Last Saturday morning it was rainy. A rainy Saturday morning in a July with record amounts of rain.
A lightning strike in the back yard the previous Thursday evening took out our Internet connection, and ATT hadn’t bothered to restore it yet. Without the Internet to distract me, I had spent the morning going through some of the accumulated mail.
Feeling good about having made great progress in decluttering mail, I reached a stopping point. To reward myself for my diligence I decided I would brew a cup of coffee, relax on the sofa, and browse through some magazines. After all, reading magazines is another way of dealing with the mail.
While my coffee was brewing, I noticed a piece of old mail that was tucked under the K-cup drawer. I would just pull it out. But first, I should fill up the reservoir so the light would quit blinking. So I grab the water filter pitcher and refill the brewer. Then I set the water filter pitcher down next to the brewer. Oh, look the brewer stopped. I’ll get that mail in a minute. Let me put cream and sugar in my coffee so it can cool while I deal with that mail that is just under the brewer and drawer. I’ll just set down my coffee cup so I can reach it.
Ok, now a quick tug, and I’ll have another piece of mail decluttered. Oh, it’s stuck. I pull a little harder . . . harder . . . harder. It’s really stuck. Pull harder. Finally . . . it comes loose. The force that I had been using to tug on the piece of paper sent my hand flying. My flying hand with the piece of mail jostled my coffee cup. Good thing that piece of mail wasn’t important, because it was now saturated with coffee. In fact, most of my kitchen was saturated. Although the cup did not overturn, coffee spread all over the place. Coffee all down the front of the dishwasher. Coffee covering at least 12 square feet of the kitchen floor near the coffee pot. Coffee all over the water filter pitcher. Coffee on the counter. It seemed as if there was coffee everywhere.
Of course, I had to adjust my plan to relax on the sofa. One simply cannot ignore a spill containing a liquid sweetened with sugar. To ignore such a spill would be like hanging out a welcome sign for ants and palmetto bugs (aka roaches).
Wipe up the spilled coffee on the floor. Wipe down the dishwasher to get rid of the spilled coffee. Rinse the water filter pitcher inside and out. You wouldn’t expect coffee to be inside the pitcher since it had a lid, but it’s there. Use a sponge to mop up the coffee spilled on the counter. Grab a paper towel to dry the counter. Notice that the edge of the towel that slipped under the storage drawer is stained with coffee.
At this point, I realize that I’m living in a grown up version of one of Laura Numeroff’s IF books. http://tinyurl.com/ifmouse Here goes my version. If you notice that the paper towel has a coffee stain, you will want to move the single cup brewer and the drawer it is sitting on so that you can wipe up the coffee underneath. If you move the brewer, you will notice that the coffee spill extends underneath the adjacent tea brewer. If you move the tea brewer to clean under it, you might notice that the carafe could stand cleaning and you put the carafe into the dishwasher. If the carafe is no longer in the way, you might notice there are some tea stains on the tea brewer itself. If you tilt the tea brewer just a little to get the pesky stain, you might realize there was still water in the appliance, but you might not realize that fact until the water spilled on the counter. If you clean up the water, you might also have to move the next appliance on the other side. If you keep this process up, you might find that you have cleaned under all the appliances on that side of the counter.
Finally finished and ready to relax with my coffee, I figure I’ll need to brew another cup. I glance at my coffee cup expecting it to be nearly empty, but I am surprised. The cup is almost completely full. Maybe a few ounces are missing. Amazing how much mess a few ounces of liquid can make.
You Can Laugh at My Life 