Bits and bobs

Random thoughts about random things by a random person

Monthly Archives: September 2019


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Day 1 (Sept 12/19): On my way!! (Or…What am I forgetting…?)

Normally, I’m a pretty organized traveler. While I don’t start packing in advance, I have my lists ready wayyyyyy ahead of when I need them.

I am a bit of a list queen, I have to admit. Not because my world would collapse if I didn’t have lists, but because I would forget everything if I didn’t have them. I have discovered this from sad experience.

Enough experiences that you would think I would learn.

I suppose I do learn. But I also forget. (Does forgetting negate the learning?)

There have been too many times when I’ve convinced myself I could swing it. Lists are for sissies!!!

Yeah, well…that’s never worked out for me.

Serious kudos to those of you who can keep everything up there in the ol’ grey matter and access it whenever you need it. That is a gift.

But it’s not a gift I have. So I make lists.

This time, though, I only half sort of started a list a few days ago. And put it aside. In fact I couldn’t even remember where it was so this morning I started a new one.

Did you catch that? THIS MORNING!!!

I didn’t start my list in earnest until this morning. The morning of the day I am travelling.

Man, I am living on the edge!!! (I so don’t live on the edge. I can barely see the edge…And I like it that way.)

Anyway, I got the list done, did all the last errands I had and, right down to the wire, got the packing done.

Hmmm…actually, I was late packing….yup….there it is.

I was so late packing, I forgot to run through my list to see if I had forgotten anything. And, as I wrote that last paragraph, sitting here at the airport waiting for my plane, I remembered that I forgot my hair dryer.

I had thought about it several times. And even headed off to get it a few times. But as you may recall, I get distracted easily and now, voilà – no hair dryer!!

Oh well!

I’m pretty sure (I say, chuckling at my likely delusional optimism) I didn’t forget anything else…

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What’s that whirring sound? (Or…Am I going to have an expensive plumbing bill?)

I put a load of laundry in the washing machine a couple of hours ago. I live in an open-concept condo so the laundry closet is within easy hearing distance. Most of it isn’t at all distracting or disruptive – it’s just the final spin that requires the volume to go up on the TV.

So, as you can imagine, I’m quite familiar with the sound of the various stages it goes through.

Tonight…well, there was a different sound. There was a new, high-pitched, whirring sound. It wasn’t super loud or anything. It was just … there. And it’s not usually there. So it caught my attention.

The first thing I thought was, “Dang it… I filled it too full.”

Being the queen of efficiency, rather than having to do two separate, small loads, I put everything into the one load. I thought, then, that I had maybe filled it a titch too full. Not crazy full. But more so than I usually do and a friend and I were recently talking about flooding washing machines and such, so my mind couldn’t help but go to a place of “Uh oh…”

I tried to talk myself out of it for a while – “It’s fine. You’re being paranoid. Don’t worry about it.”

But, after about half an hour, the whirring eventually won out and I got up to go check.

I opened the doors and listened. I could hear the whirring still, but it wasn’t coming from the washing machine. It was coming from behind me – the spare bedroom.

I can’t quite say if I was more relieved that the washing machine wasn’t about to explode and flood everything on the even of my much-anticipated trip to the Emerald Isle or more confused as to what the heckledy schmeckeldy could possibly be making that noise in the spare room.

I turned around and looked in. There are no “machines” to speak of in there – the router, a telephone and a TV. Nothing “whirrable”. But the sound was most definitely coming from there.

Huh.

Then I looked further in. The window was open. Ahhhhhh yes.

There was a lovely cool breeze this evening and I had opened both bedroom windows to get a nice cross breeze going – something other than AC air for the first time in a couple of months.

But I had forgotten the windows were open. Oops!

So, yeah…no explosion. No flood.

Just somebody doing some work outside, with what sounded like maybe a circular saw, oblivious to the state of anxiety and confusion they had innocently caused.

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