Adventures in Carencro

Last night Jayson and I went over to Mona & Ernie Fontenot's house to look at the progress on the man cave and give Mona some decorating ideas.  Okay so that was my reason for going there, Jayson just played with the dog.

Mona & Ernie live in Carencro, LA which is a tiny little town just north of Lafayette.  It has a lot of beautiful rural areas but that can make finding someone's house a little difficult.  Mona gave me her address but said that her street is sometimes not on the map so she gave me the name of a cross street to help find her.  That should have been a warning.

The sad part about it is that they live one street over from where Rhett & Michelle LaFleur used to live.  And although we'd been to their house several times, neither one of us could remember exactly how to get there.  Both of us also had a vague sort of maybe-maybe not memory of someone mentioning that the Fontenots lived close to the LaFleurs.  But neither of us could remember for sure where we got that idea so we decided not to rely on it.

The only reason Jayson was on this little journey with me is because I have no sense of direction and can get lost backing out of my driveway.  I'm actually very good at reading a map and navigating but I can't do that and drive at the same time.  I also have trust issues so even though I sometimes use the Garmin, I'm convinced that it's lying to me.

Jayson really didn't want to be there, not that he doesn't like Fontenots, but Ernie was at band practice and Mona & I were talking paint colors and fixture finishes which doesn't exactly excite him.  Jayson is one of those guys who if I said I wanted to paint our whole house in pink and green polka dots and buy inflatable furniture, he would say, "okay, whatever".  I do love that man.

When we got into the car Jayson handed me the Garmin so I could enter Mona's address.  I looked at it as if he'd just handed me the remote control to the DVD player.  This may not make much sense to you and even I don't fully understand it, let's just say that I have some sort of a mental block that will not allow me to learn how to operate a DVD player.  This is strange since I'm actually pretty good with most electronics.  I can hook up computers and stereo systems, I can figure out complicated software, I'm even fairly handy with power tools.  But no matter what I do or how many buttons I push I can never get the DVD to go back to the start menu and this has a profoundly negative impact on my life.  No matter what I do I get the same message: "not permitted", "not permitted", "not permitted".  There are 42 button on that dang remote and every single one of them are NOT PERMITTED!  What IS permitted?  It never tells you!  For the preservation of my sanity, I never touch the DVD remote and the Garmin is one step behind it.   

I explained to Jayson about how Mona said the Garmin might not find her house and she gave me the name of a side street but I don't think he was paying me much attention.  He just asked for the address, loaded it into the Garmin and it found the address.  As we got into Carencro we knew something wasn't right when the Garmin sent us to the other side of the interstate from where the LaFleurs old house is.  I mumbled something about this not being right but Jayson had complete faith in the Garmin and followed its directions...as best he could.  It took him a couple of tries to realize that when the Garmin said, "turn right", he's actually supposed to turn right.  One thing we heard a lot was, "recalculating....".

While Jayson was following the Garmin's directions on blind faith, I pulled out my iPhone and looked up the cross street that Mona gave me on Google Maps.  Then it has that thing where you tell it to get directions and it magically knows where you are and puts a dot there and another one at your destination.  I know it's some sort of GPS thing, but I don't understand how all that stuff works so it's just magic to me.  Like wireless internet.  And how the gas pump stops when your tank is full.  How does it know?  These are life's mysteries.

We arrived at the Garmin's destination which was an abandoned barn on a dirt road.  I had seen pictures of the man cave, this wasn't it.  Jayson muttered some colorful words at the Garmin and asked for the name of the cross street.  I gave it to him (again) and he programmed it in.  I told him it was on the other side of the interstate like we both thought it should be.  He said, "how do you know??!!"  Then I showed him my phone and he said, "if you have that why am I even here?!?"  I told him I can't drive and navigate at the same time.  He had to be there so that I could tell him when he went the wrong way.  Duh.

So, after listening to what was now known as the %^$#_) Garmin say, "recalculating..." a few more times, we turned around and got headed in the right direction.  Jayson was mumbling about certain landmarks as he got his directional bearings and then said, "this is taking us straight back to University!!"  I said, "that's right, see?", and showed him my phone.  I said, "you just go back to University and turn at that same place where we turned to go to Rhett and Michelle's house.  I remember it now."  Jayson was so distracted that he missed a turn and again we heard, "recalculating...".  Then I made the mistake of saying, "oh you should have turned there."  The glare he gave me caused my eyebrows to burst into flames but I suppose I had that coming.  Then he started calling the Garmin some names that were not very flattering and he said if either one of us said one more word we were both going to be walking home.  Having no great love for the Garmin, it was a little awkward to suddenly be on the same team but we both wisely kept quiet until we pulled up in the Fontenots driveway.

Mona asked, "did you have any trouble finding the house?"  And Jayson and I both cheerfully replied, "oh, no, not at all!"