Lookin' Like a Fool With Your Panties on the Porch...

Ok, Caribbean Housewife lesson learned today y'all.  Yesterday, we got a few packages from my parents.  We were SO excited!  1) Because they sent us some AWESOME stuff, and 2) Because now I know I can actually receive mail (since Rachel Gaffner sent us something a month ago and it hasn't arrived yet!).  Among many awesome things (including this FABULOUS necklace which I'll post pictures of soon), I got this:

Believe it or not, this is a washing machine!  And this Island Housewife was in DESPERATE need of something like this.  You see, around here, you have to send your laundry off with a service.  They pick it up, take it to wash, and bring it back folded.  Sounds like a pretty sweet deal huh??  Yeah, not so much.  Because you have to plan out how you wear your clothes to make sure you don't find yourself without a pair of shorts to wear or, God forbid, undies!  So this baby is a God send (or rather a Mom send).  It washes like 8 shirts in 7 minutes!  It's the little things y'all...

So yesterday I washed several "loads" of laundry and hung it out to dry on the porch on my new drying rack...which is da bomb...

When I went out to get the dried clothes, I noticed that the rack had sort of scooted on the porch.  But it seemed as though all my stuff was there, so I didn't worry about it.  I folded my clean laundry and brought it inside.

And after flipping through my stack, I realized that I was missing an article.  A pair of...yes you guessed it...MY PANTIES!!  I wracked my brain trying to remember if maybe I had already taken them in, or maybe I didn't put them out at all.  But when I couldn't find them, I started to panic a little...

So I walked outside and searched all around on the porch.  Nothing.  Then I looked over into "the murder pit", as we call it (it's the pit of plants right below our balcony), and nothing.  I was starting to give up hope that I would ever find my undies.  And then...I spotted them...

Have you spotted them yet??  Yep, the black blob on that 1ST FLOOR BALCONY is the pair of elusive panties I'm referring to.  They leapt off my drying rack and floated on a breeze down to someone's (whom I DO NOT know) back balcony!  Dear lord, what am I supposed to do now!  I can't very well go knock on the door and say "Hi, person I've never met, my panties are on your porch."  And they're too far down (2 floors!) for me to somehow fish them back up to my apartment.  I can just hear that conversation in that apartment now...

"Um...dear?  Whose panties are on our back porch?"

"What?  I have no idea, honey.  I swear!!"

And chaos ensues...

I laughed for an hour about this.  And it's funny for 2 reasons...

1) It's funny because it's funny...bottom line...

2) It's funny because in a completely unrelated situation, I HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE!

Yep, that's right.  When Jonathan and I were first married and living in a teeny apartment, I decided it would be a good idea to wash our bathroom rugs.  So I transferred the clothes out of the washer into the dryer, and put the rugs in.  After they were done, I took them out and decided it would not be a good idea to dry them in the dryer.  So I took them to our back porch to hang them up.  I shook them out to get any excess water off of them and I see this thing flutter out of one of them, it goes off the balcony, catches the breeze, and blows straight onto the porch of our neighbors below (again...whom we've never met).  My panties are on their porch!!  What to do, what to do??

What do we do?  Exactly what I think we're gonna do this time.  In order to save ourselves the embarrassment and our neighbors the...well...embarrassment.  We are leaving them.  Because who doesn't love a good story...