Why I Will Always Own a GPS

Today started off innocently enough. I woke up at the crack of noon, spooning with a goldendoodle named Ginger. I went downstairs, had strawberry yogurt with M&Ms in it for breakfast (commonly known as YoCrunch), and Stumbledupon for a solid hour and a half or so.

Pretty typical little Monday morning for a gal just recently gone on summer break.

Then my sister and I decided to run a few quick errands.

Or so we thought.

We started at Barnes and Noble, a little slice of personal heaven on earth for me. I got Kafka's Metamorphoses. I've heard the guy turns into a giant cockroach and I am morbidly intrigued, against all of my better judgment. Sister got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Solid choices, I'd say.

We then went for a quick spot of lunch at Midtown Deli. We both got Club sandwiches. Delicious, toasted-to-perfection, hammy, bacon-y, cheesy layers of absolute club sandwich bliss. Despite the celebration going on in my mouth over this Club sandwich, this errand, like our stop at B&N, was pretty uneventful.

Then we decided it'd be a great idea to go pick up little Stella, who is currently being boarded at a place called Ambassador Animal Hospital. After hardly any deliberation at all, we set off for Ambassador.

One of the first things we came across was a KIA SOUL. The only place I've ever seen a Kia Soul is in that commercial that airs before like every single movie in the previews at the movie theater, where all of the "people" are actually hamsters and they are driving around in Kia Souls, dancing, being ballers, etc.

And you know that song that's like "and you can get with this...or you can get with that...you can get with THIS....or you can get with THAT"? And the "this" in question is the supposedly awesome Kia Soul and the "that" is whatever piece of shit car they are comparing their Kia to? Yeah, the hamsters are all singing that song and it's just generally awesome in every way.


So anyway, we saw one driving down the street and had a Pavlov's dogs-type reaction where we immediately thought of the hamsters and the awesome commercial, and Sister and I started singing that song and dancing like the ghetto hamsters. Needless to say, our little drive to Ambassador Animal Hospital was off to a GOOD start.

My sister didn't know how to get to Ambassador, and we had forgotten my GPS back home in the Tacome-sauce. But I have lived in this town for like 10 years at some point or another in my life, so I was like, "Hey! I can get us there, no problem. We don't need a GPS!"

I gave my sister a series of incredibly round-about cockamamie di-rections and eventually we found ourselves on a street that I thought looked really promising. And then we drove. Down this street. For approximately 25 minutes straight. We just kept on driving. We passed out of Simpsonville and into Greenville, out of Greenville and into Greer, out of Greer and into.....we don't even effing know. The capital city of a country known as Bumblef**k.

We found ourselves driving down Main St. of some little shanty that looked like Time had just up and forgot about it back in 1953. I definitely needed to acknowledge how wrong I had been about my directional skillz, so I did, and told Sister to look for a gas station to stop at and ask for directions to Ambassador Animal Hospital.

I kid you not, it took us a solid 15 more minutes of driving to find something that even resembled a gas station. Do backwoods South Carolina shanty-towns not believe in gas or something? But thankfully we stumbled upon this little gem of an establishment:



Oh joy. The glorious fuel mecca that is Lil' Cricket. The parking lot smelled like body odor and dog poop.

Me to Lil' Cricket Sally: Could you possibly tell us how to get to Wade Hampton Blvd?

Lil' Cricket Sally: Um.....Um....Um...

(she finally gets off the phone call she has continued to engage in despite customers entering her place of work for the first time in probably 16 years)

Lil' Cricket Sally: Umm....yall know where the Ryan's is up the street?

Me: No ma'am, we don't know where we are at all or how we got here.

Lil' Cricket Sally proceeds to run outside and flag down some random-ass lady who was in the parking lot to ask her our question instead. This lady happened to be something of a walking encyclopedia of backwoods, SC middle-of-nowhere towns.

We mentioned Ambassador Animal Hospital, and this random Lil' Cricket patron knew EXACTLY where it was and how to tell us to get there.

We were back in business! We had only been in the car for a short little 45 minutes at this point!

We found Wade Hampton, and we were still in good moods. How could we not be? We were about to see Stellz! Highly esteemed artists like Selena Gomez and Ke$ha were keeping us company on the radio! We were dancin' again....




Before we reached Ambassador, we of course had one more little mishap. We juuuust missed the driveway for the animal hospital, and instead Sister turned in to the one for "The Cotton Bottom Video Games" store instead. I'll let you make your own assumptions about Cotton Bottom video, but suffice it to say, the building had no windows and the guy walking out the front door very accurately personified every single stereotype I could think of for pedophiles.



We hightailed it away from Cotton Bottom and finally reached Ambassador. We had easily turned a 20 minute errand into an hour-long mini road trip. But it was okay, I was so excited to see Stellz!

And then, in true Murphy's Law fashion, the last thing that could've gone wrong.......did.

Ambassador Animal Hospital was CLOSED.



What. the. YUCK. With a name like Ambassador, you should be OPEN even on days when holidays are being observed, DAMN IT.

After everything we had just gone through to get there, this dump of an animal hospital was closed. We had no choice but to turn around and head home, leaving Stellz in this hellhole till tomorrow.



I even got out and rapped on the window, just in case, after the effort to which we had gone. No dice though. Definitely closed.

We headed home, defeated. We decided to purchase 2 things on the way home to make our day better. The first was fireworks (one of those "good idea at the time..." ideas). The second was Four Loko.

The fireworks were a no-go, probably because it's technically not the 4th of July anymore (Ps. Someone should tell that to the awful folks over at Ambassador.) We were able to get our hands on some Four Loko though, so the night shouldn't be a total bust.



**in case you are a superNoob who doesn't know what Four Loko is, it is a hybrid beverage of energy drink, beer, and pure awesomeness.**

We even got a Four Loko for our uber-conservative father, and we fully plan on forcing him to try it with us later.

So cheers, everyone, to the 4th of July weekend (and apparent establishment-closing continuation of the holiday on the 5th), and to the return of my hopefully regular blog posting again.

Postscript: We are going back for poor little Stellz tomorrow, and hopefully this time we won't have to drive through freaking BAT COUNTRY to get there.


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