My first night in Dayton I hit up Dewey's Pizza by the University of Dayton with members of the house church I'm attending (house churches are what Apex Community Church calls small groups ... they're a little more empowered than your average church bible study). Then we went to BadFrog, a froyo joint that seems to have no connection to Sweet Frog, and neither does Frog stand for Fully Rely on God. But it was tasty:
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| Yum dulce de leche |
The next morning, after waking up with that where-the-hell-am-I feeling, I walked out to get something out of my car, which was piled to the ceiling with my life, and found the City of Dayton had left me a welcome present -- a whopping $45 parking ticket for "parking less than 5 ft. from driveway." You didn't know that was illegal in Dayton? Neither did any of the other 40 cars parked right next to driveways along that one-way street in Belmont, none of which had a ticket. Apparently in Dayton if the appearance of your car upsets someone, they can make up an offense and write you a $45 ticket. Especially if you have a North Carolina license plate.
I'm thinking Alright Dayton, I know you wish you had any legitimate claim to the Wright Brothers' fame and you're jealous of "First in Flight" on my license plate, but don't go all Napoleon on me, you little insignificant blip on Google maps.
Unfortunately, one of the things that comes along with starting your first 9-to-5 job is realizing that you can't really afford the time off to go fight your B.S.-parking ticket at the courthouse, so you bite the bullet.
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| My as yet undecorated and uninspiring cubie at the Dayton Business Journal. Just you wait. |
My first week went well, both at work and while staying with Abbie and Lucy in their apartment, minus yet another parking ticket at work (got that one thrown out with the help of the advertising director at work). By Saturday morning we had made enough moving trips to the new house that all that was left was the large furniture, for which we enlisted Lucy's sister and brother-in-law's aid, and a friend from church, and their combined six kids under the age of 9.
Two dozen Bill's Donuts, five McD Sweet Teas, three hours, one U-Haul and one reverse-birthing of a queen-size mattress later, we were moved in. That night I got to know Lucy's niece and nephews, some of the sweetest kids ever.
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| Bill's Donut Shop in Centerville ... the smell alone could send a diabetic into a coma. |
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| My room with the $10 dresser I found on Craigslist. |
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We settled in pretty happily into our new house ... took a trip to Caeser Creek (it's a lake near Waynesville) for our 4th of July... don't really recommend that. Everything was going pretty well until 5:45 Friday morning of my second week in Dayton.
"Hey Olivia, sorry to wake you up, but Lucy's car got stolen and the cops need your info," Abbie said softly, knocking on my door.
If that's not the quickest way short of a bucket of ice water to wake someone up I don't know what is. I had the presence of mind to throw on a bra, my UNC-DM sweatshirt and Dunks and stumble outside.
"Car's gone," Lucy said with a shrug. The cops -- a guy and a girl -- took our names and phone numbers.
"919 area code, where's that from?" the girl cop asked me.
"Durham North Carolina," I said, wishing with everything I was back there.
Lucy had noticed her car was missing after reading a story in the news on her phone about a robbery on ***** Avenue (a half mile from our house, and a frequent spot on my running routes) in which a four-door silver car was used. Spooked, she jumped out of bed and looked out the window. I can only imagine the sinking feeling in her stomach when it wasn't there.
Not knowing what else to do and wanting to help as much as possible, I offered for Lucy to borrow my car and drop me off at work immediately, since she had to be to work by 7, and I had a ride arranged to the airport that night to fly home for one of my former housemates' wedding. So that's about how I ended up watching the sunrise over downtown from the 8th floor of the Barclay building last Friday.
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Weddings are awesome -- open bar, dance floor, cameras flashing, happy couple, oh yeah and all your friends asking "How's Ohio?"
I wanted so badly to be able to say "I love it! You have to come visit cuz it's awesome!" But inevitably the first words out of my mouth were "Well uh...my roommate's car got stolen from out front our house yesterday."
Oh yeah, then I caught the bouquet. But I will say it was the most beautiful and joyful wedding I've been to, and I've been to quite a few. Best wishes Victoria and Colin, seeing y'all so happy has definitely been the highlight of my last three weeks. :-)
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Having home to look forward to just two weeks after leaving made those two weeks fly, but it meant walking back into RDU Sunday night with no definite plans for when I'll be back so much harder.
And then walking back out two hours later after my flight getting delayed two hours, spending an hour on the phone with United, and getting my flight rescheduled for a mere 24-hours later was like a slap on the other cheek.
Not that I minded another night at home, because I miss my family like whoa, but at the expense of one of my two personal days within the first three weeks of work, that was pretty depressing. I vowed never to fly again. Take that, airline industry! Wait that's why my brother has a job. OK at least not with United. Unless they're gonna save me a lot of money. And not home to RDU either -- I'll take an 8.5 hour drive over getting home 17 hours late any day.
Abbie and Lucy picked up a very grumpy Olivia from DAY around 7 Monday night. Since I was back, Lucy had borrowed another friend's car for the week since she didn't want to deal with the hassle of renting and insurance reimbursements. Only problem, his car was a stick shift, and she wasn't 100 percent comfortable with shifting out of first. So she and Abbie took it for a test run around the block while I decided to go pound the pavement for a while in hopes of beating the bad mood out.
3.7 miles of some very sketchy neighborhoods later, I huffed and puffed up to our front stoop to find Abbie and Lucy sitting out waiting for me ... and the cops.
"We found my car," Lucy said. She told me how they'd passed it parked along the street behind our house one block down, returned to switch cars to make sure it was Lucy's, then called the cops and come home. Ironically I actually ran right past her car on my run, but I was too focused on things like forward momentum, not having an asthma attack and outrunning potential creepers to notice. I kind of like running in the bad parts of town -- fear makes your feet move faster.
We met the cops by her car and they took Lucy's statement, then towed the car and told her they'd get back to her. We hurried back home -- the fate of three wannabe husbands hung in the balance on The Bachelorette that night.
Lucy -- a little shook up from seeing the mess the carjackers had made inside her car -- decided the night called for comfort food:
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| Inside s'mores step 1: apply peanut butter and chocolate chips to Graham Crackers liberally. |
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| Step 2: Roast marshmallows (bunnies) over blazing fire (hot eye) |
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| Step 3: devour. |
The rest of my unplanned four-day-work-week went by without too many hiccups. I met some ultimate-frisbee enthusiasts in Yellow Springs, which as one older player with more hair on his chin than on top of his head told me, is a town very much stuck in the 60s. Think Carrboro, without the trust funds. I got treated to beer and pizza at trivia night at the local bar.
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Thursday afternoon I answered a call from a blocked number on my cell phone.
"Miss Barrow? This is Detective XXXXX." (Protecting his privacy ya know ... actually I have no idea what his name is.) ..."I'm investigating Miss Dutter's stolen car and the subsequent robbery at the Sunoco station on Wayne Avenue. Do you have time to meet with me today or tomorrow?"
Say WHAT?
Shocked beyond words, I agreed to meet with him at 8 the next morning at my house. Dazed, I attempted to finish the rest of the day's interviews without asking myself the burning question: "Am I a suspect?? Is Lucy a suspect?? Do the cops really think my roommate knocked over a gas station for $50? All I could think of was all the cop shows I've watched and how the cops will analyze every detail the suspect says, and then when the suspect says, "Do I need a lawyer?" and the cops are like "Only guilty people say that."
I rolled out of bed at 7:30 the next morning, showered and got ready for work just in time to let the detective in. He politely sat down and started asking me questions all about Lucy.
"Does Lucy have any male friends she runs around with at night?" he asked.
-"I just met her three weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure the only man I've seen here is her brother-in-law, so...no."
"Do you sleep with your door open?"
-"Excuse me?"
"Would you have heard if she left in the middle of the night?"
-"Yes I leave the door cracked. I think I would have heard her. I don't know."
"Does Lucy have any tattoos?"
-"Not that are visible in a swim suit..."
"Tell me exactly how she found her car, and how she told you about it."
-"OK, I was out for a run to clear my head, and she and Abbie were test driving the friend's car --"
"Wait a minute, there's an inconsistency in your stories. Lucy said she was test driving and she came back to get Abbie when she saw the car."
My heart stopped. My fear was coming true -- he was gonna trip one of us up and use it against us, when it was just an honest memory lapse.
-"No, I'm pretty sure they went to test drive it together because they told me to lock the door and take my key on my run."
"Where did you run?"
You really need all these details?
-"I went over to *****, and ended up down on Xenia Avenue --"
"DON'T run on Xenia Avenue. Nothing good will come of a girl running alone on Xenia."
Well that confirms why my legs seemed to move faster in that part of town.
The detective showed me a picture from the surveillance camera of the woman involved. It was super blurry, but showed a woman of average height and weight in jeans and a black t-shirt and maybe blond, maybe brown hair.
"What do you make of that?"
I looked at it for a full minute.
What am I supposed to make of that? It looks as much like me as Lucy. It is literally the most generic person imaginable.
-"I don't think it looks anything like Lucy."
"Let me ask you this. Does Lucy have a habit of wearing sunglasses on her head?"
-"Yeah -- lots of people do. It's like a hairband."
"What do you see on the top of that woman's head?"
Oh now I'm five years old.
-"I dunno officer, they look like reflective sunglasses to me. Lucy's glasses aren't mirrored."
Is this the evidence Dayton's finest relies on to lock up dangerous criminals like my 27-year-old nanny roommate who barely makes it through an episode of The Bachelorette before falling asleep?
By this point I was pretty worked up.
"Is there anything else you want to tell me? Because you can tell me, if there's something you need to tell me in confidence."
-"Oh I understand that, sir. No there's nothing like that. I just want to say ... Lucy works for really rich people in a really fancy house and they trust her with their infant and toddler. She had no reason to hold up a gas station for $50."
"Thanks for your time. Have a good day."
Well after that I just wanted to throw up. So I went to work instead. With a plate full of cookies baked the night before for a coworker's birthday. Unfortunately (for her), she was in Chicago partying, so we ate the cookies in her honor. And by we I mean everyone who hadn't started their mornings off being interrogated by the cops.
Most of the rest of the day sucked so bad I don't want to write about it. I got hopelessly lost on the way to an appointment, cried in front of two vice presidents of a company, slid a sandwich over the massive lump in my throat while keeping up conversation with a bank president, and interviewed a corporate litigation lawyer with the burning question on my brain -- does Lucy need a lawyer?
Mom came to the rescue with a text that afternoon.
"It's cow appreciation day. Maybe you girls just need to dress up."
And then a minute later:
"They have starter costumes on their website."
I passed the info on to Lucy, and then I convinced my coworker Laura, with whom I already had plans to get dinner and see the new Spiderman movie after work, to dress up like cows and get some free CHIKIN at Chic-Fil-A.
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| The ears were ingenious. |
My bad day/week/month? was finally coming to a close, and on my way home I caught a glimpse of one those scenes that makes me wish my eyes worked like a Polaroid so I could save it for you. But I'll have to try to describe it.
ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) seems to have an obsession with using the most concrete possible to build its on and off ramps for the highways. Consequently in order to get onto I-675 or 75, instead of turning left after the bridge and simply merging from the right, for no reason at all you often cross the interstate twice, do a couple G-force-inducing loops above and under a giant cement jungle gym of bridges, and finally dump out on one side of the other of what you have to take on faith is the direction you wanted to go.
I turned into one of these massive on-ramps and got an elevated view over the expanse of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, with its giant hangers and cargo jets sitting on the ramp bathed in twilight as the sun's sinking glow gave the clouds a bright red trim like colored frosting on the edge of a cake.
Welp, that was my best attempt at simile. Sorry 'bout it. Anyway it was really pretty and I wanted to pull off and snap a picture with my iPhone and then instantly transform it into a timeless work of art with Instagram and share it with the world, but I was already riding on two wheels as I cut around the curve, so I decided against it.
When I talked to Lucy later that night, she said the detective had apologized to her and released her car, so unless her picture in a lineup sparks some interest with the gas station clerk next week, she's off the hook. So much for stressing out all day, but that was a relief to hear.
My deepest apologies for the length of this post. I truly believe things have got to get better from here, and I appreciate your prayers that our troubles with the car-jackers will be behind us for good. Either way you can be sure to look forward to more adventures in Ohio.
Love,
Olivia
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