So on Friday night while cutting out the fabric for a dress for Audrey, I told Aaron, “Tomorrow I’m going to the other garden to soak the plants really well and then I’ll go into the city (San Francisco). I think I’ll try to finish Audrey’s dress in time for the fair Sunday evening. She’s so excited to go. She’ll love to have a new dress to wear.”

He said, “That sounds like an ambitious goal.”

Me, “I’ll probably have time to do it. It’s an easy pattern.”

However…on Saturday I walked out of my appointment in San Francisco and couldn’t find my car. Towed? Stolen? I had no idea. I couldn’t reach Aaron because he was in Sonoma for the afternoon with the kids. And he has no cell phone. Yes…I know. So I called the police to have them look up my car’s license plate number and see if it had been towed.

My car was given to us by my mother-in-law and I’d been trying to get Aaron to transfer the title over for a few months now. It wasn’t in his name. So I asked them to look it up under my mother-in-law’s name. They gave me the license plate number but told me there was no record of it being towed. Stolen? It didn’t seem likely as I was only away from it for an hour and it was broad daylight and I drive a used Prius. I called again in a while. Still no record of it being towed. At this point the police told me to go in and start a report for a stolen vehicle. My Dad meanwhile came to pick me up. Aaron called in the middle of all this, having gotten home and said he’d call his Mom and email the car information to my Dad.

Later: my dad arrived. He took me to the police station. Dropped me off while he went to go find parking. I went in without the information Aaron had emailed. Still no report of my car being towed. So I reported the car stolen and my dad drove me home. Later in the evening, Aaron went to call the the police to check if they’d had it reported towed yet, using the phone number and license plate number I’d written down. Suddenly he said, “Wait, this isn’t the right license plate number!”

F***!!! Turns out the car titled was registered under my father-in-law’s name. I’d reported my mother-in-law’s car as stolen!

Sure enough, using the right license plate number, we confirmed that my car had been towed. And that, yes, we had to go back to the police to deal with the reported, stolen car.

So Sunday was spent going back into a traffic choked city, running around in circles dealing with police and trying to find the car impound lot. Loading and unloading the kids about 10 times from their car seats, paying an obscene amount of money to get my car back and driving home. By the time we got home, Aaron and I were so tired we told Audrey that we’d just go to the fair tomorrow (Monday).

Yeah…The fair’s last day was Sunday.

Not my best weekend.

So last night I finished the dress. And today I took the kids to Train Town in Sonoma as a consolation prize for having to drive around and hang out at police stations and car impound lots instead of going to the fair and riding the ponies.

Sometimes, despite doing the best I can with the information I have at the time, I still can’t get things right. And some of the time, things go horribly, comically wrong. That’s life. And parenting. But a dress? A dress I can do. Especially an easy, breezy end-of-summer dress like this one.

I used the Haven Dress pattern from Petite Kids Boutique, one of the patterns I won during Shorts on the Line. And fabric from my stash. It sewed up quick (good thing!). I recommend it especially for any beginner sewers with little girls. It’s definitely doable with little to no sewing experience. Or if you just really, really need a new pretty dress. Right. Now.

 

linking up with Frontier Dreams {Keep Calm Craft On}