i'm in the wrong house, aren't i?

i recently got my husband a gps for his birthday. he had been casually suggesting one for years. he'd drop hints like: we need a gps. and i'm getting a gps.

but i'd always be all no way. i have an excellent sense of direction.

but he'd say he wanted something that didn't fall asleep two hours into a trip somewhere and i would say i can't help it, sometimes being on a long drive is like a tranquilizer. he would bring up all the times we got lost and i would bring up all the times that if he had just listened to me, we wouldn't get lost, or be needing to make a twenty-six point turn in a thirty-four foot rv.

i prided myself on my sense of direction. heck, i could fly a small plane and vector a course between three points. but that was a long time ago. never mind about that time i followed the wrong river and was looking straight at some mountain ranges which was what prompted the need to vector a course in the first place. i found an airport. i landed. it was all good.

truth be told - lately, my sense of direction isn't as sharp as it once was. i don't know if it's being on the other side of forty or if i need new glasses. but i've been to the eye doctor and he said i don't need new glasses. so there it is.

i really think there's a bunch of stuff that isn't as sharp as it once was but i still maintain it's the glasses.

recently, we lifted our unintentional self imposed ban on going out and having an actual social life, and we went out. the bourbon slushies were all packed up, and i looked pretty good for the other side of forty.

i said i knew how to get there, and what with that new exit on the highway, we could even take the back way. after i totally pretended to know exactly where we were and we unknowingly passed the street three times and then backtracked to just take the long way and then made a phone call to a friend at the party, and circled back around again; an hour later we pulled into the tasty meadows neighborhood and parked right smack in front of the house.

we had argued the entire time and he said we are getting a gps.

and i said, no. look. we're here and can you believe we got a spot right in front of the house? look at all these cars!

we got out of the car, i slung the big bag of double batch bourbon slushies over my shoulder and walked up the sidewalk and into the house. i figured they all must be out back, on the count of it being so weirdly quiet for a fiftieth birthday party. i was also thinking we gotta get out more often and work harder at maintaining friendships, cause it had been a really long time since we had been to this friends house and i just don't remember it looking quite like this. and when i got to the kitchen and saw the kid in his boxers doing dishes, and his mom get up out of her lazy boy to see who was standing in her kitchen, it all became very clear and i just said, hi. i'm in the wrong house, aren't i?

she pointed to the house across the street and said that's where you wanna be. i promised i'd come back with a bourbon slushy and once we were out on the sidewalk steven said we are getting a gps. i secretly agreed, but wondered if a gps could tell the houses apart in tasty meadows any better than i could.

so i got him a gps and he named it suzanne. she's british. i said i wouldn't use it - i didn't need it cause of my excellent sense of direction. but i've totally used it. i had to get from downtown all the way out to east jesus one day and it required getting on a particular highway here that gets me all discombobulated. so i plugged the address into suzanne and off we went. i spent a good chunk of time yelling at suzanne, convinced she didn't know what the hell she was talking about in that insipid accent of hers. i questioned every turn she told me to take thinking surely, there was a better, faster way. i was pretty sure she thought we wanted to go to canada and that she had us on a direct route there via cincinnati.

my son was with me and in a real hurry to get to east jesus and all of my yelling at suzanne was making him worried we'd never get there and so he just begged me to please trust suzanne and do what she says.

so i did.

and we actually got to the right house in record time and i reluctantly had to admit, suzanne is a genius.