This morning, 
This would be a nice, much needed break from the rain and the challenging life in and around our not very comfy house - a build up of a series of days with hardly a ray of sunshine and plenty of rain. Pretty cold Spring weather with some hail and even a bit of wet snow.
Trust me, going outside, at night, for a pee and then getting snowed on is a bit of a shock to the system.
Fast forward a bit... we eventually reached the beach and Clare wanted to change her wellies for boots.
She had brought another pair of shoes along.
But when she looked for them in the car, they weren't there.
She said that she had put them in a plastic bag.
And then it dawned on me that, just after leaving, I had thrown two plastic bags out, in a trashbin near our house. Including the one that apparently contained her boots!!!
Both bags had been in the back of the car and I was the one throwing the trash out.
When she found out that this had happened, Clare obviously got very annoyed and emotional over the fact that her perfectly good shoes had ended up in the trash.
"These are my favorite and most precious shoes!"
not her exact words but close
As per usual, I felt blamed ( the little boy inside of me ) and started defending myself:
"I just tried to throw out the trash. There were two plastic bags in the car", etc.
And Clare got extra annoyed by me trying to defend myself.
Saying "sorry" didn't help much either.
Whatever I said, it probably made things worse.
and in a moment like that, it's hard for me not to talk
Clare: "You should really be more attentive..."
The discussion that followed was quite a bit longer and we both ended up not feeling good.
After we had finished butting heads talking, Clare was close to driving straight back home. But we decided otherwise.
Long story short, it was hard to enjoy the following walk on the beach. We were both emotional and it was cold and windy ( we were the only two people there ). Aside from that, Clare's wellies were wet on the inside.
We gave in after a couple of minutes and returned to the car.
We did manage though to talk things out - we are pretty good at that - and were already holding hands, again.
❤️
Afterwards, we bought a bunch of nice things in the supermarket ( including sushi, that we inmediately devoured in the car ) and then we drove back home.
The drive back was quite enjoyable. We continued listening to a podcast that we had started with on the way to the sea.
And, in my mind, I prayed for Clare's boots to still be in that same trashbin.
I had told her, earlier, that this would be quite likely, as trash isn't picked up daily where we live and it's a bin outside the village. There was a still a voice in my head that told me that they might be gone though. This would be the worst case scenario.
If so, would Clare ever forgive me? Or would she boot me out of her life?
Anyhow, when we returned home, about 4 hours after having left, we stopped at the bin in question.
I stepped out of the car, walked to the garbage bin and opened its cover. I took out one bag of trash ( with plastic and metal ) and, to my delight and relief, found the plastic bag with Clare's boots underneath it.
I fished it out triumphantly, walked back to the car and showed a thumbs up to Clare, as well as the bag holding her boots.
She smiled at me :^)
All was well and they lived happily ever after
I will definitely be more attentive, next time I throw the trash out.
Have you ever had a similar experience and, if so, do you want to share it here?
