Who Took My Keys?

This has been an eventful morning, to say the least. We were supposed to be implementing some work and travel plans that seemed, in theory, to be fairly straightforward.

Dave and I are taking two vacation days this week: Thursday and Friday. Add the weekend to that, and we get four days in historic Williamsburg, VA. Sweet. In the meantime, Jonathan and Joshua are remaining behind to do their ordinary work, school and church stuff. Looks pretty easy, right?

Original plan:
Jonathan and Dave go to the Fairfax corps in the morning. Jonathan goes to work and Dave picks up the camper and drives to Williamsburg. He will have a business meeting in the area at 1:30 p.m., then go to the campground, settle in and wait for me. I take Dave's car to work, then drive to Williamsburg and meet him this evening. Joshua will drive my car to school today, tomorrow and Friday. Jonathan will drive his car to work and school, as usual.

What's happening now:
Dave gets an email message early this morning informing him that his afternoon meeting has been moved up three hours, to 10:30 a.m. He's not thrilled with this change, but figures it's no big deal. I, not knowing that his day has been re-arranged in this manner, leave the house at 6:45 a.m. My plan is arrive at work early, leave before rush hour this afternoon and get to the campground early this evening.

At 6:59 a.m. Dave calls to inform me that I have both sets of keys for the camper. I saw my set hanging on the peg board this morning and automatically picked them up, forgetting that I would be driving the car that already has a set of camper keys inside. OOPS! So, Dave drives Jonathan to work and is now on his way to my office to get a set of camper keys. In the meantime, he's trying to get his meeting moved back a bit because his departure has now been delayed by at least 1.5 hours. Of course, if his meeting had not been re-scheduled in the first place, the key thing would be inconvenient, but nothing to worry about. (How's that for shifting responsibility to another party? Perhaps I should be a politician.)

At 7:35 a.m., Joshua calls and asks, in an exasperated tone, "Who took my keys?" I respond, "Were they hanging on a blue lanyard?" "Yes," he answers. Thinking quickly, I suggested, "Dad may have picked them up, thinking they were the camper keys. My keys should still be there. The house and car keys are both there. Just use that set until we get home on Sunday." He says, "I just noticed them. Okay."

At 7:40, I call Dave to determine A) how far he is from my office and B) if he has Joshua's keys. Answer to A: he's still 1/2 hour away. Answer to B: yes. He says he'll take Joshua's keys back home on his way to pick up the camper and leave Jonathan's car - and keys - there.

If the revised plan goes well, or at least acceptably, everybody in the family should end up with at least one set of keys that will enable him or her to get through the weekend without much further ado. And by Sunday night, all the keys in the household should be in their rightful places.