Conference Aftermath

If you want to find me, my new address is: Jennie Englund, Under A Rock, Oregon.

I had taken the college car to the writing conference in Seattle, but got back too late to return it to campus. So I kept it until the next day. But I wasn't supposed to, so I had Daney and Rees unload it--fast--before we hauled it an hour up the interstate.

Days later, I looked all over the house for my yoga mat. Rees told me it was still in the college car.

"You forgot to get it out?" I asked him.

"Well, I just shut the trunk," he told me.

Gulp. "Was... there... anything else back there?"

"A lot of stuff," Rees said.

So I kept the car longer than I should've, and I returned it with a bunch of crap still in there. All this, during the week of my review for professorship.

After losing it with Rees and Daney, and melting over the "Sorry" card they gave me, I called the Car Secretary. "Oh, yes," she said. "There was a yoga mat in there. And some other things: a prom dress." Mine. "Some really high-heeled shoes." Mine. (Long story). "A brown bra." Yes. "And..." Oh. God. "A box of feminine products."

"Uh, those aren't mine," I told her. "I don't know whose those are. But they're definitely not mine."

They were totally mine.

When I drove the hour back up the interstate today to pick up the yoga mat, the prom dress, the stilettos and the bra, the Car Secretary handed over the Tampax, and said, "I'm just going to give these to you anyway."

Yep. She knew they were mine.

Now I'm just going to crawl under a rock for a while.