Lost Cause and Former Students

Yesterday I set out for London (Ontario) to visit former-students-who-are-now-all-grown-up, Andrew Hui and Fr. Chris Gillespie at Andrew's place. We had a lovely dinner with Caroline and Jonathan, Andrew's wife and son, and caught up on what each of us had been doing since we were last together at Chris' ordination in 1997. Lady, Chris' well-behaved black lab, sat under the table and tried to lean against as many of our feet as she could.

So here we are, 21 years after they left my tutelage.















This morning, I reached for my wallet into my purse to see if I needed to visit a bank machine and it wasn't there. I checked the car, my suitcase, my other bags - no wallet. Crap!

I called Skip and asked him to look around my computer as I remembered having the wallet there yesterday. No luck. Crap! It was about 8:15am at this point so I headed to the nearest PC Financial kiosk at Loblaws Superstore so I could suspend my MasterCard and debit card. I was getting pretty hungry by this point as I didn't have any cash on me except US cash. I couldn't get a replacement until 10am when someone was to come on duty so I drove to Sarnia and went to the TD bank to suspend my VISA. Of course, the gal that helped me out was a former student whom I taught in 1978. Almost every time I return to Sarnia, I run into someone I used to teach. Fortunately, I had my passport with me so had some photo ID to verify who I was even if I hadn't run into a former student.

Arriving at Valerie's, we had lunch and then headed to an 80th birthday party, then to Edy's Mills, a mini-mill near Petrolia where they process fleece into roving and yarn. The proprietors also run an alpaca farm where 97 contented alpacas live. After dinner we went to Tay's (my niece's) for a Pampered Chef party. All of the bonuses and gifts she would have made on the party are being cashed out and put towards the MS Ride this weekend from Grand Bend to London and back (150+ km!). Tay (aka Rosa) is riding in honour of her sister-in-law, Taylor who is 17. Taylor has been fighting for her life against bone cancer and last week had half of her pelvis and the top of her tibia removed at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Instead of heading off to Wilfrid Laurier University in the fall, Taylor faces at least a year of rehabilitation. At Tay's, there were 2 former students from St. Pat's and a gal whose sister I used to hang around with back in 1967 - 1969 - sheesh!

When we got back to Valerie's before going out to dinner, I checked my e-mail and wouldn't you know it? Skip found the wallet near my computer. YAY! So I called TC VISA and PC MasterCard to tell them to unsuspend my cards. And I heaved a bit sigh of relief. All day I had been making mental notes of what cards I was going to have to get replaced - library cards, blood donor card, driver's licence, health card, etc., etc. Not only had Skip e-mailed me about finding the wallet, he left me a Facebook message, he called Tay, sent her a Facebook message, called Valerie. I wondered why he just didn't call me on my cell phone but he has trouble remembering the number - IT'S ON THE FRIDGE!

I hate losing stuff. But I like finding stuff and I'm generally pretty good at finding stuff. Oh yeah, when I was looking all through my car for my wallet I found Skip's change purse he'd been looking for the past few days. So it wasn't a total lost cause.