While filling bowls with hot leftover chili for tonight’s supper, I drop one. A full one. A full, cereal sized bowl, of chili, on the floor.
And as it falls I can hear myself yelling a very long, very loud, “NOOOOOOOO!!!” Scaring my 2 year old. Scaring the baby, who was on the kitchen floor and has hurled herself towards the mess. Both of which proceed to cry.
I remove the crying baby from the area and as I peel off my shirt, drenched in tomato sauce and wipe my face, I look around at the mess. It’s bad, really bad. But it serves me right. I cleaned my cupboards, fridge and stove a few days before. Like really cleaned. Scrubbed, buffed, used a toothpick to get the crumbs out from the crevices kind of cleaned. And like Icarus, who was overzealous, flying too close to the sun, my beautiful dream of having and maintaining clean cupboards came crashing down.
But most alarmingly there is tomato sauce on the ceiling! THE CEILING! The WHITE spackled ceiling. And as I climb up on a chair to wipe off the ceiling I realize what I already knew to be true. The spackle part wipes off, and I mean really wipes off, like easier than the tomato sauce, easy. I stare at the previously spackled ceiling, still wet and still just a little saucy, and I wonder WHY didn’t I use a hot mitt to carry the bowl!?
I take a step back to truly appreciate the full effect of the drop. I pull a bean out of my bra, tuck a saucy strand of hair behind my ear and sit down to eat what I salvaged from the floor (bonus of it being sparkly clean moments ago).
But, hey! The bowl didn’t break, my three dogs were happy to help with clean up and I was wearing black.
Excuse me as I go scrape the tomato sauce out of my eyebrows.