Guardians of the Galaxy

September 22, 2014


I have further evidence supporting my theory that someone is taking care of me.  My Guardian Angel did a lot of work for me on this one.  You will see.


Marked on my calendar for weeks was a trip with CJ and Beth to Wright St on September 19th.  Beth had set up a personal meeting with the Dean of the College of Engineering and a Freshman Admissions person.  I had the work schedule set up so that I could work 6-7:30 am and then get home to head out with the family for our 10am meeting.  Then the forces of nature started acting against me.


First, my full time cashier who works Mon-Fri at 8am needed off to go to her husband's doctor appointment.  No problem.  I rearranged the schedule to make it work without changing my schedule.  Two days later, she came back to me saying his appointment was changed to October 3rd.  I had used her hours to make the changes, so I was not able to add her back in.


Then, unfortunately, another employee of mine found out that her cancer had returned.  She had been in remission, but a form of it had come back in her lymph nodes.  She was going to need a 6 month LOA.  Please send out your prayers, she is a nice lady and this is obviously a tough time for her and her family.  Not to mention it messed up my schedule.  (Me selfish much?  Think so.)  So I went back to full time cashier and told her she could have her hours back if she wanted.  She had already made plans.  No big deal, the schedule was still working out okay for me.


THEN, on Tuesday, I got a text from the supervisor who was coming in Friday at 7:30, that she was going to need surgery on Thursday (yes, two days notice for surgery), and she was going to also need Friday off.


I looked at the schedule and saw that I could give another cashier overtime on Thursday night, thus freeing up my assistant to take off Thursday night and work at 7:30 Friday morning.  The cashier agreed to the shift.  The only time my assistant is available to work at 7:30 am is on Fridays since his wife works Monday-Thursday at 4am and he has to take his kids to school those days, but not Fridays.  Why would a retailer hire a person in management who did not have open availability?  That is a blog for another time.


However, as it turns out, my assistant's wife was asked to work overtime on Friday making him unavailable to come in until closer to 9, 9:15.  Now, I've been known to drive swiftly on occasion, but trying to make the hour drive from here to WSU in 50 minutes with my wife screaming the whole time seemed like a bad plan.  Every fiber of my conscious was telling me that I was not meant to go on this visit.  I gave up and gave in.


Then, my assistant and the full time cashier, realizing my disappointment, concocted a plan that would have her working 7:30-9:30, and my assistant would come in at 9:30.  The trip was back on.


So, we headed out at 8:30 Friday morning on our way from Cincinnati to Dayton.  If you know the highway system around here, you know that Interstate 75 runs along the West side of the city and does to Dayton.  Interstate 71 goes through the middle of the city and ventures towards Columbus.  I 275 circles the city and connects the two.  Therefore, my route from where we live should have been 71N to 275W to 75N.  This occurred to me as I drove up 71N towards Columbus about 40 minutes after I should have done the 275W part.  "Oh Darn!", I said.  Perhaps I did not say darn, but you get the idea.  I immediately pulled off the highway at the exit for Washington Courthouse and turned left onto Route 35 West and told CJ to call Stacy on his cell phone.  Stacy is the name of the voice we have given to his phone's direction ap.  While it was loading, I kept driving on 35W figuring at least west was the correct direction and hoping we did not hear any banjos playing anytime soon.  Finally, Stacy located our position and told us to keep going the way we were and we would arrive at our destination in 50 minutes.  We looked at the clock which said 9:20.  I sped up a bit.  As it turns out Route 35 is a rather nice 4 lane highway with little traffic that time of day.  Or ever for all we know.  Stacy kept adjusting our ETA and gave us the turns we needed.  We walked up to the Dean's office door at 9:59:10.  50 seconds to spare.  Never a doubt.


So I gotta believe that my Guardian Angel (who I believe to be my mother) needed a rather stiff drink after that.  Apparently, something had to be done to keep me from driving up 75N that Friday.  Normally I would guess that avoiding Ikea would be the reason, but I really think my mother would have wanted to go to Ikea.  I can only figure rerouting us helped me avoid some accident or something.  I'll never know, but I believe.