Where Is The Change Bottle?

Where Is The Change Bottle?

 

We are currently remodeling the kitchen in our townhouse.  The downstairs is a shamble.  Nothing is where it used to be and everything is covered up with sheets or plastic.  Dinner is either eating out, or ordering in.

Last night we decided to order Chinese.  Delivery with tip was twenty-three dollars and forty cents.  I had twenty-three dollars at the ready, I needed the forty cents.

“Get it from downstairs” Mrs. Cranky said.

Downstairs on a divider by the front door we usually have a bottle where we throw loose change.  Every four or five months we deposit the loose change in the bank.  It adds up…sometimes over sixty dollars.

Anyway, when Mrs. C. told me to get the change from down stairs I assumed she meant the change bottle.  I went down stairs and the bottle was nowhere to be found.  I had to holler upstairs:

“Where is the change bottle?”

“Downstairs by the front door.”

The direction battle was now underway.

I could not find the bottle. 

“On the left of the front door or on the right of the front door?”

“On the left!”

I could not find the bottle on the left of the front door.  “On the left facing the front door or on the left as I come in the front door?”

“Facing the door on the glass table under the plastic tarp!”

I lifted the tarp and searched the glass table for five minutes.  Still I could not find the bottle.  I have gone through this battle many times, I was ready to surrender but I did not want to give her the smug satisfaction of stomping downstairs only to pull the bottle out of thin air right where I have been searching.

I had another out.  Even though it was raining I went outside to my car where I knew I had another loose change stash.

Mrs. C. heard the door open.  “Don’t you go outside for the money, it is right downstairs!”  She shouted as I heard her begin to stomp down the stairs. 

I went to my car to retrieve the forty cents.  When I returned Mrs. C. was waiting.  “Look here is the money right here, right in the small wicker basket where I keep my keys and loose change.”

“The basket…THE BASKET?  Who knew about the basket?  We keep all the loose change in the change bottle.  Where is the change bottle?”

“I don’t know.  You can’t use that for spending anyway, the change bottle is only for saving.  I keep loose spending change in the basket.”

“How the frig should I know that?  I asked where the change bottle was.  Why didn’t you say ‘There is change in the small basket on the glass table under the plastic tarp to the left of the door as you face it’ instead of ‘it is by the front door’?

“Because you should know we can’t spend change from the change bottle and that there is always change in the basket, besides you can never find anything anyway!”

And yet I still love Mrs. Cranky.