Super Woman on the Freeway

Lest you still harbor disillusioned thoughts of me being Super Woman, here's a story:

Recently I went back to my mom's town to help (again) in cleaning out Mom's condo. Sister and I got it pretty much done. Whew! That was a lot of work. I came back home with another load of stuff in my car, though not as much as I had the week before, thank goodness.

I was traveling along at great speed on the freeway, in the left lane, when my car suddenly died. Eeek! I had no idea what was going on. I was able to maneuver it onto the left-hand shoulder, up against the little cable fence. It was in a scary area, lots of traffic, on the more-dangerous left side, and those cars whizzing by are scary when one is stalled on the shoulder.

I decided to get out of my car, in case someone smashed into it. I climbed over the fence very gracefully (NOT!) and went into the ditch, well away from my car, and started making phone calls. Eventually I contacted AAA, and had to take a longish walk in the ditch up to the nearest exit sign to tell them the exit number (couldn't see it from where I stood in the ditch). A tow was ordered, and after a medium-length wait, I was towed to a nearby repair station.

Then I sat down to wait for the diagnosis. (Cue in music from Twilight Zone.. I was nervous about huge expense. What could be wrong?? Eek.. this could be a financial nightmare.) Shortly the car guy came back and said: "good news. It won't be an expensive repair. You simply ran out of gas."

WHAT?! What a ditz-brain! Who does that??? I was so embarrassed. I remembered then that I had been watching the gas gauge earlier in the trip, and then, for some reason, I put it completely out of mind and thought only of sailing on home and how I could hardly wait to get there.

That little romp into craziness cost me $45 and over an hour of time. What next?? Will I go to work having forgotten to get dressed? I shudder to think...