<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you live in a big city, or perhaps someplace that\u2019s simply crowded, finding parking may be an\nissue for you as it is for me. All though we have a garage and a parking space,\nwe also have three cars which means someone has to park on the street and\nthat\u2019s usually me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes I\u2019m fortunate enough to find a space with plenty\nof room to pull up in, right out front. Other times I find a space with not so\nmuch room, forcing me to practice my parallel-parking skills, but still right out\nfront. Then there are those times when\nthere are no spaces right out front that I can easily maneuver into, or\nmeticulously squeeze into, leaving me with no other choice than to go further\ndown the street. On this particular occasion that I am about to lay out, that\nwas the case. I ended up parking several fourplexes down at the end of my\nstreet. It would have been the perfect spot had I lived in that building, but I\ndid not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To save money on gas, and get in some exercise at the same\ntime, I walked to work for a couple of days after I parked there. Since I\nusually just go to work and come home (I know, you envy my social life don\u2019t\nyou), I didn\u2019t need to use my car at all that entire time, so I just left it\nthere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When those couple of days were over, and I didn\u2019t feel like\nwalking the 1.9 miles to work anymore, I decided to take my car to work instead.\nThat\u2019s when I was met with a surprise\u2026waiting for me on my driver\u2019s-side door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember approaching my car from across the street and\nseeing it there, wondering what it was, though having some idea, but not\nwanting to believe it was true. With every step closer, the object became\nundeniable. You could say the tail was a dead giveaway \u2013 pun intended. There stuck on my car, on that rubber seal\nwhere a rolled down window disappears into was half of a dead mouse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was horrified. What a sickening sight! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So disgusted was I, in fact, that I couldn\u2019t even bring\nmyself to enter my car through the driver\u2019s side, and opted to climb over from\nthe passenger\u2019s side instead. Just as I headed around to the passenger side, a\nwoman came out of the fourplex I was parked in front of and sat in a chair on\nher porch. She never looked at me, didn\u2019t seem curious as to why I was getting\nin my car on the passenger side. She just sort of looked off into the distance,\nwith a smirk on her face. So creepy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I pulled off and drove to work, I was hoping that the\nspeed of the car would make that nasty little sucker fall off, but nothing\ndoing. I looked over to see if I could get a better assessment of what it was,\nlike maybe it wasn\u2019t a mouse, maybe it was just a ball of fur, a stuffed\nanimal. But that little mouse foot sticking up at me, which I couldn\u2019t see from\nthe outside dashed any hopes of that. I was dealing with the real thing. Just\ngross! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My initial thought was perhaps this was an accident. Maybe\nit fell out of a tree? I was, after all, parked under one. Maybe it fell from a\nbird\u2019s mouth as it flew over? It was, after all, only half a mouse instead of a\nwhole one. Perhaps it was any natural\ncircumstance for which a half a dead mouse would find it\u2019s way stuck to my car\ndoor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the fact that it didn\u2019t fall off after I drove off reaching\nspeeds of up to 50 mph, and the fact that it literally had to be knocked off\nwith a broom handle at the car wash, not \nto mention the fact that after I went through the car wash a small patch\nof its fur still remained attached to the glue that was used to secure the\nvermin to my door (not so fun fact: though I\u2019ve gone through the car wash at\nleast 10 times since that day, there is still a small patch of that rodent\u2019s\nfur on my car that refuses to come off), I realized that this was no accident\nor act of nature. Someone purposely\nglued that mouse to my car. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once it was clear that this was deliberate, the first thought\nthat came to mind was why me, and who did it. Was it that creepy lady who came\nout onto her porch as I eased into the passenger side? Was it a neighbor who\nlived closer to me, or was it completely random? Who knows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I do know is that I was mad. I was mad that the dead\nmouse was on my car. I was mad that I had to get in and out of my car through the\npassenger said several times before I had the chance to go to the car wash and\nget that thing off of my car. I was slightly embarrassed that I was driving\naround with this creature on my car. And I was also upset that I didn\u2019t know\nwho was behind this and why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve also been on this kick lately, where I intentionally\ntry to turn bad situations into opportunities. I\u2019ve had a lot of bad shit\nhappen in my life \u2013 I guess as we all have. I\u2019ve had a lot of good shit too,\nbut the bad can often times overshadow the good, especially when things don\u2019t\ngo my way and I focus on that more than I focus on my blessings. So I decided\nto start getting into the mode of making myself find the good in bad situations\non purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This whole half-of-a-dead-mouse-stuck-to-my-car thing,\npresented the perfect opportunity to exercise this skill that\u2019s incredibly\ndifficult to master. So that\u2019s what I did. I literally forced myself to come up\nwith a list of things experiencing this bad situation caused me to be grateful\nfor. And the list goes a little something like this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course this whole dead-mouse thing is quite trivial an\nissue in the grand scheme of things. I\u2019ve had much worse problems than this. So\nI guess I\u2019m also thankful that overall, this was quite inconsequential. Look at\nme, there I go again. I think I might be getting the hang of this. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you live in a big city, or perhaps someplace that\u2019s simply crowded, finding parking may be an issue for you as it is for me. All though we have a garage and a parking space, we also have three…<\/p>\n