Give me a break, are we back in the 70s??!!

This weekend, I was one of the many unfortunate Nashvillians who had to sit in lines to try to get some gas for my car! (These photos were taken on Sunday morning, when the lines were mild compared to what I saw at the same locaion on Saturday.) Notice I didn't say that I was one of the selfish clods who felt the need to "top off" their tank or fill up every glass jar and 5-gallon can from their shed or fill their boat gas tank. Give me a break!!!!!

Now, I admit, I was thinking about my own needs on Friday afternoon, Saturday morning and Sunday morning when I noticed that my gas tank was close to empty and I needed to get some gas or not use my car to go to the places we needed/wanted to go this weekend. I do not usually pay much attention to local news. If it's not in the one-minute blurb at the top of the hour on the music radio station I'm listening to, then I probably don't know about it.

So, I was taken by surprise by the lines I saw at the gas stations on the way to work on Friday. But, since I actually had to WORK on Friday and had a very busy day at the office, there was no way I could have waited for an hour or more during the day to fill up. Then on Saturday morning, after getting my "fuel report" from my wonderful parents who were out and about, I set out to get in line and wait my turn. I had waited about an hour at one station (with only 4 pumps) when they ran out of gas (I was about 6 or 8 cars away from the pump). I then tried to get into the madhouse at Kroger, but when they came around with signs saying that they estimated only having 30 more minutes of gas left, I decided to not waste what I had and went back home.

Thankfully, my parents are also very generous and offered the use of their car (with plenty of gas in the tank) for us to go to Daniel's baseball tryouts and the 5K at Belmont. Then this morning, I got up early and went back to Kroger to wait in line an hour to finally get a turn to fill my tank.

I definitely saw the irony in the fact that the place I tried to go twice during the weekend to buy gas ended up being where I finally got it. I also realized the futility of my worrying over it at various times during the weekend, and had to come to the point of confession and thankfulness when I realized that I didn't really miss out on any activities due to the gas shortage and never totally ran out of gas. Hopefully, we're out of the woods with the shortage now, but I think I'll start watching my gas gauge a little closer and might even listen to the news now and again (better still call me if something big is headed my way!).