Dear Everyone,
I have done it once again. No, I didn't run over the garden hose with the mower or superglue my fingers together or thaw a block of cookie dough instead of ground beef when company was expecting my crock pot spaghetti meat sauce. This time, I picked up an unopened and oversized plastic bottle of pop to put in the refrigerator to cool. That was my intention, anyway. The unintended happened. I lost my grip (on the bottle, to clarify) and it crashed to the floor, splitting its thin plastic container wide-open. You may have seen those golden fireworks which spin around on the ground, spewing their fiery sparkles everywhere. That was what entered my shocked mind, as I was irrationally fascinated by the happening. After a near eternity, I snapped out of my mesmerizing stupor and grabbed the bottle, tossing it into the sink. I didn't measure it at the time, but I'm guessing there was, at most, a half a cup of liquid left in said bottle. I slipped and slid in my flip-flops on the river of brown pop on the floor, surveying the damage. Grabbing dish towels from the kitchen drawer, I began to sop up the mess. Then I realized the refrigerator door, still wide open, had been thus during the explosion. As you guessed it, the entire interior was filled with an uneven spattering of brown freckles. The stuff was everywhere, including puddled under the pull-out vegetable bins. From my toes to my forehead, I felt the trickling yet refreshing liquid on me, like a dirty rain shower. Oh, and it wasn't just on my skin and my clothes, those freckles were on both sides of the kitchen. On the baseboards, the cabinet fronts, the assorted decorative items atop the cabinets, inside the magnetic picture frames on the frig, on the louvers of the water heater closet and high up on the door to the garage, some 15 feet away. (Refer to the picture at the beginning of this post.)
Sigh. Well, my kitchen could/can always use a good scrubbing. Still, I suspect I will find brown polka dots long into the future. The ONLY saving grace was that the drink was diet soda, less sticky than the full-tilt sugary stuff. Hey, I try to find those silver linings every place I can because, of course, I believe in happy endings. But oh, the power of pop!
-jmm
