On a Day when the Inner Ditz is Loose, Steve Comes to the Rescue

This is Steve.

This is Steve's truck, not mine.   I have a 2001 Dodge Dakota, a mid-sized pickup.

On a day when I should have stayed in the house and tried not to hurt myself or do major damage  to anything in the house, at a time when my inner DITZ (as in “ditzy”) is on full display and successfully avoiding my feeble attempts to keep her in check, and when I really, really shouldn’t have attempted to cut a load of firewood, Steve saved my bacon, and did a lot more.

Steve to the Rescue.   It’s a story that perhaps began yesterday.  I say “perhaps” because I try to forget about the times my DITZ is loose to discombobulate my very existence. 

So, yesterday I cut up a rack of spareribs and put them in the crock pot, anticipating a tasty dinner when I returned from picking up litter.   When I got home, I could smell the scent of cooking pork as I removed my boots and changed into clean clothing in the garage.

Oddly, I couldn’t detect the luscious aroma of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce, and I realized that I didn’t recall pouring the sauce over the meat.  As I headed to the kitchen, I also couldn’t remember putting the lid on the crock pot.  And so it was.   No sauce, no lid, no ribs for dinner.  I turned the pot to low and let the ribs cook all night.

I should have known better.  Once the DITZ is loose, my attempts as being a responsible, capable adult come to naught.   Nonetheless.

I unloaded the litter-picking paraphernalia from the truck and loaded the firewood-cutting paraphernalia.  Off I went, a few miles up the highway to where the US Forest Service has made decks of timber available for firewood.

I found some wood I wanted and started cutting.   A rain shower passed through and I went to the truck and closed the windows, successfully locking my truck keys IN the truck when I closed the door.   I looked at the fellow cutting across the dirt road from me and begged a ride to my house to get my spare keys.

I didn’t tell him, but I also needed to get a right-hand glove as I’d managed to bring two left-hand gloves.  

We introduced ourselves and chatted on the way.   His name is Steve and he lives about a mile from me, though we’d never before met.   He's a geologist with the USFS.  Then we returned to the decks of timber and went to work.

I cut a bunch of hemlock (a heavy wood compared to spruce).  Steve must have seen me struggling to load my truck.

I’ll make this short.   He told me to pull down where he’d been cutting and finished loading my truck.  I loaded the smaller wood and he did the heavy-lifting.

I started for home to unload the truck and half-way there, I remembered that I’d put the spare keys on a narrow ledge where the cap on the truck’s bed met the truck wall.   I stopped and looked.   No keys!   I’d lost the spare keys.

When I reached home, I unloaded the truck, all the while bemoaning the expense of replacing the keys and the all-important electronic fob.   As I threw out the final piece, I looked down and there were the keys, nicely nestled in the sawdust in the truck bed.

Back at the wood-cutting site, Steve was loading his own ¾-ton truck with wood that he then drove to my house and unloaded for me!  

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

“Those two words are enough,” he said.   “But I’ll tell you what.  You pick up the highway litter than I don’t and we’ll call it even.”

“Let me know when you want another load of wood,” he said, giving me his phone number.

I wonder if Steve always helps ditzy old women, but I’m sure glad he helped this one.

PS:    If there's one thing I'm really, really good at, it's making messes and getting dirty.

Sawdust all over my bottle of tea.

What the well-dressed ditzy old woman wears.