No parking at high tide

(or the dumb@ass award).
Today's Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras! It also happens to be one of those blustery, wet days as is typical for the season. A gumbo day. Sure enough, I decided that would be dinner: seafood okra gumbo with rice and cornbread as sides. The problem with that is that I would need to go the grocery store for some of the ingredients.
I had a few errands to run in town, or so I thought. Turns out it was two of those instead of the four or five that I had hoped to get done. I figured that stopping at the grocery store would be the last one. Turned out to be pretty much the only one.
Pulling into the parking lot at Fred Meyer, I had a whole 50 minutes to get home, whereas I would have had no time budget, if things had gone as originally planned. It was icky out, so I parked as close to the door as possible.
Grabbed Colton and off we ran to the door, my grocery list in my head. Even with a "rest stop", we managed to get in and get out of there in record time. 12 minutes!
I left the cart inside, thinking it would be a nice change for someone to come in and find a dry one, not a wet one blowing into the side of their car. I only had four bags and Colton, so off we ran, into the wet.
I stopped when I realized that I was standing at the edge of a stand-in for the great lakes. Or was it the Pacific Ocean lapping at the toes of my walking shoes? Ugh. Either way, my truck had gone from being parked on wet pavement to an island. A big, dirty-white island. Surrounded.
I sure as hell didn't have time to wait for the tide to go out, or the drain to unclog, or whatever was supposed to happen.
How did I make this particular mistake? I even know that Warrenton is below sea level. Dumbass! "Double dumbass!" I cursed inwardly.
"How deep could it be?" I stepped in, gingerly, to avoid splashing or rippling the water. That effort would cease to matter within seconds. The water was higher than the rubber soles of my Reeboks. It was deep. Annnnd cold. Crap.
The color of the water swirling around my feet and ankles was a grungy-grey complete with a rainbow sheen. Not much choice, now. I reached the truck by the time the water was mid-shin. My toes were feeling numb. I didn't even bother to look down and get grossed out at the gack I was wading in. Opened the door, tossed the groceries and kid in, and moved them all aside so that I could step inside onto my ingeniously-placed floor towels. At least they would absorb the runoff.
I wanted to take them off, but instead traded the time spent for getting home asap.
Shoes are on the dryer after a quick detour in the washing machine with the floor towels, and the house is filling with the pleasant aroma of simmering gumbo.
I made the roux while the shoes were washing. Takes just about the same time to do each. Never made that correlation, before.
Lesson learned.
Happy Mardi Gras!
At least my shoes are wet.