Did you know that one gallon of syrup can cover a square mile of white vinyl flooring? When Elizabeth was a baby, I had her on my hip walking through the kitchen one day. As we passed the counter, she reached over and snagged a brand new jug of syrup. When it hit the floor, it EXPLODED!. A brown tidal wave sloshed up the sides of the cabinets, oozed under the refrigerator, and inched across the floor. Sticky is not a big enough word for the magnitude of the mess!! I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, wiped and wiped, rinsed and rinsed. It is still sticky! Eleven years later!! Even though the vinyl was replaced by porcelain tile, it is still sticky! I think it saturated the foundation and now periodically oozes up through the grout.
Then there was the time, I stepped out of the kitchen for a couple of minutes. Upon re-entry, I was engulfed in a choking green fog! What on earth?? Then I saw her. Elizabeth was sitting happily in the middle of the kitchen floor shaking the very last little bit out of a brand new large can of Comet. She had completely emptied the can in about 30 seconds!! I had never really ever considered how very, very fine a powder Comet cleaner is. Every tiny little nook and cranny was filled. The grit was with us for days! But the kitchen smelled very clean.
In our first little house in Amarillo, there was carpet in the kitchen. I have no idea why someone would put carpet in the kitchen, but we didn't have money to replace it. We were new home owners and were learning lots of lessons in home maintenance and repairs. One day, I got the kitchen sink all clogged up with something. Kregg worked and worked to clear it out. He finally resorted to some kind of acid to eat the clog. Well, it not only cleared the clog, it ate through the pvc pipes and ran out onto the floor!! Of course, the acid ate right through the carpet! Time for a new mat to go in front of the sink.
Before we had children (yes there was a time when we had no kids) we had a miniature schnauzer. To say that she was high-strung doesn't come close. She was, at times, frenetic. Being left at home alone really offended her. Upon our return, she would make it abundantly clear that she was seriously displeased with us. We tried to pen her up so that she couldn't wreak havoc, but she often thwarted our best efforts. At one point, Kregg had to go out of town for a few days. We were in the middle of making items for a craft sale. Remember, this is before children! I left for work early in the morning of this particular day. Having locked the dog up, I left the projects that were not finished laying out all over the dining and living rooms.
When I got home from teaching school and opened the front door, it looked like a bomb had gone off. I stood there with my mouth hanging open wondering what could have happened.
The dog had escaped confinement and systematically destroyed everything she could reach. This dog only weighed about 7 pounds, but the strength contained in that little body accomplished seemingly impossible feats. She had actually pulled all the giant cushions off the couch, shredded newspapers and magazines, and torn up many of my projects. The toilet paper was completely unrolled. There were tufts of batting all over the house.
Her undoing was the rolls of ribbon. She had taken it as a personal challenge to unroll each and every spool of ribbon. Dragging the ribbon from the living room through the hall, kitchen, dining room, and back into the living room in endless laps, she finally entangled herself in the ribbon to the point that she was hogtied. And that's how I found her.
She knew she was in for it when I opened the door. To keep from really losing my temper, I fastened her to the front porch while I cleaned up the mess.
A few months ago, Joshua walked in and came up to stand behind me. He started talking before I looked up. I admit I was preoccupied and was only listening with one ear.He suddenly had my full, undivided, horrified attention when I glanced up at him. His face was completely covered in black goo, except where his glasses had shielded him. A spray can of black gooey tar used to seal cuts on trees had gone off in his face. Come to find out, the can had inadvertently been left on the shop porch and the puppies had chewed the spray nozzle off. Being the good little helper, he saw it laying there and was going to put it up.Thankfully, his glasses kept it out of his eyes! My brain instantly started going through the options for tar removal. I mentally checked off anything toxic or caustic until I finally landed on a special cleaner that Kregg had. Thankfully, it worked and did no permanent damage to his lovely olive skin.
One night several years ago, Elizabeth developed a stomach bug. She tried to make it to the bathroom, but ended up a few feet short of her goal. She let go all over the hall carpet outside the bathroom. Scooping her up, I headed to our big bathtub to get her cleaned up and asked Kregg to try to start cleaning the carpet. When I came out of our bathroom, the mess was gone. Completely. Including the carpet on that end of the hall. He had taken a blade knife and cut that entire section of carpet out!! I couldn't believe it! He explained that since we were planning to replace that carpet during our remodel, he just decided to go ahead and take that part out. No problem. Except for the fact that our remodel took much longer than we had planned, so it ended up being a year and a half before we replaced the flooring in the hall. Oh well.
This is one of those posts that could go on indefinitely, but you get the general idea. Take these few examples and multiply them by the number of kids times the number of years and its probably best to stop here. It's more merciful this way, don't you think?
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