A good day.

I live on Forbes Avenue, which is a pretty busy street. Even in my newness to the Burgh, I’ve noticed that it runs along some important places like the Point where the 3 rivers meet, Downtown, CMU, Pitt, and through Squirrel Hill and on into eternity-ish. Another thing I’ve noticed about Forbes, and a lot of other main roads in the city, is that street cleaning happens on a regular basis. But unlike the small towns that I’ve lived in… you can’t park your car on the road when street cleaning is scheduled, which means relocating your car during that time. Otherwise, you get a nice little surprise in the form of a parking ticket. So, I’ve made a mental note of the times in which I can’t park my car on the street. But it hasn’t really stuck yet. So as I was leaving the house the other day around 8:30 for my morning jog (which counted as the “2nd and 4th Monday of each month from 8am – noon”), I panicked. I panicked because I had forgotten the importance of the day. I was reminded of the importance, however, when I saw that many cars had a little flimsy red and white ticket wedged underneath the windshield wiper, probably from the woman in uniform who seemed to be leaving these in her path. At this point I was experiencing an embarrassing amount of panic and despair. “But wait!” As I realized that she probably had not gotten to my car yet. So I ran down to her, naively asked, “is this the 4th Monday of the month?” She nodded. So I said, “Can I still go move my car?” And her response was perfect for me because I was already in my running gear, “If you can get there before I do!” I think I cut her off midsentence and sprinted back to my house and successfully moved my car before it was ticketed. You would have thought I just found out a tumor was benign by the kind of relief I was feeling. I think I told at least a couple people the other day, “Today is a good day.”