Lost Car Keys

I lost the key to the car today.   It's found now, but it was an interesting few minutes when it was lost. You know how you mentally back track from when you last had the lost item to see if you can place where it might be?   This is what happened...

I was taking my son to get his hair cut and the parking lot in the strip mall was fairly busy.  As I pulled into a parking spot, there was a man on a cell phone in the spot talking and gesticulating.   He waved me in and got out of the way.   I got my daughter out on the driver's side and held her hand because there were car behind us.  I got my purse, the snack bag (it was past snack time and they were both bellowing about wanting snack).   I went around to the other side and got my son out, grabbing his hand in my other hand and shutting the minivan door with some sort of appendage still available.

As I held a child in each hand to cross to the sidewalk I remember thinking to myself, "I'll lock the car once I get them out of the street."  Once we got on the sidewalk, my son decided he most definitely was going to have issues going into the hair salon (even though he loves going) and he began to try and hide, "be shy" (as he told me) and insist on holding the door open to the salon, thus letting out the cool air.  

I got him inside and had to deal with him for a few minutes to get him mentally reset so he could calmly get his hair cut.   My daughter had never met my stylist and they had a nice few minutes saying hello while my son ate a fig newton bar.

Hair cut over, it was time for the hair cut reward—a smoothie.  My son and daughter walked along the side walk with me to the other end of the strip mall and we got smoothies.  We know the owner, so we spent a few minutes catching up with him.   After we left, I ran into a neighbor in the parking lot and we talked about the first day of school for their children (ours is next week) and then we departed.

I showed my children what crosswalks were for in the parking lot as we looked both ways and headed to our car.   That's when I started looking for the car key.  It wasn't in my pocket and it wasn't in the spot it sits in in my purse.  Hrm, could it be in the snack bag?  Did I drop it in there instead when I was dealing with my children and the crossing of the busy street earlier?   No, it wasn't there.   That's strange.   I was about to go back into the hair salon to look for it when I noticed one of the front lights was on in the car as we approached.  

Had forgotten to turn off the lights?  I realized at that point that I had never locked the car, I also remember thinking at the time that there wasn't much in it to steal as it was empty of anything other than wipes and apple sauce packets.   Wait...wait...oh no, the car was on!

Yes, I had walked away from the car, leaving it running, for an entire forty minutes.   No one had bothered it that entire time.   I was relieved the car was still there, although I felt guilty for running the car all that time for not only no good reason, no reason at all.

And no, this isn't related to having an all-electric car.  I've had a car for over ten years now with that, "comfort access" option where you never need to take the key out of your pocket or purse to start and stop the car.   During that time I've never once forgotten to turn off and lock the other car.   This was just a collection of stacked distraction events that, well, distracted me.   It turns out though that  a boring minivan isn't a big target for theft, even if it's ready to drive off with the keys in it.

The Big Boy Update:  I WANT TO CONTROL EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.  He does.  It's really becoming a challenge to deal with him over the past several weeks.   School starts in one week and I hope we can get this spate of defiance somewhat worked out before then, but I predict I'm going to have an emergency conference with my son's teachers shortly after school starts.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Can I have a big bite now?"  My daughter is willing to eat food X to get food Y that she prefers.  However, she will see if she can get more of the food she prefers in trade.

Fitness Update:  I walked four miles today with my neighbor.  She's sick, but needed to have some time to talk over a few things.   It was slow, but it was still somewhat of an exercise.   I didn't know I would be walking today, but my friend told me an interesting statistic she heard about walking.   She related this story after hearing how our friend, Uncle Jonathan, was doing interval training to increase his running speed for races.   She had read that a study showed people who were diabetic and walked an hour a day versus people who were diabetic and walked an hour a day, alternating three minutes of slow walking and three minutes of fast walking had distinctly different results.   The people who only walked showed no signs of improvement in their diabetic condition.   Those that alternated slow and quick walking, adding more cardiac activity during the workout, showed improvements.   I've asked her to send me a link to the study because I've been fighting doing interval training, even if it sounds like it helps on multiple levels.