Day 21, Year 7: Competition for the Cats
Date: Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Weather: Overcast with Sprinkles; High in the Low 60’s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, Massachusetts
If a cat can have nine lives, I guess I can give them some competition by doing the same. And today when we were looking through things in our storage unit, I kept saying to myself, “This is from another life.” I opened one box with memorabilia from my childhood-an organza eyelet apron from a dress when I was just a wee one, my high school varsity jacket. That was the first life. Then there were the multitude of things from our back to the land years-a horse-drawn plow, an Aladdin oil lamp, boxes of farming books, and on and on. That was another life. Next were boxes of memorabilia from our children’s elementary years on the Eastern Shore of Maryland-a surf board, a boogie board, a Jedi village, Cabbage Patch dolls. Let’s see. That’s at least three lives. The New Hampshire years are evidenced boxes containing the contents of Mark’s office at New Hampshire Public Radio, and box after box of Judy’s teacher materials. And now there are boxes of cruising books and things bought from around the world on the Voyage of Windbird. So I figure I’ve survived at least five of my nine lives and am starting life number six. Right now we are semi-dirt dwellers doing a bit of arm chair sailing and planning for future adventures. We’ll call these the years of grandchildren. These are good years and we’ll gladly stay stuck here for a bit. But back to today’s tasks, aside from the trip down memory lane, we were successful in finding most of the things on our list. We simply ran out of time and energy and will have to return in the spring.
So everyday is an adventure in these many lives we lead, and today was no exception. We got off to a great start. We were at the Falmouth Hospital before 7:30 am where Mark had a heart ultrasound. We were out of there and on our way in less than an hour. We made a stop north of the Cape at a Target where I had shopped on Saturday. I bought a number of small stocking stuffers, but when I got home, only half of them were in the bag. Either I forgot to pick the bag up or the check-out person forgot to hand it to me, but the Customer Service folks were great. They didn’t even question my story and let me pick out the missing items. We were very impressed with their customer friendly attitude. Our next stop was IKEA and just before we got there, I checked with Mark to make sure he had brought the keys to our storage unit. Uh-oh. No keys. We called the storage company and they have no master key to the locks they sell. The only choice was to turn around and try again another day or have the lock cut off and buy a new one. We choose the second option. We stopped at IKEA, had a free coffee and tea, ate a 99 cent breakfast while sitting next to the children’s area watching Nemo on the kiddie monitor, bought the items we needed, and carried on. We arrived in Concord at the same time as the rain, but thankfully the sprinkles didn’t last long. When it was time to stop for lunch we went to the local Circle K filling station, convenience store, and Subway sandwich shop to fill up on gasoline and get a sub for lunch. When we went to pay for the gas, Mark didn’t find his debit card in his wallet. Second ‘uh-oh’ of the day. The last time he had used it was at IKEA, but when we called we were told that it would be after 5 pm before the daytime cashiers would be turning in their cash bags with any credit cards left behind. So we decided to stop there again on the way home to check in person. Losing something like a debit card always knocks the wind out of you, but we took a deep breath and returned to storage to try and finish our job. We rushed and got back to IKEA just before 6 pm. No card. So we called the bank to have the card canceled. The woman on the phone asked Mark if he had checked in his wife’s purse, but he ignored her thinking there was no way the card would be in my bag. They canceled the card and as soon as Mark got off the phone, he did check my bag and the card was there. Neither of us have any idea how it got there, but it was too late. Once a card is canceled, it is final. But we can go into the bank in the morning and he can get a new card on the spot. We finished the day doing MORE shopping at an outlet center. I was continuing my search for a pair of wool pants. They just don’t exist. I went to Talbot’s, Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer, Jones of New York, and others stores I’d never heard of. All of the store clerks we asked just said, “No one wears wool any more.” I felt more than a little dated. I guess I’ll have to start all over and look for corduroy, just not the hip hugger variety.
