If I hadn’t missed my hair cut appointment last week…

…I wouldn’t have rescheduled it for today, to be followed by a drive from Bar Harbor to Ellsworth for a recall maintenance appointment for my car at the Subaru dealer.  I wouldn’t have needed to ask for the “courtesy van” to drop me off at the grocery store. If I hadn’t taken the courtesy van, I wouldn’t have needed to call to be picked up again.  If I hadn’t needed to wait for 10 minutes in front of the store for the van, I would have missed the sight that “Mr. Overalls” passed right by without seeing. He never even turned his head to look!

You may well wonder what it was he missed. When I watched this car pull into its parking spot, I was going to ask the driver if he minded if I took a picture of his car. Then I decided I would rather just wait and take the photo after he was inside buying who knows what for groceries.

Once back at the Subaru dealer, I anxiously watched the clock wondering if the car would be ready in time for me to catch the 4 p.m. ferry back to the island. The drive to Northeast Harbor takes about 25 minutes if you don’t run into traffic. On a Thursday in July, I would allow myself at least 40 minutes to be able to get to the boat in time to unload the car and then park. The maintenance person handed me my keys at 3:27. The next boat leaves N.E. Harbor at 6 p.m. so I knew I wouldn’t be totally stuck. But we had dinner plans and I had really hoped to catch the 4 p.m. ride. There was nothing to do but drive and not look at the clock. I would either make it or I wouldn’t. In the weird zen like time warp that happens to me when I completely let go of worrying about catching the boat (which I think I have only accomplished 3 times since living on the island for 37 years), I pulled onto the dock in N.E. Harbor at 3:50. I had not been speeding. I had even been stuck behind 2 different cars going way below the speed limit. No way should I have been able to catch that boat with plenty of time to unload, park the car, and even make a stop in the ladies room. And yet I did.

Once I was back on the island, around 5 p.m., Bruce started to tell me about seeing a pretty strange sight from his boat today. I listened to his story of a sea gull grabbing a  piece of discarded lobster bait  from the open mouth of a seal who thought it would be a good snack. “Pretty strange,” I agreed. I then showed him the photo of my strange sighting from today. He replied instantly with a quote from the 1962 classic thriller, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis:    “Oh, Blanche? You know we’ve got rats in the cellar?”

The universe lined up for me today in the strangest ways.