Morning all. I hope you survived your Monday and are now having a smooth and easy flow into the rest of the work week. My Monday was a bit bumpy but hopefully the bumps are cleared and all will be well. So as Tuesday starts, let’s kick it off with the morning prompt. Fifteen minutes on the timer and away we go.
I like the hiding of the documents. I am just going to need to figure out the story a well as what the documents were before I know how to continue. But I do like the disposal.
Tuesday, October 6th: The shredder whined as it ate the documents.
The shredder whined as it ate the documents. It chewed through the paper and slowed. I sighed and pulled it out. “Take your time, Nora,” I told myself. I slowly backed the stack of papers out. I split the mass into smaller piles. The machine still whined but it chomped through them quickly and easily.
The documents were confetti on the other end as the cross-cutting blades left little reconstruction possibilities. At the moment, that was a very good thing. I reminded myself to keep the piles small as I fed them into the machine.
I wanted this task done and tempering my impatience caused me almost physical pain. It was only the knowledge that if the machine broke down, I would be completely screwed that kept me in check.
If I could have shoved all the documents in at once I would have.
“Not an option.”
Still in time the pile of papers shrunk and the bag of confetti grew. Knowing I still wasn’t done I sent a couple of pieces of blank paper through the machine just to ensure that there were no remaining bits of my paperwork still in the machine’s teeth. After I looked at the machine and the bag of confetti. I went to the pile of junk mail I had stashed on one of the shelves in the garage. I took half of the stack of colorful advertisements back to the machine and carefully fed them into the machine. They were far more colorful than the paperwork had been and it was easy to tell the white from the color.
‘Plus, it is creative camouflage,’ I told myself. I reminded myself to shred the rest of the circulars and leave them in the shredding bin once I disposed of this lot. The grocery store circulars turned into confetti would save me a whole lot more than the coupons they provided ever could.
I turned off the machine and picked up the bag. I took the bag out of the garage and into the back garden. The yard was fenced in with a tall privacy fence. In addition there were enough trees around the edge of the yards, both mine and the neighbors to either side that even if the fences weren’t there, no one could see in.
It was an interesting arrangement. Everyone put privacy fencing just inside their property lines. They sacrificed an inch or two outside the property line. Everyone put up their own fence, allowing that gap. It meant that the back of my fence and the fences of my neighbors had about four inches between them. It meant that none of is were reliant on any of the others where maintaining our fences and yards were concerned.
It also created a secret highway for the neighborhood cats and squirrels.
In addition to the fences each of the original owners then planted trees. They were staggered. I had a line of trees around my perimeter but in between each of my trees I could see the tree planted along the neighbor’s side. It gave each of the trees their necessary room to grow but prevented gaps so all of us had a complete privacy screen.
I trusted the screen but had other tasks. I picked up my trowel from the shed and began to dispose of the shredded paper. I dug small holed in various places through out the garden beds, scraping way mulch, digging the hole, filling it with a small amount of paper, covering the hole and then replacing the mulch.
We were expecting rains off and on all week so I wasn’t worried about the newly shifted mulch being visible for too long. As with the shredder I had to remind myself to be patient. Only a small handful of shredded bits went into each of the holes. I moved around the perimeter until my bag was empty. I surveyed the yard even as the first rumble of thunder sounded.
