The umbrella

This is all true.

Two things I learned before the year drew to a close:

You don’t always see what is there. And sometimes what you imagine is there, probably isn’t, though I’m not totally convinced about this last one.

I bought an outdoor umbrella at the end of last summer and was thankful for the shade it gave on hot days, though it was annoying on windy nights because I could hear it flapping around when I was in bed. Sometimes the wind whipped it into a frenzy and I’d think I must take it down tomorrow. Of course, come the morning the wind would have died down and I’d forget, but I’d be reminded about it the next windy night. As soon as summer was done, I packed the umbrella away in the garage. I brought it out in November last year, remembered the annoying flapping and had a good idea. A skirt of mine had a tie threaded through the waist and the ties had bobbly beady things on the end, but one bobbly beady thing fell off one end so the tie disappeared into the nether regions of the waist gathering never to be retrieved. I knew what that meant – 30 minutes of trying to coax the tie through the seam and quite frankly, I couldn’t be bothered, so I pulled the tie out of the skirt and, lightbulb moment, used it to tie up the umbrella. Great! No more flapping umbrella in the wind. When the umbrella was up I kept the tie in a box of all-sorts on the floor. One day while vacuuming, yep, the tie got sucked up, but I was quick enough to grab it before it totally disappeared up the tube, pulling it out triumphantly, nearly, only to see it totally disappear down the vacuum tube as I let the tension off. Oh well, I’d have to find something else for the umbrella, because there was no way, I say NO WAY I was going to open the vacuum to get the tie out of the bag.

I need to digress. I am sort of terrified, sometimes not too much, but at other times I have anxiety nightmares about the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I believe there’s a whole bunch of us out there spooked by the contents in our cleaners! The thing is, I suck up spiders. Yeah, flies, too, and ants and anything that comes along. But it is the spiders that freak me out. I love it when there’s a new bag in the vacuum. I feel safe, smug, knowing it is empty, but as time goes on, I start to fret, and begin thinking that there might be a whole village living in the bag, cities, even, with baby spiders being rocked in prams, an advanced civilisation, maybe, with schools and universities for spiderettes to learn all the things that spiders need to know. Or maybe just one giant spider who feeds on the newcomers as they enter the bag. God. I don’t know. It’s freaky! But empty the vacuum bag? No way. It is a veryVERY traumatic experience, one that I have to psyche myself into it over a period of weeks. I know the bag is getting full, because the vacuum stops sucking as well as it should, and I know if I continue using it, it might overheat and blow up. And if that happened, and bits of spiders got blown around the room, well, I might have to have a permanent lie-down in a white room. But I have to be practical and the place needs to be vacuumed. If someone comes around, it’s a bit awkward to ask, ‘would you mind emptying my vacuum bag?’. I have done it. But it ruined a friendship, because it was considered just a little too weird, a bit, sort of, hyper. So the red and grey shiny Dutch thing with two sets of wheels, bendy hose, and, seriously, what looks like a face on its front, just stares out at me, day after day, taunting me with its mega village of little critters waiting to burst out. I warned you I was going to digress … to get back on topic … the skirt tie that got sucked up in the vacuum … once it was gone, it was sayonara.

I was lowering the umbrella at the end of the day, and it was a bit windy, so I was thinking about what I would use to tie it up, when something caught my eye. Little tag thingies flapping in the breeze! The umbrella has its own ties! I mean, really, who knew? Not me. But now I do.

Now I just need someone to help with replacing the bag in the vacuum cleaner. Oh, and taking the car through the car wash from time to time. Mmm, that’s right, I can’t do that anymore. It’s suffocatingly hot inside the car and all I want to do is open the window and get some air, or just bloody well get out. I can’t breathe and just want it to end before I scream or wet my pants (or both) but the big hairy monster thingies come at me banging on the glass and I end up being seriously traumatised and burst out of the car hyperventilating and white in the face at the end of the cycle, sometimes before I drive the car forward on the green light and out of the car wash to safety. I’ve used the car wash twice in 6 years, and can’t again, that’s obvious. It’s the tap+hose+me going forward. I’m okay with that, though I do love it when I see a sign saying CAR WASH put up by school kids raising funds. I’m in like Flynn and regardless of how well, or not, they do the task, I always give them a tip.