The day it all went wrong!

Bryan and I had been selected to escort two Thunderchild youth to the FSIN (Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations) Youth Legislative Assembly to be held in Regina from Sunday, February 4 until Tuesday, February 6. It is a five hour drive to Regina, so it was decided that we would leave on Saturday because the registration would take place promptly Sunday morning and none of us relished the idea of a 4 am drive.
To that end, Bryan pulled in mucho overtime at the school on Friday and didn’t come home until 10. At which point he didn’t have the van. Like he was supposed to. (The school van is covered for insurance and even though it chugged gas it was to be our vehicle of choice.) Someone else had taken the van. It was too late to fix anything and we waited for morning.
Saturday. The day it all went wrong. Like some weird voodoo curse (or hoodoo curse or curse of the ugly gypsy woman, it’s all the same…) everything we touched seemed to go bad. The principal, Rob, who is also our next-door neighbor, gave us the keys to a van. Later on that day the van was delivered. But we didn’t have the right keys. So Rob spent an hour on the phone and discovered that the keys to the van went to Glaslyn with the boys basketball team in their van. Uh oh.
We finally got a spare set of keys for the van. It was nearing one and that was when we were supposed to leave. Our two students dutifully arrived and we ran around, trying to finish packing our goodies (like our new Nintendo GameCube), leaving instructions for the dogs (I maundered on the subject for an incredible six pages in my notebook) who were going to be watched by our new neighbor, Sandra Payne. Finally the van is packed, the kids have their permission slips and I slip into the drivers seat.
Van won’t start. So I give it a tap or two of gas and it still won’t budge. Then I floor it and it just chugs and chugs and won’t turn over. Our Rob is pulled out of his house to see what he can do. (Remember it’s a flipping freaking freezing minus twenty something outside with nothing but a few caribou to block the wind between us and the arctic.) I use the time to get to know Alanna and Jordan (our students) better. Bryan leaves with Rob to find another van. Oh, but isn’t the other van in Glaslyn? Look, we have their keys!
Almost two o’clock in the afternoon and Bryan and Rob get back from their scouting. Rob half-heartedly tries the engine and it starts without a hitch. He pulls on his best ‘doctor’ expression and pronounces that it must have been water in the gas line or something. We all get in and leave for Regina, stopping at the local Coop to get gasline antifreeze.
Our first stop is North Battleford where we all get sick at McDonalds and Bryan takes out a sizeable wad of cash to cover the expenses for the trip. I do most of the buying, so the wad goes into my purse.
Off to Saskatoon, then and my stomach was still roiling so we stop at Tim Hortons. Bryan and I have to switch off again and again; we were both so tired. We want to take the kids out for a nice dinner but we hit Regina at quarter to nine at night; we still had to get our hotel rooms. We ended up at McDonalds for dinner, and then sped to the Ramada to get the kids tucked in. They got to stay at the conference hotel, but we didn’t. The Band has direct billing with Travelodge, so we had our rooms there.
Exhausted at our crazy day we were grateful to think that we could get the kids luggage and set them up and leave ‘em. Too bad their rooms WEREN’T BOOKED! And the hotel was full. Despairing, we called the Travelodge. Thank goodness our room was still there. The concierge found a small room for Alanna at the Ramada and poor, poor Jordan had to come back to our hotel and stay in the room with us.
Ten o’clock and we’d finally struggled into our hotel room in the Travelodge, me having bumped the back fender a couple times because the van is enormous! Going through all our stuff Bryan asked for some money for some reason – I don’t remember why.
My purse was missing.
My purse was missing.
My whole body seemed to freeze. We had taken out a wad of cash for the expenses and my purse was missing. We frantically searched the room and the van. No sign of it. I called the McDonalds we stopped at. They scoured the lobby and the restaurant, but it wasn’t there. I called the Ramada. They hadn’t seen it.
Oh, to have faith! We said a little prayer and I phoned McDonald’s again and asked them to check the parking lot. And there it was. It had fallen off my shoulder and was still sitting there and not a penny was missing.
It still meant that I had to drive all the way across the city at eleven to go get it. I swear, if anything else had happened that day, I would have screamed insanity.
That was the day it all went wrong.
Oh, and by the way, the rest of the conference was peachy and nothing else bad happened at all. Thank goodness.