Parking

I love living in the city. I love the sidewalks. I love being close to everything. I love the noise. I love everything . . . except the parking.

Because I live on a narrow, one-way street, there is parking only on one side of the street. And because the city was late in establishing rules that if you turn a single family dwelling into a multi-family dwelling you better have the parking places to back it up, that one side fills up really quickly. So, driving home at almost 8:00 pm I was not at all surprised to find no parking spaces empty. I was lucky enough, however, to get the first spot around the corner. But I had to walk.

Tonight I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. I had with me a work bag, a college bag (I taught tonight), a water bottle, a purse, and 5 grocery bags. (BTW: I didn't buy that much but these days they put only one or two things in each bag so that you end up carrying more bags than necessary. Why is that?) Oh, and as you remember from the earlier post, I hate to make more than one trip.

Anyway, I manage to put the college and work bags on my left shoulder (precarious because both are filled thick and sticking out from my side) my purse on my right shoulder, my water bottle in my left hand, the grocery bags all in my right hand, and my keys in my teeth (see earlier post.) I managed to close the trunk and started the walk to my house - leaning slightly to the right so the overstuffed bags don't slide down off the shoulder. I had to stop about halfway and get a better grip on the grocery bags, but made it.

But, of course, once I make it to my porch I look up a couple spaces from my house and there is an empty parking space. While I was finding a way to grab everything, someone had pulled out of a parking space. I hate it when this happens.