Following up on yesterday's happenings: post-tomato incident, I told Abby to get the vacuum so she could deal with that whole mess. Upon arrival at the scene, I found Ellie with her face to the floor, blissfully lapping up hot chocolate powder.
It turns out cherry tomatoes aren't easy to salvage from fine coats and powdery beds of hot cocoa powder. In my attempts to rinse them, I found cold water merely brings the powder to form globules in and amongst the tomatoes and hot water cooks the tomatoes in ... hot chocolate. Oh well.
Today's moments of chaos were relatively few - Ellie keeping family prayer from happening this morning until she succeeded at dislodging a last-night's-frosty coated m&m from the kitchen table with her teeth; my finding out (since I didn't actually read the notice that went home before misplacing it) that Abby's Valentine's party is tomorrow - not Friday (thus a lively trip to Joann's because I haven't given in to the notion that buying valentines cards at the dollar store is 30x cheaper and 100x less work than making them from scratch); Ellie subsequently having an accident on aisle 41 at Home Depot (despite her having escaped to the bathroom by herself while I talked to Abby's friend's mom at Wendy's - pre-Joann's. Incidentally, when the HD customer service gal whom I asked for paper towels asked what kind of accident and I said "she didn't quite make it to the bathroom," her reply was "oh that's embarrassing." Nice.); Abby spilling out a tube of purple glitter powder all over the entry floor while I attempted to get Ellie down for a nap (even though I swear I did away with anything glitter-related after her incident with emptying 12 glitter bottles around the house months ago); my realizing the family pack of chicken breasts I planned to cook for dinner had expired and the bread bag had been left open by one of the girls, so my fall-back dinner of tuna and peas on toast was put in jeopardy.
Of course, those were just typical may-or-may-not-happen-in-a-given-day incidences that keep life hopping. However, I was reminded again why going to the trouble of cleaning my home - doing dishes, specifically - just isn't worth the headache. So, at some point in the day, Ellie had gotten into the pantry and filled a cup with red lentils "to drink" - naturally. I firmly objected and at once removed the cup from her hands, placing it somewhere on the piling dishes while also dealing with her immediate counter-protests.
Fast forward to tonight: I finally get to loading my dishwasher. Abby has decided she needs to help me do the dishes and is sloshing water everywhere while "scrubbing" her bowl and fighting me for yet more water from the tap. I'm trying to get the dishes in the dishwasher asap so I can relieve Abby of her bowl and get to making my scrumptious tuna on toast. CRASH!! There, splattered through my dishwasher and across the floor, are Ellie's red lentils. Seriously?? And while my first instinct is to just shut the dishwasher and turn the dial to "on," I have sudden flashbacks to the most vile experience of my life; dismantling the drain tube beneath this very dishwasher last year. (An allspice berry somehow got lodged in the tubing and soaked up all that hot water passing by until... no more water passed by. That's what we realized, of course, after draining the stagnant contents of the tube and finding the berry. That odor will haunt me forever.) And so, rather than have to drain lentil soup-in-a-tube next week, I scoop and swipe red lentils out of most every nook and cranny in my dishwasher. I'm really starting to feel convinced that the cost - to the earth and to our budget - of paper products couldn't possibly be outweighed by the benefits to my sanity and general well-being.
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