Spills

While getting ready for work the other morning, I spilled something. I was really upset about it. It sparked an idea:

The Top 8 Most Memorable Spills of My Life (in time sequence order)

1. This is actually my first memory. I was three years old, maybe 4. We lived in Ft. Worth, Texas. My dad had finished part of the garage as a computer work area/hangout for his friends. One night he had all his guys over and they were all drinking in the garage. Apparently my mom was their beer wench and I was her little helper. I was carrying a large plastic cup (about 16-20 oz in my tiny hands) and I got to the door of the garage and dropped and spilled the whole thing. I cried.

2. Before Caitlyn was born and Chris and I weren't in school, we'd accompany my mom on various shopping trips. This particular day, we'd gone to this scary grocery store that had no windows. We got to the checkout and Chris and I were helping mom empty the cart. Chris dropped a large container of vegetable oil and the container busted. Oil spilled everywhere. I'm pretty positive we never went to that store again.

3. One day I opened the refrigerator to get myself some milk. It was a full gallon and I was a stubborn girl. I didn't need help. I grabbed it and promptly dropped the gallon. The little plastic lid popped off and milk spilled all over. I can remember the glub-glub look and sound. I didn't know what to do. My mom seemed rather disappointed that in that moment of panic I chose to yell at the top of my lungs, "THE MILK IS SPILLING, THE MILK IS SPILLING, THE MILK IS SPILLING" instead of, perhaps, picking it up.

4. My best friend Stephanie and I sometimes ran out of things to do. We often resorted to cleaning various parts of her house. (Why? I don't know--she had a maid, for Pete's sake!) We decided one day to clean the entire kitchen floor. Who needs a mop when we had our hands and knees?! We scoured that floor for an eternity. Just after we'd finished and we were having her mom tell us what a great job we'd done, baby Caitlyn spilled a whole cup of apple juice all over the floor.

5. The salsa shake. In 7th grade I lived in Palmdale, CA. We still ate dinner as a family every night. One night we were having something that suggested salsa as a condiment. I picked up the Pace Picante, shook it, put some on my plate and set the lid back on the jar. Not a minute later, Chris picked it up, shook it full force and that lid that I'd gently set on top hit the wall behind his head on the first backstroke, along with the entire remaining contents of the salsa jar.

6. When I was in 10th grade, we moved back to New Mexico. On my first day of school, I took a couple dollars and bought pizza from the DECA store. (I have no idea what that stands for but it was a convenience store on campus). They had pizza from a local pizza place and I couldn't wait to have some. I carried my slice down to where my friends were eating. My pizza slice had flour on the bottom and it was sitting on a paper plate. As soon as I stopped walking, my object (pizza) in motion stayed in motion until it hit the dusty NM ground, cheese first. Gary Gilbert didn't miss a stride. He quickly picked it up, blew on it, put it back on my plate and said "5 Second Rule." It was tasty.

7. It was our last day of classes in college. My college Bestie, Luci, was dressed really cute for our celebrations in class. We had a bit of a potluck. Luci went for the blueberry pie. She cut into it while balancing her plate on her hand. Turns out she was rather unbalanced. The blueberry pie slice went straight onto her lap and turned a large portion of Luci's pants purple. From then on, she has been known as Luci Pie Pants.

8. I tend to use semi-expensive face lotion now. It's organic and it has lavender oil. In a word, it's delicious. It comes in a small jar with a screw-off lid. I took my usual finger full from my brand new jar on Monday morning. When I went to screw on the lid, my sleepy hands dropped the jar. It hit the ground and bounced up the lotion-sans-jar into the air. It was all over my cabinets, wall, and carpet. I have to be honest here. I did a quick overview and deemed my cabinets clean-ish so I scraped it off and back into the jar. The wall and carpet were wiped up and the lotion there was not salvageable. Today I noticed that my face smelled like cabinet. On a plus note, my carpet smells nice.