Have you ever had one of those days where it seems like everything is going "the hard way"? That's how our Thursday went.
We were going to take Jakob to a cultural event in Tulsa and he wanted to get a laptop and some shoes, so we left early to do some shopping. We made the hour long trip to T-town and stopped at a shopping center. We went to the electronics store, but he decided not to buy a laptop and talk to his parents first. Then we went to a shoe store, they didn't have the shoes he wanted. We walked down to a clothing store to look for orange shirts for our family photos next weekend, they had none. We drove across the street and went to a department store and found the orange shirts we were looking for. However, there is another one of these particular department stores much closer to home and if we hadn't driven to Tulsa, we could have gotten our shirts in Stillwater next week. We drove to a sporting goods store and again, no shoes. Stop #1 = strikeout.
We drove to a mall that was about 20 minutes away where the store that had the shoes online was located. Five shoe stores later, no shoes. They were either out of stock or the store didn't carry them. And the store that had them advertised online said that his size was completely out of stock nationwide. We consoled ourselves with a cookie for me, a brownie for Jakob and coffee for D. Stop #2 - strikeout.
We drove another 20 minutes to the park where the cultural festival was to be held. We were super excited about going; D and I had never been before and Jakob would get to eat some food from his homeland, and this is supposed to be a premier event; known worldwide. Let me tell you about it - IT BLEW. All three of us were utterly disappointed and felt like it definitely did not live up to it's name. There were a few rides, which none of us were interested in. There were a few vendors selling knick-knacks and t-shirts, which none of us were interested in. There was lots of food, which we ate, even though it was overpriced. There were several bands, but the music was so loud inside that we couldn't even hear each other talk and had to use abbreviated sign language to communicate with each other. After we'd been there for about an hour, we'd had enough and decided to go to the football game. D asked if I knew where we were playing and I said that I thought it was in Dewey and Jakob agreed. We wouldn't make it before kickoff, but we'd be there before the second quarter. Stop #3 = strikeout.
We left the park and headed north to get on the highway. However, the highway is under construction and we didn't take into account that every single entrance to the highway was shut down. So, we ended up in downtown Tulsa. We tried to take our normal route back to the highway, but it was blocked off. When we found another entrance to the highway, we didn't know if we were now east or west of US75, the highway we needed to get on to go to Dewey, so we got on US412 and headed west, thinking since the two highway intersect, we'd run into US75. Oh, no. We were still east of US75, so we ended up right back down at the park where we'd just left 15 minutes earlier. I think I might have uttered 1 or 20 bad words. So, once we were back at our starting point, we went south and found an entrance onto the highway and followed it around and 30 minutes after we'd started, we were finally where we needed to be. As we headed out of town, I asked, "The game is in Dewey, right?" and D and Jakob both said yes. D had been texting Shawna about the game, so we were positive that's where we needed to go.
We drove north for about an hour to Dewey and as we entered town I told D that I didn't know exactly where the stadium was, so he needed to start looking for stadium lights or I would have to stop and ask for directions. Then we saw the stadium. No lights on. No cars in the parking lot. No kids. No parents. No bands. No mascots. No teams. No cheerleaders. Nothing. From the back seat Jakob said, "How do you spell the name of this town?" "D-e-w-e-y," I said. "Oh, the game is in Depew." I think I said another bad word. We were at least 90 minutes away from Depew; there was no way were making the game. D texted Shawna again and she said that when she had received his text earlier, she thought that his phone had autocorrected "Depew" to "Dewey". If you're allowed 4 strikes, then this was #4 for us.
We wasted 8 hours of our lives driving to and around Tulsa, then to Dewey and then home, shopping for nothing and walking around a festival that we didn't enjoy. We wasted $35 in gas, $10 to park, $6 each to get into the festival and $50 in tickets that we had to purchase for use inside the festival. It wasn't anyone's fault, it's just the way things happened on a random Thursday. As Jakob said when we finally got home, "It was a bad day all around."
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