Daughter Downloaded

My daughter landed early and safely very late Tuesday evening but didn’t step off the plane until Wednesday morning (technically a couple of minutes past midnight). Despite arriving at least fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, no gate crew could be found once the plane taxied to Terminal C. I kept my self from dozing off in the cell phone parking lot by leaving the car turned off despite temperatures in the teens. Rachelle finally called me and I navigated the surprisingly congested orange cone maze of construction that is the remaining two terminals at KCI to retrieve her before she froze to death. An uneventful drive home through Platte City and Leavenworth found us back at home by 1:30 a.m. My alarm goes off at 5:18 am.

Unsurprisingly, I ignored my alarm and slept an extra hour. I had convinced myself that Wednesday was the department gift exchange so I absolutely had to drive to work. I realized mid-morning that the gift exchange was Thursday so I could have worked from home. However, it was a mixed blessing, my absentmindedness, as it gave me the opportunity to take a late lunch and shop for my daughter at Trader Joe’s on Ward Parkway, about 10-15 minutes south of where I work. She has a corn allergy and many products at Trader Joe’s are safe for her to eat. And I found that of the two Trader Joe’s stores in the KC metro area, the one on Ward Parkway was larger and much easier to access than the one I visited last Saturday in Overland Park.

I spent the evening making yet another set of Italian Bread loaves for my boss (last weekend it was for my boss’s boss but when I showed the finished product to my manager before shipping it, his eyes got soooo big I felt guilty for not making him a set). While the bread was kneading and rising in my bread machine, currently installed on the hearth due to a lack of counter space, my daughter disassembled her piano – the one she left behind when she moved out over ten years ago – to tune it. Being a professional vocal performer and teacher, she could not tolerate the less than (in most cases) quarter tone flatness that had encroached over the last decade). She completed two octaves before 8:30 p.m. when I finally got the loaves into the oven.

I asked Terry and Rachelle to bag up the loaves once they cooled. I went to bed as soon as I took the loaves out of the oven.

This morning, I found the loaves ready and waiting for me to take them with me to work, nicely bagged. I made tea, read a few news articles, got ready for work and left home by 6:45 a.m. As I was watching the sun rise, driving east on I-70, somewhere between I-435 and I-635, I realized I’d left the bread on the counter.

It’s nice to know that my absentmindedness is a constant in this universe.