that is the sound of my phone, hitting the water.
and there it went, gently bobbing out of sight, down into the murky depths of lake springfield.
oh boy.
it’s been an iffy, not so great, a little bit terrible, nerve-wracking kind of week, for a whole bunch of reasons.
last night i’d planned to have bev and toun and mom over for pizza and a boat ride.
i kept thinking of cancelling, because there are way way way to many things i need to do this week, and it just hasn’t been happening so great. but i decided i deserved a little fun, so i went ahead with my plans.
the pizza part went fine, because bev picked up the pizzas for us on her way here. dinner on the deck was good, except for the mosquitoes that tried to suck all the blood out of our bodies.
kevin didn’t want to go on the boat with us, so the rest of us toddled down to the water.
because it’s labor day weekend there were lots and lots of boats out, making good-sized waves. we sat in the boat, mom lowered the motor, and i started untying the lines.
but then the boat didn’t start. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? after a summer with no boat, and only about three boat rides at most since we got out boat back, now it wasn’t working again.
i called kevin, who went to get the battery charger, and i suggested that we sit at the dock because the boat was bouncing all around. but everybody thought it was fun, kind of like we were on a boat ride even though we weren’t.
i decided to re-tie all the lines so the boat wouldn’t smack into the dock. i managed to get one side tied, then walked to the other side.
and reached over to get the boat line, and….plop.
my bright pink ultra-waterproof case quickly disappeared out of sight.
by this time kevin was there – i think he was actually testing the battery at this point – and i said, “i have to get it.” and i jumped in.
i do have to say the water was quite refreshing, but of course there were those giant waves.
everything was murky after that, mostly the dark lake water.
at first i was too nervous to try to touch the bottom, and a little nervous that the boat was going to crush me because it was rocking all around. but toun and bev hung onto the other side of the boat so it wouldn’t go anywhere – kevin had re-tied it closer to the dock, so there wasn’t so much risk of me dying from being crushed.
kevin went up to the house and got the peach-picker pole, thinking he could fish it out, but that didn’t work. but i grabbed onto the pole which he was holding onto, and used it to guide me down. i kept dunking down, swooshing my feet back and forth on the muddy lake bottom, trying to find the phone.
i got a little more brave and started diving down, now feeling the bottom with my hands, sweeping back and forth. a couple of times i thought i found it, but it was just rocks.
kevin ran up to the house again, this time for goggles. the only pair he could find had a wrecked strap, so he tried tying a string around it. i attempted to use them, but of course that didn’t work. he then gave me his diving mask, and after a little confusion on my part about how to get it on, bobbing there in the water, i started diving down again wearing it. he’d also brought down a waterproof flashlight.
i did feel more confident for some reason, having those goggles and being able to open my eyes, but of course i couldn’t see a thing because the water is too muddy plus it was starting to get dark outside.
we had mom call my phone a few times, thinking that maybe we’d see the light under the water. nope. i do recall that she left me a message, something like “i’m sure you’ll find your phone.”
and like i said, it was all kind of a blur, and all i know is that i spent a long time bobbing in and out of the water. at one point i remember that mom rattled off all this stuff kevin was out getting for me – the goggles and the flashlight and all – and i asked her how she possibly knew all this. she said she’d called him, of course. since i’d been mostly underwater, i’d missed all of that.
i finally gave up. i’d hit my head against the dock pole once, and one time when i was down there i panicked because i’d been down longer and was pretty sure i was going to run out of air.
i swam away from the dock, and it was quite pleasant, swimming in the dark. by this time the many boats had left, so the water was pretty calm. i climbed out, and they said i’d been at it for an hour.
good grief.
kevin had a towel ready for me. it was still quite warm outside, so i wasn’t cold, but very waterlogged, and i was happy that he continued to be so thoughtful and kind.
we trudged back up to the house and toun declared it was the funnest boat ride she’d had. at least somebody enjoyed themselves.
after i showered, i got very weepy because of losing all that stuff on my phone. i have lots of little lists on it – projects i’ve wanted to do over the summer, plans for next summer gardening, lists of what we did on some trip, lists of books and movies i wanted to see – all kinds of stuff.
because of some phone issue, i’m pretty sure i won’t be able to retrieve any of that because i don’t think it’s all stored somewhere up there in the intangible icloud.
at least i recently backed up my many photos.
i won’t have the last video i took of mollie on my phone anymore.
and of course there are all those contacts – i basically won’t be able to call more than about three people now. not that i call many more people than that, but i bet i’ll miss having that ability.
ironically, this week as i’ve been trying to de-clutter, i found a notebook that i wanted to use, and saw the list of all the phone numbers i’d written down when i switched cell phone companies. it was a huge pain, and a lot of numbers, but it was the only way to do it. i threw those pages in our giant-sized recycling bin.
so that’s another fun thing i get to do today, empty out the almost-full bin and try to find those pages.
things seem kind of bleak, here at 4:30 in the morning. i woke up at three and realized i wasn’t going to be getting right back to sleep anytime soon.
in the morning, after i’ve hopefully gone back to bed and slept a little, i’ll start my day by jumping in the water and trying again. but not for an hour, because the odds of the phone actually working after being at the bottom of the lake seem pretty slim. it’s an ultra-waterproof case, like i said, but still…
plus i feel that the odds of finding it are also pretty slight.
kevin talked about the emergency diving people, but i said they probably just rescue people. kevin said that maybe they’d be happy to do it, for the experience.
maybe when i wake up he’ll already have called them, and they’ll already be here finding my phone.
and then there all the other things that i have to do – we’re having a garage sale next weekend, which has been looming over my head. there are many, many, many tubs of things that have to be gone through and sorted and priced. signs to make. stuff do do.
ugh.
i really, really need to get back to sleep now.
i hope your labor day weekend is going more smoothly than mine.
ok then,
mrs. still kind of waterlogged-feeling hughes.