How Hard It Would Be to Kidnap a Kid

Hello again, all. I wanted to take a moment to let you know that some crimes are easy to commit. Others- not so much. I was assigned the job of child picker-upper for the Jordan girls yesterday. Shelly is out of town in Lexington at corporate meetings, and her husband Reggie, mayor of Eugene (unofficial title) was playing in Mike Belotti's golf tournament that was going to go long since he got moved to the afternoon flight.

Either way, I was excited to pick the kids up because I have seen Emma run across the playground to her mother so I was hoping that she would just walk fast toward me...I don't requre much in the way of kids' appreciation. However, I didn't know what I had signed up for.

For those of you who don't know, I am a direction-tard. I don't know if that is an official disease, but it should be. I could not find my way around a block. For that reason, I pay for the Verizon (Verison, if you're English) Navigator on my phone. It's supposed to get me from here to there if I can manage to get an address into the phone under the "destination" slot. so when Shelly proposed picking up kids I only asked that I got an address. She had enough of an idea for me to plug it in to google and get the actual address.

As part of the plan, I needed to drive Shelly's car to get the girls. It's weird, but my car does not include car seats (I KNOW, so many kids, not enough carseats). So thank goodness, I went and exchanged cars at lunch time. However, the Jordans have a listed house, so I noticed that there were folks in there already. I knew where the spare key and the $20 that Reggie had left me for the car and dinner that we were headed toward. However, I didn't want to scare the folks in the house by sneaking in and then the Volvo was gone that they saw earlier...After announcing myself, it was clear that these people wouldn't have cared even if they had come down the stairs and seen me taking the television, I don't know that they would have stopped me, but whatever. Either way, I switched cars. Thank goodness.

Soooooooo, every Monday, we have a staff meeting. Most days, it starts at 4 and ends at 4:25. However, this week, it ended at 5:22. I know, and I recognize that it's bad luck. Again, this wouldn't be a big issue if I wasn't a direction-tard. I had already run the address that Shelly had given me and found the actual place that these kids were staying. Sooooo, I plugged it in and I headed for glory. However, half way there, the damn lady told me to turn and I did. Unfortunately, she said that I was no longer on a road. I can assure you, internet, that I was not in a field. I turned when she told me to....Only that was apparently stupid (oops, not allowed to say that via Emma so "silly"). So I stopped at a gas station where the toothless woman helped me find it. That was pretty sweet because I told her the road, and she had no idea. She had to pull up a map and tell me where I was going and it took her a couple minutes to let me know where I was going. I guess the point would be that it is HARD to find a daycare center (centre if you're in Europe).

I got to the daycare, and that is where Shelly's page-long directions came in handy. I had to punch in a code to get in the door. Then, I had to let them know who I was, which, thank goodness, Reggie had remembered to tell them was me. Then I had to recite the girls' names (first, middle, and last) and then my own...Just to get these kids.

I felt like a damn felon. They were fun on the way home, though, which made me laugh. Thank the Sweet Lord that Shelly left me some goldfish for the ride home.