like a blonde beacon in the city

Being that I live in the urban center that is Hilltop, I often forgo my car to walk places. Picture me walking my posh teacup puppy and carrying a baguette. Often we walk like this around the drainage ditch behind Michael's parking lot. Let's refer to it as The Reservoir for the purpose of this post. Sometimes we head over to the ole DQ or even Borders.

But tonight, Bobito and I marched over to Panera and lounged in the bath water heat on the bistro chairs with Ana and Peter. Upon parting ways, my mother and brother got into their respective cars and headed out to different parking lots. I walked on home.

I walked home only to find that I had no keys and the bath water was collecting on my forehead to the point I could almost wash my hair-- if I could get into my apartment to grab my shampoo. I reached to call Ana and realized that she had just told me that she somehow misplaced her new iPhone. Since her house is a wreckage of remodeling and she has no TV, she chose to walk the aisles of Target until they kicked her out. Still sweating I started to panic. This Eagle Scout I live with once broke us into our apartment with only a credit card and a furrowed brow. I almost busted up my new Wild Water Rapids season pass trying to mimic his success.

Now, the Eagle Scout is in Nicaragua and I have no iPhone but something I do have is Target's phone number saved in my phone (...). I call their customer service line and carefully explain to the kind employee how I am locked out of my apartment and my mother has lost her phone but she is wandering the Target aisels and I need her to be paged. I give the lady my cell phone number, confident that after 8 years my mother still never learned it. I then request that she please page "Ana Strickland" and ask her to call me. At this the woman exclaims, "Ana Banana?! Are you RUTHIE?!"

Oh my gosh. If I wasn't embarrassed by this situation, I am now. Barbara knows us, she says.

Within 1 minute Ana calls me and I am saved. She of course gives me an earful about how they paged her over the ENTIRE TARGET but hey, so soon she forgets the thousands of childhood hours I spent hiding in the clothes racks at TJ Maxx. I know her tricks.