Put some clothes on!

I'm a very lucky girl generally, but every now and then my luck monitor goes on the blink and I find myself in all sorts of trouble.

A couple of years ago, after selling my Hummer and while I was waiting on my new car, I borrowed a friends car to drive from Vegas to LA. My son's passport had not arrived and we were leaving for Australia two days later so I had to go to the Passport and Immigration offices in Los Angeles to see what was going on. My appointment was at 7am so I had to leave Vegas at 3am to have a chance of getting there on time. On a side note; yes, my life really is this complicated ALL the time!

Anyway, my friend's car was a Mitsubishi Spider, it goes fast, really fast, there was no-one on the road, and I didn't see the speedometer creep up to ....brace yourself...109mph!!!!!

Of course I got a ticket. A big one. From a cop who scared me silly...so silly that I now always drive within the speed limit and am terrified every time I hear a siren that they're coming to take me away...Ha ha!

So this morning after dropping the kids at school, imagine my panic when I not only heard a siren but saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror and heard the law enforcement officer boom in to his megaphone "pull over to your right, pull over to your right"

What did I do wrong? I didn't jump a light, turned left on the green arrow, stayed in lane, under the speed limit. I pulled over and the lovely little (isn't there a height requirement to be a cop?) man approached my window. I had my licence and registration all ready for him, but he didn't want to see it. "Step outside of the vehicle please Ma'am" he said. Blimey I was in big trouble! Not least because I was in bright pink stripey pyjamas, with a granny sweater over them, turquoise crocs and my hair in a banana clip. "Errrm, do I really need to?" I asked him. I did.

Lovely, standing on the pavement looking like a circus clown with a cop in front of my kids friends parents is always the way I like to start my day!

Turns out, now that I'm a California girl, I need to put a plate on the front of my Ladybug as well as on the back...only trouble is, I bought my car in Nevada, which is a State that only requires plates on the back of a vehicle so there's nowhere to attach a plate on the front.

The cop must have felt sorry for me...or embarrassed by me...he tried really hard to keep a straight face when I stepped out of the vehicle, could barely contain his mirth, especially when he realized I was English, from Nevada, and eight feet taller than him. I stood there as pink as my PJs watching him struggle to get his words out without surrendering to hysteria.

He let me go with just a warning. Well, two warnings actually;

1. Go to a dealership and get a plate put on the front

2. Get dressed before driving your kids to school

I jumped back in the car thankful my luck meter was up and running and tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that I'd only been outside the vehicle for three minutes...no-one could have seen me in three minutes, right? Wrong. I just saw my daughter's headmistress in the Post Office, with an unusually bright smile on her face, she said "Mrs. Mayer, how lovely to see you again! Saw you this morning talking to my son-in-law, Officer Johnson, nice pyjamas!"