Today was good: good weather, good news, good company.  We met Gwendomama and her kiddos at the park for a little bit.  Bubbles is going to star in the toddler Dirty Harry movies.  I mean, look at that face.  I’m glad I had a cookie to give him!

I went to the grocery store tonight and ran into the owner of the sandwich shop where I worked my first job at sixteen.  Haven’t seen him in years, but it was totally appropriate to see him over by the produce.   Backing up a little, the park we met at is bathroomless, so I ended up walking three of my kids and Supergirl over to the sandwich shop across the way.  We bought some snacks and got a bathroom key. 

Here’s where I managed to lock myself and the girls in the hallway by the bathrooms.   

See, the bathrooms are only for customers, and the hallway to get there has a door that locks with a deadbolt.  We got ourselves into the hall with a bathroom key.  I waited in the hall while the kids went into the two bathrooms.  The boys came back out first, and I helped Nate read the sideways directions written on the hall door with a sharpie: Use Key To Open Door. 

So, Nate opened the door with the key, and I sent him and Alex to return the key and wait for us in the cafe.  The girls finished up, and we went to go meet the boys.  Except, we couldn’t, because we had NO KEY.  I knocked on the door, knowing that it would be useless because the boys weren’t close enough to hear and anyone else would just ignore it.  There was one door leading to the outside, but it had Emergency Exit – Alarm Will Sound in red lettering on the glass.  Our only other option was to go down to the basement.  Supergirl started to get a little quivery in the lower lip over the thought of being stuck in the hall and missing all the fun.  I pulled out my cell phone, called information, and then got through to the restaurant.  By now, both the girls were giggling, and they laughed even harder when they heard me say, "Hi, we are locked in your bathroom hallway!" 

One of the employees came to our rescue, and we only missed a tiny bit of fun.  We came back with cookies, so it all came out even.  Anyway, not to get all overly into the symbolism I found myself in today, but within the space of a few hours I received some incredibly lovely and wonderful news about my new job, I locked myself in a sandwich shop with no apparent exit, I found a way out, and then I ran into my boss from my first ever job in a different sandwich shop and I felt an even stronger sense of relief and escape when I saw him than I did when the employee with the key let us out of the hallway. 

And now, I really must go convince the boys that just because it’s summertime that doesn’t mean they can have an all-night-long video game fest.  They stay up later than I do these days.