasn't missing something. Then I remembered the post-it note on the meter.

I'd seen it when we parked in the morning. It read "This meter ate my quarters!" and it was dated Saturday. I had been thisclose to removing it when we got there in the morning, but then I got cold and made a dash to the gym.

The parking matron must have seen the post-it note and thought it was for our car.

A big thank-you to the coincidence/karma patrol, and the lady who wrote that meter eater note, because it was a little bit of good luck and good news we needed to start off the year. Also thanks to me for not buying enough food for the week, because otherwise we would have left the car there all night and it would have been towed.

I'm considering this the sign that 2013 is going to be filled with good luck for the Robinsons.