On The line

This Mothers Day, instead of flowers and candies and other normal Mothers day fare, I asked my husband to put a clothes line up for me. As part of my country living fantasy, the idea of drying my clothes in a dryer seemed a little to easy and the only solution was to dry my clothes old school.
We went, family in tow, to our local hardware store (Lowe's is a brand started about 45 minutes from where we live, so much like buying Tyson chicken, we still get to count it as a local business and it's always important to buy local). They had several nifty devices for installing your own clothes line. One was a snappy line that pulled out all retractable like and was $13.00. We placed this in our cart and looked at the large octagonal varieties that my husband said looked trashy. I am not sure why that would look any more trashy than hanging your ripped undies from a tree, which is what I had been doing, but he was raised in a higher tax bracket than I and is much more "down" with what is proper.
When we came to the widget isle my husband found some pulleys and clothes line and decided that he was going to make me a clothes line himself. It would be twice as long and would have the pulleys so I could stand on the porch and pull the laundry to me. How exciting!
We got to the register and paid $19.00 for the parts to build the thing, costing more then the clothes line we were going to buy (making it yourself does not always save you money). It took us several hours to get the darn thing up, hanging one end from a tree and the other from my front porch. Finally it was done and I washed my first load of clothes giddily in anticipation. I set out my entire load of laundry and the weight of the wet clothes pulled my new clothesline down to the ground. I tried not to act disappointed, but my husband went to bed that night with promises to "fix it" so I carried on happily with my new clothes line.
Upon waking the next morning I found that the knot in the line had been weak and all my clean clothes were now resting on the ground. I picked them up and shook out the dirt and put them away (I don't like to repeat work after I have already done it once).
My husband retied the line and pulled the tree pulley higher so that the sag is gone but now I have to stand on a paint can to load the laundry on it.



This morning I woke up to find that the wind had blown and taken my pants with it up to the higher branches of a locust tree. My son happily got the ladder and pulled them down for me.
I am happy with my clothes line, even though it has its problems, it was made with love and good intentions. Hopefully it will last me many years and my laundry hanging skills will improve and well as my electric bill.