A week ago Sunday, after a lazy day around the house, I decided T and I needed to run some errands. We needed to go to Blockbuster, Kohl's and my work. All said and done, errands that should have taken less than an hour. Should. Have.
Our first stop was Blockbuster. T opted to hangout in the parking lot and throw around his new flying disc, with distances up to a quarter of a mile. I had called my brother after leaving the house to talk about my pending trip out to Vermont and get the latest on my dad. I went into Blockbuster and swapped out movies. When I came out, still on the phone, T was forlorn. T had managed to lodge his disc in the one of two trees in the middle of the parking lot, over 20 feet in tree! Understanding the predicament, I got off the phone and decided that using a baseball in the car might knock the disc down.
After about 15 minutes, we managed to get the baseball stuck in the tree. For those of you that don't know me all that well, I have a slight fear of heights. So why in the world I thought it would be a great idea to climb the tree was unbeknownst to me! In minutes, I was in the tree, climbing and retrieved the ball. I spent many years of my childhood in trees, but several falls from ladders have made me height-skiddish. I embraced the tree and proceeded to shake it, to no avail. The disc didn't budge. I even tried to throw the ball at the disc while in the tree. Of course, not my smarter ideas. After sometime, I decided I should climb down from the tree, without the disc. This is where fear set in. Fear.
As I stood in the tree, about 6.5" in the air, I froze. Fear. I couldn't do it. I tried to psyche myself. I tried to calm myself. I tried to trick myself. I was even tempted to have T drive the car under the tree so I could jump on my new hood. Then, I realized I was a grown woman. 36 years old. I could do this. I maneuvered on to my stomach and stretched downward and jumped the remaining feet to the ground. Then, I began to shake. I realize I am no longer 6 or even 12. I shouldn't be climbing trees. Especially given that I am more than accident prone. Why was my 13 year old son not in the tree?
After another while, we again managed to get the ball stuck. All the while, we hit the disc and managed to lodge it a little more than initially. T climbed the tree, while I tried to give him instructions. He advised that I should have taught him Tree Climbing 101 in 2nd grade, not 8th grade! We were right back to where we started. Disc in the tree. We started tossing broken pieces of the parking lot and finally after discouraging onlookers from joining in our adventure, we gave up. An HOUR later.
An hour of our time, was definitely worth more than the $10 disc. Fortunately, after both of us climbing the tree, neither of us fell. T suggested we get an extension pole from Menards and retrieve the disc. After finishing our errands, we went to Menards.
The first sales associate directed us to the gardening section. Other than tree edgers, there was not an extension pole. I located a second sales associate and inquired about an "extension pole" to retrieve something in the tree about 20' high. He had no idea what we needed and called over a third sales associate. When I inquired about the "extension pole" he said they had them in the painting section at which time the second associate said, "Oh you meant an extension pole!". Ummm...Yeah. Needless to say, T mocked the associate the entire jaunt across the store to the poles.
Almost $40 later and a 24' extension pole extending the length of my Neon, we headed back to Blockbuster. Fortunately the disc was still lodged in the tree. We extended the pole as much as possible and found it to be rather unstable; however, we were able to retrieve the disc! Then a quick return back to Menard's to return our pole, less than 30 minutes later!
So our one hour of errands...turned into an adventure of 3.5 hours! Is anything simple?
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