Curls

I had a bit of an adventure yesterday evening.

While reading on the couch and waiting for Jo to get home, my eye was caught by the golden curls of a small girl walking down the middle of our street.

I stood up to get a better look just as she passed from view, went to the window, went out on the porch, and determined that she had no adult accompaniment.

I hurried after her, and caught her just before she entered the traffic lanes of 85th, an arterial with fast, inattentive traffic. My very special cat, Sophie, died trying to cross 85th several years ago.

Kneeling to bring face to eye level, I tried to determine if she knew where she belonged. She spoke, but if she was old enough to talk coherently, it wasn't working for me.

We couldn't stay there in the middle of the street, almost in an intersection, so I picked her up and decided to take her to our neighbors to see if Britt recognized her -- I figured the mother of young children was much more likely to know the neighborhood kids and where they belonged.

After initially not coming up with anything, Dan & Britt suggested that she might be the little girl living with another neighbor I knew, and I went down there just as Jo drove down the street and missed my wild gesticulations.

I knocked on the neighbors' door and rang the bell, but got no response.

I went back home but was locked out -- I had gone out so quickly I had no key.

So I called Jo on my cell phone (calling your own house from your own front porch is a bit strange), and she accompanied me back to the neighbors, where we still had no success.

About then another longtime neighbor came out from a house across the street, and I called to him to see if he could confirm that this was indeed the child for this house.

Yep.

More conversation.

Jerry went to get his wife, Peggy, to see if she had a phone number.

By this time I was getting chilled and the child was dressed less warmly than me. We went inside Peggy & jerry's and sat down while Jerry went and pounded loudly enough to get a response.

Jo and I returned the child to her mother, who is in chemotherapy and not doing well. We also got their phone number, which I entered into my cell phone, not having pencil and paper.

By this time I was thoroughly cold, my back hurt from toting even a light child for so long, I was headed into autistic shutdown, and was hypoglycemic.

I had had oral surgery in the morning and an insurance mix-up at the pharmacy had kept me from getting the prescription the periodontist had given me. I had been hypoglycemic & in autistic shutdown after that, too.

So, feeling that I had had far more than enough for one day, I headed home while Jo took my cell phone to go give Peggy the phone number.

Got home to find house locked again & I still had no key. And no cell phone.

I sat in chair on porch completing autistic shutdown, chilling further, getting more hypoglycemic, for an indeterminate amount of time while Jo had what was surely a reasonable and necessary conversation with Peggy,

When she finally came home she started to go right past me unseeing, to give Britt & Dan the phone number & fill them in.

I managed to make words & stop her, so I could go bundle into blankies on the couch.

Eventually, I we ate chicken soup & Jo went down to the pharmacy & got my prescriptions.

Woof.