Admittedly, when you live alone like I do, there really isn’t much use in setting house rules, let alone following them.
After all, if you track in mud, you are the one that is going to have to clean it up.
If you don’t replace the toilet paper roll, there just isn’t any toilet paper.
When you open the refrigerator door and smell something funky, you are going to be the one to investigate.
Yet, even considering the stark reality of living solo, over the years I have developed a pair of steadfast rules. The type of rules that I never break.
Those rules are that, on Sunday night, no matter what the last week or weekend were like, or what is on the docket for the coming days, before my head hits the pillow, the dishes are done, and the laundry room is emptied out.
This week, I was just about forced to break one of those rules.
On Sunday, when I was finishing up dinner and starting to fill the sink to tackle the dishes—me having been gone for the previous four days made that day’s haul a relatively light load—I realized that my drain stop had gone missing.
Talk about a head-scratcher!
As I noted earlier, there is no one else living at this address, so there is no one else to accuse of stealing the stopper. Furthermore, I had been out of town for work the previous four days, meaning that there were no dishes in the sink.
I was perplexed as all getout.
H igh and low, throughout my kitchen I searched, but to no avail. Finally, I decided that, if I was going to find that little kitchen tool, then I would simply have to wait until I stumbled across it. Other arrangements were made to stop the sink, I tackled the dishes and moved on.
I was in no mood to go hunting for a small, but relatively important object.
After all, at that point in the weekend, I had already done enough searching to hold me over for a spell.
While covering the NSAA State Wrestling Tournament in Omaha over the weekend, I, like all members of the media, was forced to prominently display, around my neck, my credentials to be matside. The little placards are punched, and in my case, attached to a lanyard. Unfortunately for me, several weeks ago the punch in my credentials had snapped, leaving the little card dangling, and, at some point while covering the medal rounds of the tournament on Saturday, it fell off.
Of course, at the moment when it tumbled to the ground, I wasn’t paying attention, and by the time I noticed I was without credentials, my day had already been well underway.
Normally, I would have just cut my losses and moved on, but at the state wrestling tournament—really any state championship event—having the right credentials is critical, as people check early and often. That meant that, if I ever wanted to exit and enter the building for the remainder of the tournament, attend the state basketball tournament, or cover events at state track, I needed to find the little placard that I had lost.
The CHI Health Center in Omaha is a big place. On state wrestling weekend, it is also a crowded place. So, for the better part of an hour, in between taking photos and talking to coaches, I retraced my steps from earlier that day, looking, scanning, searching. From the hallways to the men’s room. From media row to the sides of the mat and everywhere in between, I looked as hard and as often as I could.
Still, I came up empty- handed.
Thankfully, while I was wandering around in a panic, I had mentioned to a couple different people that I had been skirting the rules following the loss of my credentials and that, if they happened to stumble across them, I would be appreciative if they would let me know.
Those conversations paid dividends as, later in the morning, as I was pecking away on a story, a member of the media approached me with my media credentials in hand.
I could not have been more thankful at that moment to have had a helping hand. My eyes had failed me, but, thankfully, his had been strong enough to find what I had been frantically searching for. Suddenly back in compliance, I got back to work, and I vowed that, when I returned home, I was going to jerry rig a more suitable way to display my media credentials.
While I got that done on Sunday, for most of the day I had still been scratching my head about the fate of my drain stop.
Luckily for me, my Sunday night routine is two pronged.
After the dishes were cleaned, I turned my attention to the laundry. While hanging up clothes, I looked down into the drum of the washing machine, and there was the stopper that I had been so frantically searching for.
As I folded and shelved my clean clothes, I couldn’t help but smile at my luck. Over the weekend, I had lost a series of important tools, both to my professional life and in my personal life. Yet, through the help of others, and some blind luck, I was able to find what had gone missing.
Now, my dishes are clean, and no more rules will be broken.
