Getting lost in southern Maryland is as easy as falling off a log. One minute you are humming along in your car, following directions from a Google map, and then the next minute, you are LOST! And if you are using a GPS device (not the fancy ones that sit on your dashboard like a 13' TV, but the handheld kind), it's even worse. The iPhone GPS is gorgeous but quite unsteady...when my driving companion is holding it, it's solid as a rock. If she hands it to me so I can read it (she has bouts of myopia), it FLIPS to some other app without my touching anything. And that means we're back to stage 1, which is not knowing where we are other than SOMEWHERE in southern Maryland. "I didn't know there was such a place as Westphalia here, did you??" Um, no. My mother was born in Westphalia, but it was NOWHERE near southern Maryland.
The GPS challenge may be a test of friendship. My driving companion said WORDS to me today that she has never said before! Personally I feel this is great progress. She is gradually becoming comfortable with thinking of me and actually saying out loud that I am a horse's neck. I like that. I like that she feels comfortable enough to tell me to go to hell now and then. That has been one of the great problems of female friendship--women are SOOOO sensitive. You can tell men to go eff themselves, and they think nothing of it. If you say that to a woman, however, that's the bitter end.
Anyway, when we got to our friends' house, a big hawk or maybe even an eagle flew overhead. That's a great omen.
Oh hell! I am a luddite -- no GPS or iPhone here -- I use paper maps. I have a pretty good sense of direction and even though I took a different route out of Toledo this time (avoiding the bridge from hell), even when I thought I was lost, I wasn't -- I was heading in the right direction and only a few miles off my regular route. All it cost me was time and I have more time than money. Ain't retirement grand?
ReplyDeleteLuddite! That's wot I wanna be. How to divest myself from all this electronic gear that not only do I not REALLY need but that is driving me batty! (a short trip...ha). You are my hero!!
ReplyDeleteoops....throw a question mark in there in the appropriate place....
ReplyDeletea horse's neck???? never heard that one before.
ReplyDeleteNow, maybe the OTHER end of the horse.....
Shammy...You guessed it. The "horse's neck" was my dad's polite way of saying another part of a horse's anatomy when referring to someone he didn't much admire. I remember my oldest niece repeating "horsaneck"and everyone laughing.
ReplyDelete