So, it's Sunday. Paul goes to work, as you all know by now, every day it's humanly possible, and some days you wouldn't think it is humanly possible, and today, even though it's windy as all get-out here, he's out there on the bounding main doing his thing - lobstering.

Every Sunday, before he leaves here which is about 5:30 a.m., he puts in a load of laundry, has his breakfast, and puts that first load in the dryer and then puts in a second load of laundry. Today was no different.

I happened to have a third load of oddball things I wanted to wash, so when I got up much later than Paul, at say around 8-ish o'clock, I got dressed, stripped the beds, etc, and bundled up the laundry basket for the long trip down the two flights of stairs. When I got to the first floor I stopped to put the kettle on for my cuppa, gave the dogs their little cookie, and sat down for a bit. Traversing a flight of stairs for me is a major production these days. It is not fun, it is very painful, and it goes very slowly.

So once my water comes up to boil, I make my cuppa and cover it while I make the trip down the other flight of stairs to the basement where the washer and dryer live.

(BTW, if any of you out there EVER think about buying a house and the washer/dryer set-up is on the first or second floor - take it! Going down to the basement is fine if you're young and intact, but boy-oh-boy, if you should happen to wind up like me with two bum hips, a bum spine and two bum knees, those stairs are killers! But young people never think of those things - and neither did I when we bought this house 26 years ago.)

So, I got down there and transferred the washed clothes (which is Paul's 2nd load - the 1st one was still going around in the dryer) into the basket and I put my load into the washer.

I came back upstairs, turned on my laptop and TV and settled down to my cuppa, caught up on a bit of weather and news and then heard the bleeping dryer downstairs indicating that it was nearing its end.

I went down the stairs, as always slowly, and opened up the dryer. Now the reason you don't have a photo of this is because I keep my camera upstairs - way upstairs near the other computer which it is hitched up to - and I would have had to do two flights of stairs up and back just to be able to take a picture of this - which I was not willing to do. Sorry.

I opened up the dryer and what was all over the edge of the front lint collector? Many many dollar bills! Each had been rolled up like a cigarette from going around in the dryer, after having been through the washing machine, so they were all over the place! Money, money money! I thought hey, I've won the lottery! Are any of these $10's or $20's I wonder?






Nope. They are all $1's. Well, I knew that. You see, Paul sells his lobsters every Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. down at the harbor in Marblehead. He mainly only deals in cash or checks, so he needs a lot of $1's to make change for people.

He must have left his 30 $1's stuffed in his shirt because there were no trousers in that wash, only the shirt he wore yesterday.

They were so tightly rolled up that it took me a while to flatten them out and I had to hold them with a giant potato chips clip (you know, those big plastic ones you put on an open bag of chips?). That held them open OK and after carefully unfolding all 30 of them, I had a nice little wad of one-dollar-bills.

I could just imagine Paul's consternation when he got in from lobstering and went into his truck down there only to find he had no $1's. He would probably go into the boatyard and use their phone (because he no longer carries a mobile or cellphone) and he would call me up and plead with me to bring down those dollar bills for him.

I would have been really upset at having to rush through the process of getting them all in order and getting me out the door, into my car and thru Salem over to Marblehead and down to the harbor to him. So I just went ahead and did all that myself without being asked. It's only 11:45 a.m. now. He's still out on the boat lobstering, by my estimation, and probably doesn't even know that he was missing those $1's.

The reason this is such an ordeal is that I never go out these days. My car sits in the driveway, undriven, for months on end. I have almost forgotten how to drive, for pitty's sake! Anyway, I went. I put the bills in a big envelope with a note for him, and I drove down to The Fort where he keeps his truck parked. Luckily I have a key to it. He keeps a change of clothes on his truck seat and changes out of his yucky fishing clothes before he sells to the public. Coming home the 7 or 8 miles would just take up too much time. I put the envelope in with his lobster shirt that I gave him for his birthday, and so now he will be happy rather than angry when he gets in. And I won't be all upset either having already accomplished what he would have wanted me to do.

And life goes on.

Back to the news. And lunch.

Cheers,

Bex

2003 - 2007 Archives at Diaryland
2007 - 2009 Archives at WordPress
2009 Archives at JournalScape
2010 Archives at JournalScape
2011 Archives at JournalScape
2012 Archives at JournalScape