We live in a smallish town close to the San Francisco airport and down the street from a Toyota repair facility. Parking on our street can occasionally get to be problematic. We are fortunate in that we have a long driveway and can easily fit three cars in it. We have three cars in our family but it is a pain to have to go and jockey the cars around so primarily we use the one parking spot in front of our house and then two cars in the driveway. Here is a picture from when we were having the siding put on. You can see the garage is way in the back and my car is at the edge of our walkway. Two cars could fit in front of mine.
There have been times when the Toyota employees were parking in front of our house all day, occasionally there have been cars left on our block by people who are traveling. They leave the car and get an Uber to the airport so they don’t have to pay for airport parking. There have even been times when a stolen car was left abandoned. Since my husband is retired, he keeps his eye on the neighborhood and if he sees a car that he doesn’t recognize and that doesn’t move for a few days he will call the police.
Since we like to have the front spot available, when whoever is parked there leaves (usually my husband’s truck is the one on the street parking), we will go and put another one of our vehicles there to save the spot. It may sound silly but if you are coming home and not able to find parking in front of your own house it is frustrating.
Today my husband left to do some work with a friend and I didn’t think about it so I didn’t move my car to the street. I went to throw the trash out and just as I was going back inside a woman pulled up and parked in front of our house. I watched to see if she was going to visit one of the neighbors because I didn’t recognize the car or the driver. That’s where the mystery starts.
She got out of her car with a duffle bag and opened the trunk. She proceeded to empty the bag, putting her things in the trunk. This took about five minutes. Then she closed the trunk and took the empty duffle bag and opened the back door where I could see a laundry basket which she moved to the other side of the seat. Then it looked like she was refilling the duffle bag from whatever was in the laundry basket. This took another 10 or 15 minutes. I went and stood on my front porch but she didn’t notice me or turn around at all. I emptied another one of our garbage cans and put a new mat on the front porch. She never looked at me. When she was done with the rearranging, she put some more stuff in the trunk and neatly put a plastic cover over it.
Then she went and sat in the passenger side of the car, scrolled through her phone and started going through her mail (or that’s what it looked like to me). She got a phone call and at that point (it was about a half an hour so far) I decided that I would do the dishes – from the kitchen sink I could still keep an eye on the car.
Finally, about 45 minutes in total, she got out of the passenger side, went around to the driver’s side and drove away.
What do you think of that? Would you park in front of someone’s house and clean out your car, read your mail and chat on the phone? If that happened in front of your house would you go out and ask her what she was doing? I have pulled over in front of someone’s house to answer a phone call in the days before I got a car with hands free talking but I would never think of rearranging my trunk there. Maybe she was homeless and living out of her car? If she had just done her laundry, why didn’t she rearrange things in the parking lot at the laundromat? Love to hear your thoughts!
from Blogger http://asmile4ufromjanet.blogspot.com/2018/11/noted-in-november-2018-mystery-of-woman.html
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Janet's Smiles 
LOL – I love how you found ways to stay busy while you watched. I could just see myself doing the same thing. Her activities were sure weird and not something I’d think of doing!
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I was intrigued. I’d never sit in front of someone’s house to do that. I’d have found a parking lot or something.
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Seems odd to do that, but it made a great story for you to tell. 🙂
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You’re right. As I was watching her I was thinking of what I could say about her. My kids tell me to get a life!
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haha! Same here. I’m always thinking – hey, I could blog about that – even if it is something ordinary. It’s always fun to see something a little odd or different, and we do seem to notice. 🙂
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I think that this woman was early for an appointment and decided to use her extra time to get organized. She happened to find your street and because she was ahead of schedule, she took her time getting her laundry folded and arranged just so. That’s my story about her…
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Could be but she was dressed very casually. My daughter said perhaps she had a conference call which, being self-employed I could understand.
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That IS a mystery! There are a lot of people who live in their car, but it seems she would have arranged all of her laundry when she put it in the vehicle. Very strange. Maybe she was going to pick up someone from the airport and decided to clean her car beforehand? But why not do it at home? You’ll never know. I love how you described the whole encounter. It might be a good blog hop prompt to see how many imaginative stories people can come up with. Too funny (and kinda creepy, too, when you think about it).
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I have no real clue. I thought about going to see if she needed something but then I thought that might be a little too intrusive. It is a public street really and we have no real claim on that parking space.
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I have no idea, Janet! But your investigative reporting is very entertaining.
What caught my eye: “We will go and put another one of our vehicles there to save the spot.” My husband sometimes asks me to stand in a parking spot if were are going out to eat and he has eyed a particular spot close to the restaurant/shopping. I feel funny standing there, but I reap the benefits too.
In answer to your question: No, I wouldn’t park in front of someone’s house and go through the litany of tasks you described.
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You know, Marian, it seems so silly sometimes but our street is also close to the train station so lots of times people park there who “do not belong.”
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