Disaster Avoided

Yesterday morning I chucked my show clothes and dressage boots into my car with the intention of stowing them in the trailer on Tuesday afternoon.  You might remember that a a few months ago I went to an event and left all of my riding attire in my car instead of loading it into the truck and trailer.  I also wanted to add my muck bucket, rolling saddle cart, shampoo bucket, and a few other odds and ends.  I wish I could just remember everything that I need at one time, but alas, that's not how it works.

Show clothes and helmets stay here. Jacket, shirts, and boots get added right before the show.

I reached into my car's cubby compartment for my always present trailer keys.  I reached a bit further, and then further still.  Crap.  No trailer keys.  And equally bad, no truck keys either.  I am the world's best non-panicker. If you're in a crisis, you really want to be with me.  I don't panic, and I don't get hysterical.  Instead, I get eerily calm.  It's a little creepy actually.  Someone's arm could be dangling by a thread and I'd be all, that can't be good.  Is there a doctor nearby?  And I would say it in a totally Stepford Wife kind of way.  After the crisis is over, I usually sob and bawl and fall totally apart.  During?  I am your gal.

So rather than freaking out, (have I mentioned that I have a a big show this weekend and need to hit the road on Friday after work which means there's not a lot of time for screw ups?), I stood in the middle of the driveway and slowly circled around.  My brain was working in overdrive - where were my keys?

Slowly, very slowly, I started to picture my keys in the bottom of a horse bucket.  It was a blue bucket.  A blue horse bucket in the locked tack room of my horse trailer.  Bingo!  As though I was Superman himself, my laser vision pierced the tack room door and clearly saw those keys inside the tack room in the bottom of the bucket.  Well now, isn't that special?

My brain quickly did a rundown of all trailer entrances: tack room door, pad-locked; horse compartment door; pad-locked, camper door, locked; pass through door from the camper, locked; truck, locked.  Hmm ... this kind of sucked.  Still not panicking, I reasoned that my spare keys were at home, and I'd just have to load everything the next day.  But no.  That wasn't good enough.  What if I didn't have another padlock key at home?  And frankly, I couldn't even remember where the spare padlock key was, or if there even was one.

I grabbed RM's bathroom key which would get me into the house where my spare truck keys hang.  Maybe the padlock key was on that ring.  Half-way to her door, I stopped and realized that there was a padlock key on my car's key ring which was in my hand.  I looked down.  Was it the right padlock key?  I had no idea.  I walked over to the trailer and slid the key into the lock.  Doh!  What an idiot ...

Whew, that was a close one.