It was just supposed to be exercise

I have Parent Teacher conferences on Thursday.

After that, I get to sit in a meeting for another hour or more.

Shoot me in my head!

Tonight, I realized that some items I needed to deliver to friends, whom I was SUPPOSED to see on Thursday, had I not remembered that I had Parent Teacher conferences, wouldn't be delivered.

I had two choices.  Teachers are big into choices.   If I say it once, I say the following a million times a day:

"You have two choices.  You can follow directions and reap the benefits.  Or you can not follow directions and deal with the consequences."


It's amazing the number of students that choose the latter.

But I digress....

So, I had two choices ...

1. I could make my friends wait even though time is money where these particular items are concerned ... OR
2. I could walk the items over to Viv's house, who is a mutual friend and will be seeing both owners of items on Thursday.

This second choice seemed like a great idea because I could really shove some exercise into my already unforgiving schedule, and I would be getting this errand out of the way.  

I LOVE being able to check off items on the TO DO LIST!

The only problem that I saw with this plan is that I would either have to cross a major highway to get from Point A to Point B ... or I'd have to travel a ped-way over top of the highway.  I chose the ped-way, mainly because I had a vision of myself lumbering across the highway, tripping, falling in front of a Mack truck, and dying a horrific death while the guy "playing" the fake cardboard guitar for Little Caesar's at that particular intersection witnessed my untimely demise.  

I've never walked the ped-way before ... many people had, and they all seemed pleased with the ease of getting from Point A to Point B.  Why not, right?

Well, I will tell you why not!

First of all, the entire time it took me to cross the ped-way, I had a vision of my death as the cement and steel girder structure crumbled and fell to the busy highway below, where I would shriek to my death, bounced and flattened by one racing vehicle after another.  

This is a gift, people, this thing I do in my head every single day ... envisioning my death.  A gift, I tell you.

Once I got off the ped-way, though, and took a big whiff of the intoxicating sweetness of the honeysuckle that covered the area, I felt better ... that was until I realized that the honeysuckle COVERED  the area ... on both sides ... and it was bushy and desolate and isolating ... and the entire 8 miles (that's what it felt like anyway) reminded me of at least 5 episodes of 48 Hours, wherein some single teacher, desperate for a little exercise and brain draining in the middle of her ridiculously over-scheduled day, dies a horrific death at the hands of the masked murderer/rapist/cannibal hiding in the aforementioned bushes.  

A gift, I'm telling you.

I made it to Viv's house without a problem, and she assured me, after some giggling, that I should be alright retracing my steps.  Easy for her to say.  She's the proud owner of a giant horse-like creature commonly referred to as a Newfoundland dog. Indy would just as soon lick you to death, but he's quite the intimidating-looking fellow.

I decided that if I was going to be stupid enough to return the same treacherous route that I came, I would punch in 9-1-1 and just let my thumb rest on the call button.  Just in case, you know, the masked murderer/rapist/cannibal decided to try again.

This plan was almost brilliantly executed thanks, in part, to the scary noises I heard behind me mid-way through my daunting walk to my impending death.  I turned around and JUMPED, almost out of my own skin, when I saw a man on a bike, almost directly behind me.  Granted, he was suited up for what looked like a cross-country bike trip, and I'm pretty sure he posed very little threat to my virtue.  Still, the mere act of jumping caused my trigger-happy finger to come right up to the very precipice of a 9-1-1 dial, and I'm pretty certain that it wouldn't have ended well for me ... I had a vision of the SWAT team converging on the area, guns drawn, and much hullabaloo to have me "spread 'em" and "drop to the ground slowly" ... wherein, I've decided I shouldn't have watched that last COPS rerun ...