Sneaking around

Ok, so I am leaving for France on Monday at 1pm, and it's Saturday at midnight, and I have had a busy day. Even though I have only been up for 12 hours. Whatever.

I made a HUGE list this morning of all the things I needed / wanted to do before leaving for France, and I really have gotten most of them done. That is a good feeling. Of course, that one task, you know, the one that reads a little something like this:

1. Send complete draft of thesis to committee

Yeah, that one - it's not done. And, let's be honest, I AM disappointed about that. That means that I will REALLY be teaching myself this next month in France that I CAN work all day long and then in the evenings, too. And while that will be good preparation for this next year of teaching at two different institutions, I was really hoping to NOT have to work quite so hard in France. But alas.

OK, but let's look on the bright side - I did get TONS done today.

And now that we've got that out of the way, let's look on the not-so-bright side. Meaning the "sometimes I am not so bright" side.

So I have this GREAT aunt and uncle and big ol' family of cousins who live in town and who don't mind if I do laundry at their house and who don't mind if I know where the spare key is. :) And yesterday my aunt and cousins were talking about my cousins spending time at their grandparents' house over the next two days while both parents are out of town (my aunt left this morning and my uncle gets back tomorrow night), so when I realized tonight that I needed to do one more load of laundry before the France trip I thought

nice, good, kind generous family that loves me + no one home right now + spare key = available washer and dryer = HOORAY!!

So I went on over. And then on the way over I thought, "Wait, why would my cousins be sleeping at their grandparents' house? They are old enough to be home without their parents."

So imagine me, at 11ish at night, desperate to do laundry, pulling into the driveway of a totally dark house where I think, but I am not sure, that there are four kids sleeping. And imagine me sneaking around in the garage, using the little tiny flashlight on my keychain to search for the spare key, and imagine me HOPING that I don't wake them up as it takes me THREE TRIES to get the door unlocked. And imagine me sneaking around this dark house, NOT turning on any lights so that I won't wake them up. I know this house pretty well, so not turning on lights was not that big of a deal, I mean, I know where the furniture and the stairs and the laundry room are, right? Well, ok, except that I forgot that they rearranged some furniture (read: stuck it all in the laundry room) because they were getting the carpet cleaned. So I got safely to the laundry room, and then turned on the light - and then realized that yes, I WAS going to have to climb over all that stuff, carrying my laundry basket. But, hey, I'd made it this far, and I needed to get the laundry done.

So imagine me shleping my laundry over and around all the furniture that would fit in the laundry room, starting the load washing, shleping myself back over and around all that furniture, sneaking back through the dark house, sneaking back through the garage by the light of my tiny flashlight to put the spare key back, and sneaking back to my car.

OK, now imagine me doing all that sneaking with the back of me, from my waist to the top of my calves, TOTALLY SOAKING WET.

'Cause those automatic sprinklers in the front lawn? Yeah, they move.

And I feel like there is what my boss would call "one of life's little lessons" in all of this. And for those of you who missed it, here it is:

All you people who sneak into your relatives' houses in the middle of the night to do laundry, or really for ANY reason, and you notice the sprinklers on in the front yard, BE WARNED. Just because they weren't close enough to get you wet when you opened the car door to get out doesn't mean that they won't, 10 seconds later, be close enough to SOAK YOU TO THE SKIN as you get your laundry, or anything else, out of the back seat.

So there you have it. I finished out the night feeling like a genius. A not-so-bright, not-so-dry, genius. I wonder how you say that in French? I think I'll just head on over there and find out...