A lucky unlucky day

Well, which was it? Lucky or unlucky? What’s your opinion? I think it was definitely unlucky, but could have been a lot unluckier if a few lucky things hadn’t happened.

Becca and I were driving to Bellevue (terra incognita for me) to find material to cover her chair. To get there, we had to cross a very long bridge. As we were driving across, I said, “I think something might be amiss with one of my tires. It sounds weird.” “It’s just a weird street,” she said. I believed her. She goes to Bellevue way more often than I do (which is almost never.)

When I went to this fabric store years ago, I had an idea of the very thing I wanted. I walked in, found it, bought it, walked out. No problem. And this happened twice for two different projects. A miracle. Not so today. We both had a similar idea as to how her chair should look. Since we both independently thought up the same thing, it could not have been that far-fetched. We looked at every single bit of fabric, and none of it was anything near what we wanted. (Unlucky.) We decided to go to a different store, and her little telephone was telling us how to get there. (Lucky.) For those of you who don’t know Bellevue, it is a hybrid of freeway and posh stripmall. No sidewalks – or very few. As we headed for the next fabric store, the little “low tire” warning light came on. (Lucky that we had a warning light – unlucky that it went on.) We pulled into some sort of paved factory lot, stopped and got out to look at the tire. Very low. (Very unlucky.) Suddenly out of nowhere, a woman surfaced and asked us if we needed help. (Lucky.) We told her about our tire, and she agreed that it did not look good. She directed us to a tire repair shop, (very lucky) and with the aid of Rebecca’s phone, we found it. (Lucky again.) It would take two hours to get the tire fixed. (Unlucky.) It was in an awful neighborhood of all auto repair places. (Unlucky.) We decided that, rather than wait, we would go for a walk and try to find lunch. We walked for miles. It was wet. There were no sidewalks. (Three unluckies.) We finally came to some restaurants, but they all looked awful. (Very unlucky – I was starving.) Finally Rebecca spotted a Mediterranian Deli. “We can get falafel,” she said. That sounded good. It was good. (Lucky.) And we found lots of other nice Turkish foods there, bought some cookies, and had a pleasant chat with the proprietress. Rebecca got a huge jar of olives. (Lucky.) We toted our purchases back down the highway to the tire place, and found that our car was ready and that there was no charge for fixing the tire. (Quite lucky!) Our trip home was uneventful. (Very lucky.) We stopped at a local fabric store and still could not find a single suitable thing. (Unlucky.) Bedraggled, we came home and had some tea and our cookies. They were good. (Lucky.)

What is the consensus? Lucky or unlucky? A bit of both. And it could have been much worse, if not for the nice woman who miraculously appeared in that parking lot.