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Want Something For Free From The Universe? Just Be Specific!
By Sid | September 25, 2007
The excerpt below is from a series of musings from The Lazy HouseHusband Blog
With summer quickly approaching, I mentioned to my wife that it would be great if we had an outdoor table to put on the back porch. That way, instead of spending the day indoors working on my computer while Destructo, our three year-old, rips my bedroom office apart (”you just keep working Daddy … I’m playing!”), I could sit out the back with my notebook enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, watching over our youngest son. I pointed out to my wife that we could also sit outside and have breakfast together on weekends, and she agreed that it would be a terrific idea.
Anyway, last Sunday we were driving back home from a family outing, when my wife suddenly stopped the car outside a house, a few blocks away from our home. “What’s the matter?” I asked her. She told me she had just spotted a yard sale and maybe we could find an outdoor table there. “No way!” I snapped. “Let’s just go home! Besides, I don’t want to pay for a table. I’m sure we can find an outdoor wooden table for free.”
Sure enough, today as I was driving the kids to school, I drove past a house where someone was throwing out a large, round outdoors wooden table. Where I live, we have regular council collection days where people throw away unwantedappliances, furniture, equipment etc., many of them in reasonable condition and some just needing a little repair. I’m not a Mr. Fix-It type of person and I can’t stand having more junk in the house, so I generally don’t take notice of these collection days, unless we’re after something in particular, like a chest of drawers for the kids clothes, or an exercise trampoline, and so on.
At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the table, however, and it looked like just the kind of outdoor patio table I was searching for. I made a mental note to return there after dropping the kids off at school.
When I drove back, the table was still sitting there. I parked the vehicle in their driveway, opened up the rear door of our family wagon and lowered the back seats to make room for the table. I quickly inspected the table and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, so I cleared the top off some of the things the owners had piled on it and started lifting it towards the back of the vehicle.
Unfortunately, it was too large to fit in. I tried tilting it this way and that way, but the round table top was just too large to fit. What a bummer …
Read the complete article here: The Lazy HouseHusband
Topics: Parenting Advice |