random thoughts – Day 1,419 – (Sunday) – kitchen mishap

After dance class there was a visit to Ocean State Job Lot. It had been months since the last visit, mostly because there isn’t one in Lowell, and the one in Leominster is close enough to the exit to Route 2 that when I think I might stop there, I usually decide to just head directly home instead.

After seeing recent emails and ads for some sort of promotion where you get a gift card worth 40% of a purchase over $30, today I stopped in to look around. A cart seemed  unnecessary as I was mostly browsing. Soon I had a pack of small art canvasses, some acrylic paint, Echinacea tea, and two soup bowls close to the shape I search for in very store I have set foot in for the past several years. Mathematics indicated that the total was nowhere near the $40 threshold for the gift card. The checkout line was long, so the browsing continued to the back of the store and the rugs.

Runner in the kitchen.

Two runners in colors that looked like they would work in the kitchen were found, which set the total into gift card territory and a $16 gift card was received at checkout. Once home, the grayish-purplish color in the runner proved to be a great match to the wall color, and the runners were unfurled onto the floor, tags still attached during the initial deliberation period. One covered the stretch leading to the refrigerator, and the other along the sink and prep counter area. After deciding they looked OK, I went to the living room and Netflix (The Hookup Plan).

An hour later, it was realized there had been no breakfast or lunch eaten. Cabbage, broccoli, carrots, and onions were chopped for a soup. After deciding the veggies and a container of broth from the freezer would benefit from tomatoes, the pantry cupboard was ravaged in search of diced tomatoes. There were none. The kitchen manager is really failing in the stocking of staples. A 24-ounce jar of mild salsa was found. 

The jar was large enough to be hard to grasp and the lid is too large for my hand. The lid wasn’t budging. The two rubbery jar grippy things were retrieved from the drawer, but the lid didn’t loosen. The lid of the jar was tapped on the counter and still wouldn’t budge. It was tapped again. And again. An angry letter along the lines of "Dear asswipes, why are so many jars and lids too large for normal sized hands? Do I now need to start checking lid sizes in the store?" And so on. It is unlikely any such letter will actually be composed.

Salsa mishap.

Suddenly, there was a mound of salsa on the counter. That last rap of the lid on the counter, propelled by the passion of the mental letter writing, had traveled through the jar and the bottom of the jar was missing. The lid was still attached to the neck of the jar. the science of it all is unclear, but there was no mistaking the mess. Luckily, the salsa was thick and mostly stayed put in a heap.

The new runner, with the tags still attached, had several splotches of airborne salsa on it. Of course it did. Also, the bottom of my pant leg and my left sleeve from hem to elbow. 

There was a big cleanup of the counter and rug, after which there was no longer interest in eating cabbage soup for supper. There was a moment of sulking before leftover French fries from Saturday’s supper were heated in the toaster oven. Later, laundry was started with a big dose of laundry pre-treatment spray to clean the jeans and fleece top of the salsa.

It’s been a while since a messy kitchen mishap and apparently, it was time. But damn, why did it have to be the big jar of salsa?