I thought it was a fun idea so I jumped right in to help like an excited eight year old.
"You do the top part, I'll do the bottom," Terry said. After we agreed on the message, we set to work.
About 10 minutes in, Terry asked, "Mike, how do you spell invaluable?" I think I'm missing something."
Spelling has never been my Xena's forte.
To my surprise, she had left out an entire syllable in the word.
"Ah, it's actually INVALUABLE, not INVABLE, I think," trying to soften the blow by not sounding too certain about it.
She laughed at herself and said, "Oh dear, I better get a damp rag to fix that."
After a few futile minutes with the rag, she decided to just add the missing three letters above the written text. Indeed the garbage men were coming soon.
We finished our tribute and went inside to warm up; it's been miserably cold here for May.
After the garbage men had passed our house (not even sure that they saw the message), I decided to go out and take a few pictures of our "work of art."
As I was snapping pictures, a neighbor came by to have a look.
Feeling sheepish about Terry's spelling gaffe, I said,
"Yes, we had a little trouble with the word INVALUABLE."
"INVALUABLE?" she repeated. " No, I'm looking at how you spelled GARBAGE."
Much to my horror, I had spelled GABAGE instead of GARBAGE.
When I told Terry about my mistake, we both broke out in uncontrollable laughter.
"Hey, I've just got to get a picture of this on my phone to send to the kids," Terry said. "They'll love it."
As she walked outside for the pic, a grey haired old man was standing at the end of the drive reading the sign.
"A lovely message, dear," he said to my wife. "And how old are your grandkids?"
Terry tried to control her laughter as she owned up to the spelling mistakes.
Just not our day but hopefully we made it a good day for others...and that's all that really matters.
Maybe I should invite you and Terry to my online class for a refresher English course!
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