A laugh.

This afternoon I headed out all alone.

I got into our little Honda Civic, shifted into first and headed out the country road. I was dressed in my athletic gear and ready for a workout at the Y.

Alone time at the Y. This hadn't happened since last winter, when I used to meet a friend in the evening to swim, our huge, pregnant bellies floating almost ahead of us as we lay on noodles in the warm pool. This afternoon a pocket of time opened, though, and I seized it. It was perhaps the third time I've been without a child in tow since Maeve was born (excluding work functions) and it did feel liberating.

I worked out for a spell on an arc trainer, drowning in a wonderful home renovation show, and then headed up to the locker room to change. I was wearing some old black pants, and an older very tight tank top/bra combo. These I removed and put on my bathing suit, tossing the workout clothes in my locker along with a purple zip up hoodie to slip on later when I re-dressed. I grabbed my cap and goggles and bounded down to the pool.

Twelve hard laps later, I was ready to head out and climbed back up to the locker room. I took a nice, hot shower (all by myself), dried off, and headed for my locker. I rounded the corner and saw my bag sitting on the bench and the locker door open. Immediately I felt sheepish; in my haste to get into the water I'd left my space in a state I would have chastised my children for. I dropped my towel, cap and goggles into the bag, spun out my suit and threw that in, and began to get dressed.

I retrieved my socks and undies, pulled on my pants, and then reached in for my shirt. I lifted up the purple hoodie. There was no shirt. Confused, I took my jacket from the hook, but the shirt wasn't there either. I dumped out my bag. No shirt. Checked in my pant legs, in case I was so exhausted and daft that I hadn't noticed it in there. Looked again in the locker. Opened every other locker in the row to see if I'd misplaced it. No shirt.

So I conclude the only possible option: sometime while I was swimming, somebody came up and took my sweaty, dingy old tank top/bra workout shirt from my locker. Now the open locker makes a bit more sense, but the missing shirt doesn't make much sense.

Could it be just some person who gets such a rise out of stealing that it doesn't matter what they steal? Because I can tell you, that shirt was nothing special. But there I was, left with neither shirt, nor bra. Fortunately, I did have the purple hoodie. I put it on, zipped it up, and headed out the door, a huge smile on my face. I didn't care much about the shirt. But it was pretty funny that somebody took it.

So I headed out to run some errands, shirtless.

Good thing it wasn't my pants.