I Feel Lucky!

I was the mom who actually left the phone off the hook when my son was in kindergarten. His teacher was constantly calling to report the latest infraction (throwing a kid's mittens over the fence, kicking sand at someone, etc...), and the woman seriously had me thinking he'd end up in prison. That was all finally resolved by the school psychologist who deemed him perfectly normal and told the teacher to start observing the kids who were picking on him, but it left an impression on me for life. When he was growing up, I was always waiting for the other shoe to fall! The phone would ring and I would immediately think something was wrong.

So, when a woman called yesterday morning and asked me if I was Mike's mom, I thought what the heck! Oh noooooo! The woman went on to say she and her husband had met him in Carmel on his birthday. She wanted me to know what a wonderful son I had, and she wanted to verify his address from his business card so she could send him a selection of wine as a treat! OMG! After I got off the phone, I quickly looked up the area code and it was the Napa Valley. Hmmmmm.

When Michael called last night to give me the rundown on his work (fun) in Carmel, I told him about my phone call. He said the woman owns a winery in the Napa area and he had met her and her husband at the bar in Carmel where he and his coworkers were watching the Super Bowl and celebrating his birthday. At the bar, he'd also won the Super Bowl field goal competition. We had a good laugh over that because he was the kid who never kicked anything but a soccer ball, and gave that up in middle school for golf.

Around dinner time, I made a Walmart run to pick up something for my dinner. When I saw Paradise Bakery, I decided to ditch cooking and treat myself with a chicken artichoke panini. When I got to the cash register, I handed the woman my Paradise Bakery club card to get my points. She informed me that their system was down, so they were comping the meal for people with cards because they couldn't give them credit for their transaction. I think my mouth hung open for a few minutes because I couldn't figure out the logic on that one. (Can you imagine if the airlines did that? A free flight when their system's down and can't register your mileage number?) Anyway, the clerk wrote down the number on my club card and that was it! No tax -- nada!

Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch!

On my way out the door with the free bag of food, it suddenly hit me that this must be my lucky day! I should have stopped at the 7-Eleven on the way home to buy lottery tickets, but I was hungry. So I sped home, snarfed my free gourmet panini and the chocolate chip cookie that came with it, and watched the first episode of the new Survivor season!