My 35th birthday was an adventure to say the least. Mom came over at 5 to watch Dylan so we could go out. I took Kairika to a nice restaurant called Arnie's on the Edmonds waterfront. It had a nice view of Puget Sound and the ferry port. If only the weather hadn't been crummy, it would have been a perfect setting. I told her I'd take her back here in the summer, hopefully during a fine sunset over the Olympics.
Once we left, I tapped in the next place we were supposed to go on my GPS. We were scheduled to see the Cascade Symphony Orchestra at the Edmonds Art Center, thanks to my boss Jay who gave me the tickets (he has season tickets to see local symphonies). Foolishly I typed in the orchestra instead of the location, thinking it would lead me to the same place. Well, it almost did! We had a devil of a time trying to find it. We ended up going in circles for 30 minutes around the location my GPS gave me. What made it even weirder was a road that had blue lights all over it, and people who were driving so slow that it made us think they were looking for the theater like we were. Most of them were parking, just like we ended up doing. We noticed our efforts had been futile once we found the address Google had matched our symphony with to nothing but a closed church.
We gave it a second try by typing in the art center, which took us only a couple blocks down the blue street. Alas, by the time we got there the symphony had already started and there was no parking left. Plus it was raining like the devil. All day long. It's still raining as I write this, and will probably still be raining when you read it.
Defeated by technology and the weather, worried about mom dealing with Dylan and his sensitive bedtime routine, we gave up and decided to head home. On the way back, I gradually started to realize my GPS was having a meltdown because of all the turns it was telling us to make. We drove through a dark, scary grove with leaves falling everywhere (Kairika had commented that this same stretch of road was pretty during daytime). Then this light came out of nowhere and nearly shocked the wits out of us. Turns out it was a runner crossing the street, with no indication of his presence but a small light on his head.
Just as we were feeling lost, desperate for some indication of the streets we know, this large house decorated with overblown Halloween props scared the devil out of Kairika. Gravestones mounted by ghosts inhabited the lawn. There were spider webs all over the house, and this huge jack-o-lantern was grinning maniacally over the driveway. Even I was scared at first, then I thought it was cool. After all the weird shit that had happened, that house looked like something out of the Twilight Zone. It was crazy, I'll never forget it. I jokingly told Kairika it felt like our GPS had decided to lead us on a path of Halloween mayhem.
Soon we found a road we recognized, and made it home safely to happy baby and Grandma.
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