Happy Birthday to Me?

It was supposed to be a birthday present to myself, a road trip with my sister who needed a change of scenery, and a relaxing day for chatting and visiting our father's grave. And honestly it started out that way....

Even though an hour before we were scheduled to leave, I received a call from a woman who was trying to re-home a dog. She asked if I could "come today" to meet her, as she was going out of town.

Well, what the heck, it was essentially... sort of... on our way down to Corona del Mar, so yeah, we'd hop off the freeway and meet the dog.

Except when we arrived at exactly the appointed time, the woman responded to my text saying, "I'm across the street at the grocery store. Be there to meet you in a minute." Which she was... sort of... after she unloaded her groceries while I stood in the sun and waited for her to meet me at the gate to her apartments... only to find, when she arrived, that the dog was, um, not quite "as advertised." I'll leave it at that.

Back on the road, my sister and I chatted about dogs and our kids and our grandkids and our childhood as we motored along Highway 241, a toll road cut through the hills between the Anaheim Hills and the ocean (because of course I have a Fastrak transponder on my new truck, so we could easily cruise the toll road). In no time, we were pulling into Pacific View Cemetery and strolling over to Dad's grave.

It was a pleasant visit. We left flowers on his headstone and sang a duet of his favorite song, "Danny Boy." Then it was back in the truck and a short drive down Pacific Coast Highway (with views of the ocean we hadn't seen in a while) to our destination: Las Brisas Restaurant in Laguna Beach. I dropped Peg at the entrance so she could get us a table, and I went looking for parking, which I readily found, pulling into a spot where someone had just pulled out. I knew the routine: Slide the Visa card into the slot and hope I'm not paying a fortune for the hour or so we'd be eating lunch.

Lunch—was fantastic. Great food, a terrific chocolate mousse cake, which we debated about getting because, with the dog stop in the beginning of our journey, it was getting on toward afternoon, and we knew we had to beat the traffic home, but once we ate it, we both agreed it was worth sitting in traffic for. Little did we know....

We also drank lots and lots of chilled water. Here's how our very slow and often inattentive server offered that:

"What can I get you ladies to drink? We have water or Evian, iced tea, a glass of wine...."

"Oh, you have Evian? We'd like that."

We did indeed like it. So much so that we ordered a second bottle and shared it. We might have enjoyed it less had we known that the chilled glass bottles of Evian he brought to the table and poured into our wine glasses with a flourish were $12 a pop, adding a whopping $24 to the bill when it came. Yikes! I know, I know; a fancier person would have expected that. My brother would have asked the price of the fancy water first. But he's fancier than I am. Whatever. It's only money. And I can be that cavalier about it now, because someone else ended up paying for it. But I'll get to that....

We headed home. Thirty minutes into the drive, my sister told me she needed a pitstop. (All that expensive water, you see.) But we were back in the canyon, driving the toll road. There was nowhere to stop. And she was getting desperate with every passing minute.

"Just pull over," she said. "I'll find a bush."

Let's be honest. Guys do this all the time. One of the advantages of having a small hose (or, okay, whatever size it is) attached to your bladder is that you can drain it standing up. Women can't. And some people would be shocked at the thought of a woman squatting behind a bush. But let me tell you, as free roaming children at a very young age, we did what was necessary so we could still wander and explore (and probably get into some kind of predicament). As adults, my sister and I both went on trail rides on our horses along riverbeds and on isolated trails. I still hike in wilderness areas—where no one has thought to install restrooms. So yeah, it wasn't really a big deal.

I followed the turn-off for Santiago Canyon Road, found a spot to pull over, and Peg walked off into the bushes and relieved herself. We were back on the road in under ten minutes. Easy peasy.

Except....

I merged back onto the toll road to find that apparently a few thousand of our neighbors were also heading in our same direction, so five lanes of flowing traffic became two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the long back-up occurring when both those lanes had to merge into one to join the 91 freeway. We were now rolling slowly, averaging 15 miles per hour.

I'm a California native. Generally speaking, traffic like this isn't an issue for me. I simply sit in the comfort of my Ford Maverick (with excellent lumbar support) and enjoy the scenery (if there is any). But on this day, I had left the house at 8:30, taking Maya out before I left. Confident we'd be back by early afternoon, I hadn't arranged for my dog wrangler to come over and let her out. But now, since it was already 3:00p.m., far past the time Maya should have had a potty break, I called the teen wrangler's grandmother to ask if she could pick the kid up and have her do me that favor.

"Sure," was the immediate answer. Then I remembered: I'd locked the house up tight before I left. Damn.

The next call was to my next-door neighbor, Gus, who told me when I moved in, "Hey, I have a key to your house" (from the previous owner). "Do you want it back? Or do you want me to keep it in case of an emergency?"

Thank goodness Gus has a key, I thought. But... that was eight years ago. When I called, Gus couldn't remember having a key. Or our conversation. "Even if I did have one," he said, "I would have no idea where it is now."

Sigh. Poor Maya! She would have to wait. A much longer time than I anticipated....

About this time, Peg started patting her pockets, scanning the floorboards, and asking, "Where's my phone?" I couldn't help her look. I had to keep my eyes on the car ahead of me so as not to bump.

"When did you last have it?"

"I don't know," she said. "At the restaurant maybe? I might've left it in the restroom. I took it out of my back pocket and put it on the toilet paper holder."

Brief aside here: This is not the first time I've been with my sister that she's left her phone in a public restroom.

Since my phone was synced with my car, I could call Las Brisas without too much distraction. The very kind hostess searched the restroom and their lost and found box. No phone.

I tried calling Peg's phone to see if it was in the truck and she just couldn't see it. We heard nothing, and about that time traffic cleared, and Peg said, "Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I got out to pee."

Oh, lord.

We'd finally made the transition onto the 91 and traffic was moving along at 70 miles per hour. We could be home in another hour or so. I could let Maya out. My shoulders could go back to their normal position instead of hovering around my ears with worry about my poor dog.

But what else was there to do?

I took the next ramp off, crossed back over the freeway and got back on in the opposite direction. We breezed back to the Santiago Canyon Road exit, I pulled up to where I'd stopped to let Peg out previously, and she got out to look. She was roaming through the brush, eyes on the ground, when I called her phone to see if we could hear the ring.

Boy howdy, did we hear it. Or at least I did.

"Peg, come here."

Her phone was in the passenger seat. She'd been sitting on it.

If only there hadn't been all that traffic noise earlier when I called it. If only we'd pulled over and stopped for a minute, had her get out and look. If only we hadn't stayed to eat that indescribably delicious chocolate mousse cake.

Wait. Scratch that last bit. I will never regret ordering that cake.

Back on the toll road with my apologetic sis, I inched into traffic again. Now, however, the traffic was worse. So when I say "inched," I literally mean we were moving at zero miles per hour. The line of traffic stretched endlessly before us. I took deep breaths to belay the worry about Maya. When you're in a situation you can't control, you only make it worse by getting angry or upset. Wise words, no? Yeah, it's only taken me about 70 years to learn that lesson.

So I tried to relax into my Zen mode. We would be home when we arrived home. I would practice patience and deep breathing until then.

Which is when, with a loud thump, my truck was rear-ended, and all my meditative energy exited the vehicle as I did, right in that long line of equally frustrated motorists.

I marched back to the car behind me, looking first at the damage to my beautiful new truck. The right side of the license plate was crumpled. Slightly. That was it. The driver of the car that hit me was a kid, twenty years old. I told him, in my sternest Mom/Teacher voice, to get over to the emergency lane, which meant both of us shifting over two lanes. The cars behind us had seen what happened and let us over.

I took a photo of the license plate of his car, then one of his driver's license.

"Let me see your registration," I told him.

"It's not my car," he said.

"Who is it registered to?" I asked.

"It's not registered," he said.

Then suddenly he was on the phone with his father, telling him what happened in the profoundly mortified voice that only a young man who has previously believed himself to be badass has when he has to call his mommy or daddy and admit to being a dumbass. Deepening his humiliation, I'm sure, was the fact that his buddy was sitting next to him in the car. Nothing worse than looking like a dumbass in front of your bestie.

But Dad had a plan.

"Will you take cash?" the boy asked, his father still shouting instructions on the other end of the line.

We both looked at my license plate again.

"I don't know," I said. "How much does it cost to replace a license plate?"

"Um...." the kid said, still dazed and confused.

His pal was on it, though, showing me his phone when his search turned up the answer. Fifty bucks.

"Okay," I said, "do you have fifty dollars cash?"

"Um... I have Citi Bank...?" the kid replied.

Once again, the coherent passenger was on it. There was an ATM twelve miles from our location. I tapped the address into my phone.

"Follow me there," I told the driver. "Meet me in the parking lot or I'm calling the cops."

Yep, I said "calling the cops." What was it the Apostle Paul said about 'becoming all things to all people'? I learned this as a teacher. Talk kid talk to kids. And I was still using my your-behavior-was-inappropriate voice with him.

It took us an entire hour to drive those twelve miles. But that young man followed right along behind like a baby duckling, pulling into the parking lot and jogging for the ATM. Moments later, he handed me three twenty-dollar bills.

"The ATM only gives twenties," he said.

"I don't have change for you," I said. Okay, yeah, maybe I had two fives in my wallet in my purse in the backseat of the truck, but I wasn't going to fetch that for him.

"No, it's fine," he said, handing me the money and looking like he was about to cry.

I took the money, showing him my phone as I deleted the photos I'd taken of his license plate and driver's license.

"We're square," I said, and I held out my hand. We shook on it and departed.

By then, it was 5:00p.m. We hit the freeway again, and I finally arrived home after 6:00. Maya had been without a potty break for nearly ten hours. But she hadn't had an accident in the house.

Who's a good girl?!? It has taken me years to get her fully housebroken as she was so used to having to do everything in her small kennel. My poor girl. What a good, good girl.

DENOUMENT (if you're still reading, and if you wandered off, I still love you, you tried, dear soul, to get through this interminably long, self-absorbed rant):

I don't really care about my license plate. Anyone who's bought a new car knows it's only a matter of days or weeks before somebody bumps, dings, scuffs, or otherwise mars it. I got away easy. I took the kid's money to teach him a lesson. And besides, check this out:

Final total for our back and forth on the toll road:               $22

Really expensive fancy water:                                             $24

Parking by Las Brisas with a view of the ocean:                   $ 1

Yep, a dollar. The meter still had time on it when I parked.

Really expensive fancy chocolate mousse cake:                  $13

All that adds up to fifty bucks, plus I got ten more for the inconvenience of having to go to the kid's bank. That equals what he handed me in cash. The way I figure it, Peg and I had an adventure, no one was injured, we enjoyed a great lunch, saw the ocean, and most important, we sang for Dad. All things considered, we had a blessed day. True story!

 

Ahhh, adrenaline

For the uninitiated, let me say this: There is nothing that kicks off your sympathetic nervous system response with some high octane adrenaline like seeing three hungry adult coyotes charging down a slope toward you and your not-large dog. Boy howdy. Pro tip: Do. not. run.

If you take off running, you will not gain the experience of seeing how the lead coyote splits off from the other two so that he can head you off while the other two chase from behind. It's amazing, really. They do this without verbal commands or hand signals or walkie talkies. They simply know to hunt prey this way, and it's quite fascinating. And kind of scary.

So I stood still on the trail, Maya close beside me, but I kept my eyes moving back and forth, watching the lead guy, watching the other two. As I did this, I began talking in a voice loud enough and deep enough to make the 'yotes nervous, but I kept the lid on my urge to do some excited shouting because I didn't want to terrify my dog. She knew, though. Maya knew. She'd seen them, too, so when I started making loud growling sounds--something she's never heard me do before--she understood that I was doing this to warn off the very big creatures who had come running toward us.

Also for the uninitiated: Coyotes are damn smart.

So we watch the lead guy peal off and run parallel to us and then ahead of us, crossing the trail and abruptly stopping to hide behind a tall shrub. I know he's there because I've kept my eyes on him, and now I can see the tips of his ears above the foliage. He stands as still as I had moments ago, waiting. Watching.

What to do? We walk straight toward him.

I mean, I'm not going to turn around and go back in the direction of two coyotes, and this is the only trail out, so we're going to--I'm going to--chase him off. Which is what I do, tossing rocks into the shrub, growling, shouting (but not too loud), "Go on, 'yote!"

And he goes.

But we do not stop watching, Maya sniffing the air as we pass that shrub, all senses alert, me ready to reach down and scoop up my thirty-pound dog if I have to. But the coyote disappears into the brush.

Next item on our hiking agenda: Get the hell out of there and back to the truck. Sadly, Maya is now limping badly on her left front paw. When I find a sandy section of trail surrounded only by low foliage, I bend down to check her foot, grateful that finally, after three years, she will let me touch her feet when she picks up a thorn so I can pull it out. There is nothing in her foot pad this time, though, as I suspected. When we stopped on the trail to watch the coyotes, I realized too late we were standing near an ant's nest. I suspect she's been bitten. She licks her paw over and over, then looks up at me. I know exactly what she's thinking. It's this:

Can't you make it better? You always make it better. This hurts. Please make it better.

But I can't. Not out here. So we limp slowly down the trail, me promising to get her home as soon as possible while ever vigilant lest the coyote reappear.

We've gone fifty yards when I realize I left my hiking pole in the trail when I stopped to examine Maya's paw. We have to go back for it, back toward the coyote's hiding place. Maya limps slowly beside me, I finally pick up the pole, and we reverse direction, heading back up the trail toward the truck. It's a long slog. We were nearly to the farthest point out when we saw the coyotes. Now we've got a mile to walk back. And even though it's only 7:30a.m., it's getting hotter by the second.

We stop every time we find shade. Maya immediately crouches, turning her paw up to lick it over and over. My poor girl. We walk on.

Slowly, though, the pain in her paw starts to subside. She limps less and less, and by the time we get to the final steep uphill, she trots ahead of me. She knows the truck is on the other side. Safety assured. We've made it.

Before you ask: No, I don't carry pepper spray. The coyotes would just sneeze it off. I, however, would need to call 9-1-1 for a rescue because my lungs would immediately shut down. No, I would never carry a gun and shoot a coyote. Just no. Coyotes don't attack adult humans. It's only Maya I need to worry about. Because a coyote will hide in the bushes and leap out to steal a small dog off a leash. For this reason, I am hyper-vigilant when out in the hills with her, scanning the sides of the trail ahead for snakes or predators, scanning the ridgelines for coyotes (which is how I saw these three right at the exact moment they saw us). FYI, I often slip a pocket knife into my backpack or hiking pants if I think I may be in a dangerous situation. But we were just out for "a quick walk in the hills before it gets hot." Sigh....

Maya is fine. I am fine. The coyotes are fine but probably still very hungry. For a while. The hills are covered with rabbits and voles. They'll get breakfast, don't you worry about them. I'm just glad the menu didn't include Maya.