Revision

Boy was I wrong about the adventure of the day.

Fast forward about six hours and I'm driving to my second day of work. I'm still figuring out exactly how long the trip takes and how much time I need to budget to get there on time. I'm going along, I'm almost at Hurlburt, which means I'm about 3/4 of the way there, and I think I'm doing pretty well.

Until I hear the sirens and see a cop waving me over.

I was speeding in a school zone. (There are school directly on the highway, and where the speed limit is usually 45, it goes down to 20 for 45 minutes every morning and afternoon. I'm not familiar enough with where the zones are and what the times are yet, and didn't see the flashing yellow soon enough to slow down enough. They said I was going 35.) AND I got a citation for not having a Florida driver's license. Turns out I had only 10 days from moving here to get it changed. Since my husband is active duty military, he doesn't ever have to get a license here. But those exceptions don't extend to me because I'm only his dependent. Nevermind the fact that just like him I only moved here because of government orders and just like him I don't intend to live in Florida beyond our service commitment here. I've been here plenty long to abide by a law I didn't know existed.

Of course, because of the traffic stop I was 20 minutes late for work. And as soon as I pulled away from the cops I reached for my cell phone to call in and realized that I had left it at home. I really felt like the most stupid, useless person. I couldn't believe that I was going to be late on my second day of work with no advance warning because I'm a bad driver. When I got to work, I immediately started crying when I tried to explain everything to my boss, which I'm sure freaked him out a lot more than me being late or anything else. I was altogether a mess for awhile.

Fortunately, there was a lot to do at work since we were preparing for our store inventory which started today at 6am, so I was able to stay busy and get myself back together. I would have rather used $226 to pay down my credit card, but it's not like this is a financial blow that will completely ruin us or that a speeding ticket will blackball me from ever having a good job. Today, I'm ready to end the pity party and move on to more important things.