planning ahead.

Why? Well, let's see. Two small boys in sunsuits, shivering, with no food or water, on a corner four miles from home, with night falling, and I just got my period very heavily with no supplies, and I just realized that it is Sunday and the bus we are waiting for is not going to come. At all.

What would it have hurt to throw a sweatshirt or two in the bag? Or to just make doubly sure that the bus we took on the way in would also take us out? And aren't there women out there who actually carry menstrual products in their purses? I've heard that there are. Somewhere. Way out on the fringe.

These situations happen a lot. The only reason I have reached my thirties without being dead is that so far there has always been some kind of divine intervention. Always. This evening it took the form of the driver of an out-of-service Big Blue Bus. He saw my pitiful band waiting futilely at a stop to which no bus would come. And so he turned around, gave up his break, and drove us home.

Xir, oblivious, happily entertained him with "magic" tricks, not a one of which came off, all the way. I babbled ceaseless gratitude and Anainn just babbled.

On my way out of the bus--after a comfortable ride of fifteen minutes, rather than the three hour forced march dripping blood and tears I'd been envisioning--I stopped to thank the driver yet again. He shook his head and shushed me.

"Lady," he began--and I steeled myself for the chewing out that I was surely about to get--

"Lady, I just pray to God that He brings you a car."

There are some really, really good people out there.

I am going to start planning things through better, because I am tired of taking their break time away.