No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

We are firm believers in Giving To Others, and we make sure our kids share our belief system.

The majority of people in this world are more than happy that we feel, and act, this way.

They would be termed 'recipients'.

To that end, today, though we try to reserve Sundays for Family Time, The Big Guy volunteered his day to put special rubber strips on the new spiling which supports The! New! Hoist! which is sustaining serious damage from a visiting boat.

That the Town had to spend money to prevent further damage caused by an outside entity is a Bone Of Serious Contention around here. In true Island Fashion, there was misinformation, and some sneaky underhanded doings.

Don't give me that look; it happens in your town, too. You just aren't as aware of it. There are only 38 of us here. We see and hear everything.

In an effort to avoid confrontation, the Town spent taxpayer's money on special rubber strips which are meant to absorb the damage; they can be replaced far more easily and cheaply than the spiling.

If this works, and avoids confrontation, and keeps everybody happy (yeah, that's gonna happen), it was money well spent!

For those of you who don't understand the full import of The! New! Hoist!, I refer you to this story, in which I vow to have a hoist.

And I now vow to protect The! Hoist!.

The kicker is: I have yet to have had occasion to use The Hoist.

I was away during the bulk of the inclement weather dealing with my Mom's brief illness (if you can call it that), and subsequent death, and the winter was a fairly mild one.

Not that there needs to be inclement weather to use The Hoist. We could use it every day, I suppose.

I stand behind the need for The Hoist. Nothing has changed.

And so it was that The Big Guy spent the day bolting rubber to the side of the spiling with 52 lag bolts. Now boats will slide effortlessly up and down the pole with the tide, instead of scraping away at the wood, splintering the spiling.

Huzzah!

And because No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, when the job was completed and The Big Guy was putting his tools away, he dropped a wrench overboard.

He hates to lose his tools. It's a throwback to his construction/SeaBee days.

So he looked around the boat for something to use to fish the wrench back up. He found, of all things, the magnetic funeral flag from Ma's funeral. (It had been inadvertently left on our windshield after the service. We drove all the way back to Maine before we noticed it.

Why is it on the boat?

I couldn't say.)

He took the magnet from that flag, and fished the wrench up from the bottom.

And in true Louie Vazza fashion, the magnet wasn't strong enough to get it to the surface! It took four attempts to get it aboard!

We laughed our butts off at that at dinner.

Everybody who knows Louie will get a kick out of that.

Good old Luigi.

Thank You, my husband, for giving up your Sunday to Give Unto Others yet again.

Your reward will be waiting for you in Heaven, I guess, because you aren't getting squat down here.