Penelope is trying to have me killed!

I'm convinced of it.

I don't know if she is just tired of rescuing me from my navigational disfunction or if she's just completely flipped a wire,

but the gig is up.

On three separate occassions, she has provided questionable directions which could have ultimately led to my demise.

Last week, the girls and I were driving in Lake Stevens and we were seriously low on gas.

Seriously low.

So, we asked Penelope to find the nearest gas station for us.

We followed her instructions and she led us straight into a dead end street full of old houses with rusting cars in the yards.

A few scruffy men with bandanas around their heads were standing around an open hood of a once cool hot rod. Beer cans in hand and cigarettes hanging from their mouths, they all looked up as I, fully expecting to see a Shell station, pulled into their street .

A few dirt covered shirtless little elementary school boys chased an equally muddy dog around the front yard with a stick.

Basically, it looked like a "you might be a redneck if" joke.

Fearing that these were not the "nice" kind of rednecks, I threw the car in reverse and drove back to the nearest main road.

What did Penelope expect me to do, syphon gas?

Crazy GPS.

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The second incident occured when we were in downtown Seattle.

Penelope loses her ever-loving mind in downtown Seattle.

I don't know if it is because of the way the roads are laid out there or if she figures that this would be the best place for her to kill me off without drawing too much attention,

but let me tell you

if I listened to her

I would be doing right turn squares for the rest of my life in downtown Seattle!

I'd either die of starvation

(which would take years because if there's one thing I am sure of, it's that I have done a sufficient job of protecting myself from any impending famin!

It's just the responsible thing to do.)

or I'd die from running out of gas on the wrong corner of the wrong street at the wrong time of day.

Strike two, Penelope!

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Having survived those two attempts on my life, Penelope decided to go the sneaky route and tried to have me expire of natural causes.

The girls and I were going to pick up the boys at church late on Friday night.

We were coming from a different direction than we usually do, so we needed Penelope to help us find the quickest route.

One of the disadvantages of being new to an area is that it takes a while to learn the short cuts and we usually stick to the main roads that we know even if they take an extra 15 or 20 minutes of travel.

So, I was excited to see if Penelope would show me a new way to get from point a to point b.

Boy, did she ever!

David had pre-programmed some locations for Penelope to lead us to and "church" was one of them.

I clicked "church" and obediently followed her through unfamiliar roads and small towns, trusting her all the way.

Her screen indicated that we'd arrive about 3 minutes before the boys needed to be picked up.

Perfect!

It seemed strange to me though that as we got within a few miles of where Penelope said our destination was,

I recognized nothing.

Still holding out hope that the church would magically appear around the next corner,

we made the final turn and she directed us to pull into a residential driveway.

UG!!!!!

We had driven 30 minutes in the WRONG direction.

At this point I was very close to having a heart attack because we'd now be close to an hour late picking up the boys!

We are still way too new at the church to know anyone and I was afraid they'd be sitting out there on the curb all alone.

Luckily the function the boys had attended ran over and we pulled up while lots of kids were still milling around inside and outside of the building.

Nice try Penelope.

I've got my eye on you girl!

If I happen to go missing.....

It was Penelope, on the dashboard of the Sienna, with a carefully planned faulty direction.

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