pat loughery

I’m in DC, at the computer in my bed n breakfast, getting ready to go meander around the neighborhood before our 2pm-4pm registration for Servant Leadership School. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s pretty remarkable.

My flight left yesterday at 6:10 am. I arrived at the airport parking place at 4:15am, carefully wrote down my parking location and put it into my wallet, next to my $11 in cash and right next to where my debit card ought to be. Only, no debit card. I had changed wallets the night before to remove all the extra stuff I didn’t need to carry around (Barnes n Noble card, coffeeshop punchcards, work cardkey… probably half an inch of junk I didn’t want on my fanny). And along the way, I apparently forgot to grab my debit cards and put them in the new wallet. Took everything out 4 times, didn’t see my card. I had $11 in cash for 4 days in DC. Not good.

Of course, my cell phone is also not workng right now, so I couldn’t just call Shannon and beg her to drive down to the airport with my old wallet. Sigh.

So I figured that if I timed things just right, I could re-do the 45-min flight – err, drive – back home, grab my cards, ask Shannon to drive me to the airport and drop me off, and maybe make the plane. I was 10 or 15 minutes into the drive when I realized there was no way I could do it, but… I had ID, I could call Shannon and ask her to overnight my other wallet to my b-n-b, but that meant I had no money till lunch on Thursday. So I pulled over, found a pay phone, woke Shannon up (had to call collect at 430am; that’s got to be scary), got her ok, and headed back to the plane.

I paid $2 to the skycap for curbside checkin of my bag; $3 for the DC metro card to get me to a 9-block walk to my bed n breakfast in Morgan-Adams, and I now have $6.

Yesterday I ate two cups of orange juice, two cans of apple juice and an airline cracker snack. And when I found out last night that we had microwave popcorn at the b-n-b, that was overwhelming.

Breakfast today – just raisin bran and juice – breakfast was sooo nice.

Praying the daily office this morning as I’m trying to wake up, the moment at which we’re closing up the prayer time, praying the Our Father again (as our church has focused on doing lately so that we can be a people who see God’s Kingdom come; His will be done) – that line, “give us this day our daily bread”, those were sweet words to pray, trusting God to provide breakfast, and my means of paying for food today.

I’m disappointed – I wanted to go down to the national mall, visit the national monuments, maybe go see the Smithsonian or visit the US Holocaust Museum. Instead, I’m sitting, reading, exploring the local neighborhood.

My wallet hasn’t arrived yet. But I’m going for a walk.