Clean-up on Aisles 2 AND 5

I had quite a start to the day on Wednesday this week.  It is not uncommon for me to wake up between 4:30 and 5:00 am on a work day, do a few chores (the quiet type, like laundry, not vacuuming!) and then be on my merry way to work, usually leaving around 6:00 am.


It was no different on Wednesday, with a load of laundry waiting in the washer from the night before to be hung up on the rack.  I went into the garage, turned on the light and noticed the laundry detergent container in the bottom of the laundry basket sitting in front of the washer.  Upon closer examination, I realized that it had somehow fallen off the top of the washer and into the basket, knocking the top off and spilling it's sticky blue liquid into the bottom of the blue basket.


Marveling at my good fortune of having the basket there to catch the mess, I decided that I would also be able to save the majority of the spilled contents (about 1/3 of the bottle) by pouring the detergent right back into the bottle.  An excellent idea, were it not for the holes in the front of the basket that the concentrated liquid soap started to spill out from.  Oops.  Now we had quite a mess on the floor of the garage.


I slipped back into the house to get some paper towels and in my haste, I kicked one of the dog water bowls, spilling a good quart of water onto the kitchen floor.  This was NOT part of the plan.  I decided to use beach towels to sop up the water in the house first, then out to the garage to try and make some progress on the blue goo.


I ended up laying newspaper across the floor and warning David that there was a "bit of a mess" in the garage.  So much for having an efficient and productive morning!

Sappy Pine

Ebe was visiting us on Friday...we had an Emmaus team building meeting in Ventura early Saturday morning and she was already in South Pasadena for work, so it just made sense to have her come over, enjoy the company and save herself a loooooong drive in the morning (she did still get the mileage in going home on Saturday night, but at least it wasn't in traffic!)

We (mostly I) did not put on the best hostessing show. I was late getting home from work, so they ended up going out for KFC (and a special stop at Chipotle for me since there isn't a single entree that I can eat at the jankety-chicken place). Dinner was served in front of the TV (we are still working through all of the I Love Lucy DVDs) and predictably enough, I fell asleep in the chair. Quite the evening out for Ebe!

I managed to wake up in time to join a conversation about fire pits, burning wood and smokey fires. Holly was recounting a time that she was at a party at a friend's house where the wood in the fireplace was creating so much smoke out the chimney, the fire department was called. We debated the reasons that this happened...wood too wet, wood too dry (is there such a thing?), and then David's contribution...sappy pine.

Perhaps it was the delirium of being too tired, but that hit my funny bone and we started using "sappy pine" in every context imaginable...with contempt, excited, scared, maybe even as a swear word. I don't think that it translates as well in writing, but I am telling you, we had a good laugh about it.

It was a sappy pine evening for sure!