The Monday book will be back next week. Sit back and enjoy the story of Wendy’s latest adventure….

Regular readers know that I enjoy canning. Like, a lot. It’s my down time upper. So yesterday evening I was squeezing out seven quarts of mixed veg from our garden, which is putting out more daily. Having a good time, rocking out to a little oldies Abba, slicing and dicing and spicing.

I threw a load of laundry in at the end, because canning is a messy business. And because Tuesday morning is my swim aerobics class with my sister, and it had been ages since my suit had been washed, what the heck, in it goes.

(Yes, I know washing is bad for suits. Just like fungal growth is bad for suits. It needed a scrub.)

Next day, sis and I are paddling in the pool preparatory to class beginning, and I feel something in the lower area. Like elastic that’s poked through. Oh well, I think, I know better than to wash a suit with other clothes, ruined it. I reach in….

…. and pull out a string bean.

A dried up string bean that looked so much like elastic at first that I didn’t realize what was happening. Until I felt a little pebble-like thing caressing my cheek….

After removing the two beans and the other half of the string bean husk, I placed them as surreptitiously as possible on the drain at the side of the pool.

A few minutes into class, the lifeguard gets this incredulous look on his face, climbs down from his chair, and walks to The Place of the Bean.

My sister who drags me to the class each week shouts, “It’s a string bean and it’s hers!” She points at me. “She cans everything and it got in her suit!”

Fortunately the instructor had The Beegees blasting at top decibel so not many of the participants heard her. Only one woman turned and asked, “Do you can in your suit? Is that cooler? I can a lot and…”

I am not banned from the pool. That is the good news.

My sister will die at the time and place of my choosing, and they will find her with a green bean shoved into her throat, serial killer style. That is the other good news.

Thank you for coming to my comedy of errors life show.