Good Deed Gone Bad

Today is Sunday. I generally go to church on Sunday. I'm lucky enough to live close enough to my meeting house that when the weather is good, and services start after 9am, I walk. Oh, and if I don't wear big heels. Big heels=driving.

Anyway, this morning I got up, got dressed and walked toward the meeting house at my usual time. We haven't had much of the crazy bad heat that we can get here in Utah (no week or more in a row with the highs over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and air so dry that your skin withers up and cracks if you even think about going outside) but it was still pretty hot out there. When the time is before noon, and I can already feel the heat pulsing up off of the asphalt, I know that I am going to be grateful for central air. It's Sunday, one should be grateful . . . right?

Between my apartment and the church building lies a retirement center. So I'm walking toward my church, and there are two older ladies walking back to the retirement center, headed straight for me.

First off, there are two of them and one of me. Second, one of them not only has a walker, but also an eye patch of some sort on under her sunglasses. Now my mother is legally blind in her left eye and I can't tell you the number of times I had to endure the speech about how I had to help her because she didn't have any depth perception. So that comes to my mind, as the ladies come toward me and I notice that the spot we meet will be at a fence.

We're too close for me to speed up to miss the fence, so I did a good deed (avoiding any possible issues with the walker, depth perception or being outnumbered) and walked off onto the grass.

Did I mention that I put on some strapy sandals this morning?

First step and I felt the squish of newly watered grass. Ugh. Soggy sandals. Wonderful. So I went back toward the sidewalk. Not onto the sidewalk, because the ladies were still passing me, but close. I stepped right next to the fence. Right at the corner of the grass. Right near a sprinkler head. Right into a squishy, patch of water and mud.

The splash, followed by the sucking sound as I withdrew my foot, told me everything I needed to know. Yuck! Mud, water . . . twenty feet from the church. Good thing there was grass right there and the bathroom is close to the door.

Figures. I try to be nice and what do I get? Mud for my efforts.

On a brighter note, I had to laugh out loud when after church I saw five or six kids running, screaming from one little boy. A little boy who had his pants down and was relieving himself onto the steps outside. I felt like I was back in Europe. Funny. Glad I'm not his mom.