no good deed...

 Once a month, members of our church agree to provide supper for a local shelter for homeless young women.  In a moment of weakness, and because it was a friend who was asking, I agreed to provide dessert for this evening's supper for 18 girls.  Since it really seemed too hot to bake, I decided to buy the ingredients for banana splits and some cookies and let them create their own ice cream treats.  I figured if they didn't all want bananas, they could keep them for breakfast.  Because my freezer is small and full, I decided to buy the ice cream and other stuff, just before I delivered it.  It's only a 10 minute drive from my grocery store to the home on Lake Avenue, and I bought the ice cream in plastic tubs so I assumed all will be well.  I was forgetting the construction underway on Lake Avenue.  I had been to this place before, but that was a few months ago.  I reminded myself what the house looked like by googling it and felt fairly confident.  It looked white on Google but blue in real life.  But the real trouble was, not only were stretches of street torn up and one way, the sidewalk all along the side of the street I needed to get to had been dug up in long swaths with only little bitty poorly paved sections to let you get into parking areas.  After my first time accidentally passing the little bitty drive, and driving from Lake to Coliseum to State and finally on a cross street back to Lake again, and missing it again on the second pass, and figuring out that I could make a U turn, which I did, so I could miss it from the other directions, I finally pulled into an easily accessed clinic parking lot to regroup.  Did I mention that I had melting ice cream and browning bananas in my car?  In desperation, I called the friend who got me into this, and told her I couldn't fine the way into their parking lot.  She commiserated, said she had trouble spotting the entrance also, gave me a phone number to call and wished me luck.  I called the number and, of course, got an answering machine, and asked if someone could come to the lot where I was parked and pick up the stuff from me there.  But then I realized it could take a long time to get an answer and decided to try one more time.  This time I went so slowly that I'm sure the drivers behind me were annoyed, drove in the middle turn in either direction lane for a long block and finally spotted the "driveway" and turned it.  At that point I really didn't much care if I had the right house or not.  But I did, and they were very pleased to get the ice cream, soupy or not.  But wait, the story isn't done.  Once I was home, relaxing with my own supper, a different friend called me and asked if I could give her a ride tomorrow morning to an appointment on that same stretch of Lake Avenue.  I can't wait.