Today was a crazy day! I was doing another Promiseland drama (in Jaden's room again), so I had to be at church at 2:30. Scott took the kids to Linda's house - they were going to go to the children's museum, but they never made it there. The drama went well, but I was feeling a bit unprepared during the rehearsal since I had only picked the script up about an hour before I had to leave. I had a relatively large role in this drama because it was kind of a co-teach. When I got to church, I realized that I had left my purse at home, but wasn't too concerned about it.

Anyway, the drama went well, but then the real drama began. First of all, I lost my keys. I searched everywhere in the PL room, but couldn't find them. Finally, someone suggested that perhaps I had left the keys in my car. This seemed like a possibility, since I had a lot of stuff that I was carrying. I went upstairs, but since I didn't have my purse, I didn't have my cell phone. I asked a woman in the lobby area if I could borrow her phone and called home. But, Erin told me that Scott wasn't home yet! He was still in Milwaukee!

I saw Marta and she told me that I could use the phone in her office. I called Scott's cell phone, and he told me that I should find someone on the traffic team because they would be able to get me into my car. So, I finally found someone and we went to the van - I couldn't see the keys inside, though. Even though it was snowy, I could see that the keys weren't in the ignition. I was starting to worry that the keys were just lost. I told the guy that if it was going to be too much trouble to get into the van (he had to pull open the handle with this long doohickey), maybe we should just forget about it, since it didn't look like the keys were even in the van. Luckily, he seemed to want to try anyway - it was the first time he was doing this by himself and he was eager to succeed. He did get the door opened and I searched the van, to no avail. Finally, on a whim, I decided to look inside my makeup bag, which had been sitting on the floor of the van. Sure enough, my keys were there! I guess I must have thrown the keys in when I got my lipstick out. What a goof!

I went inside to call Erin and Lisa and let them know that I had gotten into the van and then went back out to the van. As soon as I started to pull out, though, I remembered that my gas light was on! It had turned on when I pulled into the parking lot. I had no purse, so that meant I had no money or credit card (or phone either!). I quickly started calculating in my head to figure out if I would be able to make it home. It would be very close. I decided not to take the expressway because if I got stuck there, it would be disaster. So, I headed up Barrington Rd. It had been snowing earlier, and there was still snow on the ground. Apparently, the person driving the car in front of me had never seen snow before because he was driving 10 mph in a 55 mph zone! Sometimes we were almost stopping for no reason at all. I started to panic, realizing that there was no way I was going to make it home if I was driving at this pace.

Eventually, I saw a gas station and decided to stop. I searched through the van and found 60 cents in change. I knew that that would not get me home, since gas cost $2.15 a gallon. I ended up asking a man who was filling up if he could give me money for gas. I was basically begging at the gas station! I felt so weird, but I didn't know what else to do. I explained the situation and asked him if he could give me a dollar or two so that I could make it home. He pulled $4 out of his wallet and gave it to me. Thank goodness!

It ended up taking me an hour to get home - there's no way I would have made it. I'm so lucky that I found a nice stranger at the gas station.