As we sit around waiting for the inevitable, I thought I would go off on a tangent for a while.
It all started when the dog began shitting out $100 bills. From there, the story gets a whole lot less interesting.
A few weeks ago, our dear friend Lydia asked me, in an attempt to help me make a little extra money for our soon to be expanding family, if I would be interested in doing a little construction work on her house. Having done my fair share, and even more than that on our own lovely little cottage, I agreed to come over the following Saturday and get started.
What began as two simple projects (replacing a set of deck stairs and a few boards on a front porch) turned into a mammoth project and a lesser mammoth project: dismantling a failing/dangerous back yard deck, building a new backyard deck, and a dismantling and building a smaller front porch/deck. After getting through the back yard, I decided to ask our friend John Boy to help me with the last project, the front porch, after running into him at a coffee shop and finding out that he would be house sitting for Lydia the weekend I planned on tearing out and replacing the front porch.
During this brief meeting, at which I decided to stay for a cup of coffee, he told me about his latest in a string of house sitting gigs. During this last one, for our friends Kevin and Joe, he returned from work (as a landscaper) with his paycheck, in cash. After feeding the dogs and such, he was going to meet his brother Pierce (as in Pierce Edens) for dinner. Not wanting to carry around a wad of cash with him - we are talking several hundred dollars - he took out a twenty and left the rest on the table in the dining room. Returning late, and having to get up early for work the next day, he quickly turned in for the night.
When he awoke the next morning, getting his things together for another day of landscaping, he discovered that all but one portion of one hundred dollar bill of his money was gone. The one remaining portion of a bill had teeth marks where the rest of the bill, the usable part of the bill, had once been. He was now several hundred dollars poorer. One of the dogs was now several hundred dollars richer.
John Boy being the great person that he is, took all of this in stride (although disappointedly so) and refused to let the dogs owners, the couple for whom he had willingly house sat, repay him the several hundred dollars. He looked at it as an odd set of circumstances and was ready to move on. Having lost several hundred dollars, he was happy to help me with rebuilding Lydia's front porch, and a chance to earn back some of that money which was lost.
For several days (okay, perhaps several weeks) Audrey and I (and everyone around us) has been eagerly awaiting our son. His due date came and went last week (three days and counting) and yet we are taking it all in stride. Much like John and his lost several hundred dollars. I don't mind the waiting. It has allowed me a little extra time to tackle all of these projects, like Lydia's house, painting some window trim that I haven't gotten to, et cetera. I imagine that this waiting of ours is nothing like what Kevin and Joe, the couple for whom John Boy house sat for, the couple who are proud owners of one dog with several hundred dollars somewhere between its mouth and its hind quarters, recently went through.
Wanting to be good friends (and they are) and feeling awful about John Boy's loss and feeling a sense of responsibility, they vowed, against John Boy's wishes, to repay every lost dollar. Perhaps out of frugality, perhaps out of a sense of the current economy, or perhaps out of sheer interest, they decided to wait on that payment. Until today. This afternoon, at about 1PM, they called John Boy. The conversation, I imagine, went something like this:
Kevin: "John? Hey. Do you still have that portion of a $100 bill?"
John: "Yeah, it's right here. Why?"
Kevin: "Are the last three numbers 036 C?"
John: "Uh...yeah...?"
Kevin: "I think Barley just shit out all of your money. Even the partial $100 bill. It's kind of hard to read the serial number right now, but once we get it cleaned up, I can confirm."
John: "?"
I am sure there was something else said, but I was only there for this part of the conversation. Regardless, as Audrey and I while away this muggy Sunday afternoon, moving further and further away from our due date, I can rest assured, there are worse things to wait on.
