Why not? - English

13-22 Hoop Splash

Penny had taken today and tomorrow off because her grandmother was turning 80 and she wanted to celebrate a big party. But the old lady needed help with the construction, the preparations and tomorrow with the cleaning and dismantling. Penny wanted to organize this with her parents, uncles and aunts and a few cousins.

Penny had wished she could introduce me to her family that day. But since Steele had put me on the late shift today, I was only able to come along this morning and spend two hours helping set up the tables and chairs in the hall where the celebration was to take place. I was still able to get to know her grandmother because, to my great astonishment, she helped herself. I had never seen a woman carry a stack of 5 chairs at once across a room half the size of a soccer field - and the woman was 80! Three attempts to take the heavy chairs from her and to persuade her to take things slowly since it was her birthday had ultimately earned me the comment that I didn't have to play the hero here, plus the threat of a headbutt if I did wouldn't stop asking to get her off work. Now I understood where Penny got her emancipated thinking from.

As soon as I got home, I was able to change and go to work. As I got there, I saw Ellie standing in front of a huge stack of boxes and she asked me where they came from. All I could think of was that it had to be equipment for the ocean rescue center and I thought correctly.

We drove it into the harbor after trying in vain for 2 hours to pack everything onto the trailer, but somewhere a box kept slipping or another didn't fit properly into a gap. It had been maddening. Even with Saturn's help, we couldn't do any better and in the end we were still left with one box that just didn't want to go on the trailer. By the time Elvis joined us and within a few minutes, everything was perfectly stacked on the trailer. When Ellie confused asked how that had worked, Elvis had simply said that he was pretty good at puzzles.

Just as I hadn't responded to Ellie's repeated suggestions to ride twice because I simply didn't want to give up, I was just as impressed by the fact that Elvis had managed it so well and I hadn't. But you could train anything, right?

So after our mission and the subsequent tire rolling competition with the children and Trevor on the river bank - which I won, by the way - I called Charlie and had him give me all the puzzles they still had lying around from the children, which are now were spread out on the large dining table in the kitchen.

It was quiet this evening and so for the last 3 hours I had already completed 2 puzzles with 500 pieces with whales and dolphins and 3 puzzles with 100 pieces with characters from some of the twins' children's series, while now I was poring over the edge of a 1000 pieces puzzle and not even two pieces fits together. Why did these parts all have to look so similar? And who bought a picture with a waterfall at all - and really only a waterfall in it? There was nothing to base this motif on. No rocks on the edge or anywhere else, no grass or foaming spray in the lower area. That was even worse than loading the boxes onto the trailer this afternoon! Now I understood why Charlie had said that I should definitely let him know when I actually finished it and definitely not take it apart again. Bronwyn had bought it to hang in the Cafe, but surely both of them had given up on finishing it much earlier than I had. I would do it and then I would stick a sign with my name on the picture frame once it was hanging in the Cafe so everyone could see that I had done it!

My phone rang and I pulled it out of my pocket, lost in thought, trying to figure out where the corner would fit best. I ran my finger across the screen and held it to my ear with a curt 'Hello'.

"Sam, I think your ear is wonderful, but this is a video call!" I heard the voice of the love of my life and immediately lowered the phone to look at it. I could actually see her and she looked at me, both amused and a little confused by my behavior.