Day 2216 Dirty job

7th September 2023

Today I did a dirty and disgusting thing that I’m ashamed to admit.

We left home to do a few errands, I had to go to Lowes to buy a sheet of plywood to make floors for a number of drawers that I have rebuilt, Kelli wanted to go to the bank finally.

As we were driving along south shore her head spun round and exclaimed “Did you see that crate in the trash?”.

Thankfully I didn’t.

“Shall I turn around and get it”

I made some unfavourable noises by which time we had traveled some distance, and I hoped she would forget about it.

“We don’t want anymore crap, we have loads already, and we need to get rid of it” I replied.

“But I could use it as a prop for our pictures”

I then made the big mistake.

“Look if it’s still there when we get back then I’ll get it for you”

“But it’s trash day it will be picked up and it will be your fault that it will go to landfill”.

We drove on to do our shopping.

I don’t go to Lowes very often, Menards is much closer, but they don’t stock the thin plywood I needed.

We needed a replacement cistern for the second toilet, this became searching for a needle in a haystack exercise. Walking up and down the isles was a thankless task, and Kelli was getting bored. Eventually I had to ask an assistant, she tapped things into her handset and said to follow her, which we did.

There it was in the toilet parts section, I expect we would have found it eventually.

It seemed we had to ask someone for everything we needed, but finally the last thing was the plywood.

I did know where that was stocked. Once we were past the checkout, there was the problem of loading it into the truck. In the past I had no problem, it was a case of getting the right angle and pushing. It would mean it would rest on my head for the journey home, but that was acceptable.

So there we were driving along south shore getting closer to the bin with the crate. I could see it in the distance, my heart sank. The trash hadn’t been collected as Monday was a holiday, so my worst nightmare was looming up ahead.

I was hoping that she would drive slowly past and I would lean out of the window and grab it , but no she had to pull into the drive and stop. I then had to open the door, get out, walk around the back of the truck, grab the bloody crate, walk back around, open the back door throw the crate inside, close the door, open my door and get in, and only then would Kelli would reverse out and leave the scene.

So I actually lifted something out of a rubbish bin in broad daylight, I felt dirty, unclean and violated, the kind that would haunt me forever, and it wasn’t even a good crate.