'Stash it!

To-day, because there was a Big Storm headed our way and I was working at home (WAH!), I took my usual lunch break to go run a few errands before all Hades broke loose and we were covered in 10 feet of snow up to our necks and armpits.

Or, the 2 inches of predicted snow fell, along with a nice coating of freezing rain and sleet.

It's the South, y'all.  We can get worked up over much MUCH less winter weather.

So, I toodled up to the gas station to get myself some gas, but instead of just pumping at the pump like one does in this day and age,  I wanted to get maybe a little cash so went indoors to use the debit portion of my card, thinking that 20 bucks in hand for a meteorological Armageddon would be a good idea.

No, I don't know why.

Whatever.

I swiped my card, clicked in my PIN, realized that the gas station don't give OUT no cash back y'all, stashed my card, signed the pad, and went to pump my gas.

And realized that on the 30-foot walk from the register to my car, I'd lost the card.

The card I pay for EVERYTHING with.  The card for which I'd just punched in the PIN, in full view of more than one person because I just wasn't being that careful about the full body shield and such.

That card was GONE.  Not in the regular par of my wallet, not in the other parts of my wallet, not in the OTHER parts of my purse, not in my jacket pockets, not in the car.  It. Was. GONE.

I walked the route twice, hoping to see it, very gratified when a lovely woman in a sharp blue SUV asked me with great concern in her voice if I needed help looking for something.  No, I needed no help, it would be tough to miss a card the color of mine in the short distance from pump to front door.

I figure I was in for a call to the bank.  Report in a possibly stolen card.  Bonus points: the bank is closed for President's Day.  So, yeah, whoever now has my card might have an extra day to purchase things from my account.  I could see the dollars flying past, me grabbing futilely at them while some dark menace sucked them away into its gawping greedy maw.  MY MONEY!

Well, I had one more stop to make, and another way to pay for that purchase, and determined that the first order of business once I got home would be to call the bank's service line and hope they could help me.  As I sat down in Carl (our new van!), something poked my hip.  It made an owie, and I hoped for a moment it wasn't a scorpion or assassin's poison dart.  Knowing, of course, that that owie was more likely something more mundane, I reached to my hip and discovered that....

My pants have pockets and this is where I put the card.

Pants have pockets!  The pants I am wearing today have pockets!  In which I had put my card!

Happy days are here again!!

I, therefore, could stop being suspicious of the guy behind me in line who I was working up to being SURE was a pro pickpocket, could stop fussing mentally about the hassle of having to procure another card and in the meantime having to deal with the bank and alternate methods of payments, could rest easy knowing that full of the fact that I am a dumbass and forgot my pants have pockets, sometimes.

Just another day in the life...

Tiff out.