Today I changed my sheets. And as per usual, being mildly disabled, I grunted and grumbled fitting the bottom sheet (fitted). Half the time I get the bloody thing upside down, and only after trying to squeeze it into a corner or two would I realise my mistake! So I wished to myself there was a better way.
I tossed the sheet into the air before attempting to fit it onto the mattress, and fuck-me if there wasn’t a little tag sewn onto the sheet saying ‘SIDE’. Why have I never noticed this before, and why the fuck did it happen mere seconds after me griping about fitted sheets?
Lots of modern sheets have a side tag or a top/bottom tag. You’ll also find a magic marker can write TOP/BOTTOM or SIDE along the middle of an edge right near the elastic very easily & permanently. And once the sheet is on the bed the writing is hidden.
Just make sure you get the sheet on the bed properly before marking it. Don’t ask.
I was recently casting about for a new hangout to add to my list. So there I am at the same-old-same-old yakking with the random person on teh adjacent stool & make my gripe. They said “Have you ever been to [whatever], just around the corner?” “Nope. Never noticed it.” So I went. It was great! Convenient, timely, serendipitous. A trifecta of good.
We just bought a new (used) house. We knew that we had to sell our previous house to make it all work in the end.
We found the perfect house for us. We bought it. So, we MUST sell our ‘old’ house and it must be done before this winter. This is not a house you can easily shut down, it should be occupied. We are both retiring in the fall.
I was working from home. Some looky loos came by and I (not the real estate agent) showed the house. That was fortunate, because I can really point out the good aspects of the house.
They bought it. We worked our asses off moving out. Many SUV loads of personal stuff on a trip to the new house that is 130 miles away on mountain roads.
It’s done. I have very fond memories of the ‘old’ house. Some fantastic things about it. Our new house will be great for us though. Not a single regret, none at all.
When my Dad got old, he struggled with climbing stairs. So I invited him and my Mum to sell their two-storey house and move to my town, buying a nearby bungalow.
I found a suitable bungalow, so we just needed to sell their house.
Two days after they put it on the market, a Rolls-Royce with chauffeur parked outside the house. A middle-aged bloke in a very expensive suit got out, followed by a gorgeous young woman.
As the visitors discussed buying the property, my parents decided this was a wealthy married man and his mistress (the house was for her.)
After the woman said “Darling, I love it!” the man said “I’ll buy it right now for cash.”
And he duly turned up at the bank shortly afterwards with a suitcase containing £250,000* (about $338,000.)
Our most recent purchase of sheets was for ones with a woven stripe - all one color. Makes it much easier to figure out which direction is “vertical” - though of course if we don’t have the overhead lights on, it can be tough to see.
I have some sheets like that. I have housekeepers who change the bed weekly. I greet them when they arrive then leave them to their work and I return home a couple hours later after they’re gone.
One time I came home to find the striped sheets on the bed. With side-to-side stripes on the pillow cases and top sheet but top-to-bottom stripes on the bottom sheet. The fitted bottom sheet is just close enough to square you can get it on sideways if you try hard enough.
I left it that way until they came back next week. Then showed them what they’d done. We all had a pretty good laugh, and it hasn’t happened since.
I often cursed my power miter saw, as it never seemed to cut completely through the wood. I put up with it for a couple of years and just figured that it was a glitch for that model.
Then one day I was looking at tool purchases I had made from Amazon because I was going to be selling a lot of them prior to our move. When I looked at the picture of the miter saw, I noticed that the blade arm was raised. WTF??!! It’s a compound miter saw? Went out to the garage, and immediately spotted the blade arm release knob that I had never noticed before. Major head smack. I may never have discovered it if we weren’t preparing for a move.
This is back when I was in my early 20s, working my way through college by working at a hotel. I was a roaming cashier, meaning I worked wherever needed, filling in for other cashiers on breaks or having called in sick-- working the various restaurants in the hotel, conventions selling drink tickets, etc.
This night I was working the glass elevator entry to the sky restaurant and lounge on the roof. I had been flirting with a young woman who also worked in the hotel, and wanted to take her out after work. But these were the days when I lived paycheck to paycheck, and I was dead broke at the time. But I was young, my life was ahead of me, and I was probably happier (certainly more carefree) than I am now.
I was pondering this dilemma of how to pull off an after-work date with no money, when a guy came up to me and asked if he and his wife could get a table in the sky restaurant. I called up and got them a table. I pulled no strings, it was just a slow night, but he gave me a $10 tip. Which almost never happened. A little later I found a $20 bill somebody dropped. $30 in my pocket? Date’s on!
I wish I could finish up my serendipity story with “…and that woman became my wife!” But nothing much came of the date, as I recall
I was working at an investment firm, when I was unexpectedly fired. A week or two later, I saw a job at a college IT department that seemed to fit me, so I applied and got the job.
I found out later that they were hiring two people, and wrote the requirements to fit a person they knew who had worked part time. It just happened that his background matched mine.
And if I hadn’t be fired, I never would have seen the ad.
Meeting my wife
I was out of work and my first wife saw a notice about a writing class. I wasn’t sure if I should spend the money, but she urged me to take it.
By the end of the class, she left me. I was blindsided by it, but one of the women in the class had a crush on me (mostly because she figured it wouldn’t come to anything – she had never dated seriously and wasn’t sure how to deal with it). Of course, I started seeing her, and when the divorce came through, we married.
If I hadn’t taken that course, it never would have happened.
(Meeting your significant other is very often serendipitous.)
Yeah. My wife and I both work for the same county government (different departments). There used to be a county fair every year. I’m not much into that but I went. County workers chipped in/volunteered to help (sometimes you got volunteered, but that’s another story). Anyway, the main attraction at the fair is a rodeo. Really not my thing. But the county folks including me got roped into helping. So at one point we where all hanging out at/on a county work truck. I was sitting on the roof rack, my to be wife sitting on the hood. We got to talking.
Yeah, but it just fit too perfect. I ended up getting the calves for the cowboys to rope. Ya see, they pick certain ones, so I would go into the pen and find #34 or whatever “But #5 is right here, #34 is over in the corner” I was wearing shorts and running shoes, got kicked a couple of times.
Ended up visiting the on site ambulance asking for some rubbing alcohol or other topical antibiotic. I know they have those little individual packets. Probably 100’s of them. They wouldn’t give me nothin. They probably thought it was some sort of liability, I still say they where assholes.
got out, followed by a gorgeous young woman.
