I woke up this morning to a dark house, but that’s okay, I knew my way to the bathroom. The bathroom is always your first destination after you get up in the morning when you are in your mid-60s like I am.
I didn’t need to turn on the lights, though. I pretty much know my way around.
Not like the poor fellow who once lived up in Bridesville. His wife got mad at him one night when he stayed out with the boys until all hours of the morning.
When he got home he found the furniture rearranged and all the light bulbs in the house unscrewed. Needless to say, he was not successful at sneaking in without waking his wife.
Back in my own house in Midway, I was pretty sure I was okay. I headed towards the hall to the bathroom but as I passed the watering station for the cats I noticed my foot was uncomfortably wet.
It seems that one of the cats has discovered the wonderful new toy that playing with the water can be on a really hot day.
No biggie though – I got down on the floor and wiped the water up. Then I picked up the bowl and walked to the sink to put some more water in it.
But when I got near the counter I heard a splash and found out that the uncomfortable wet that I experienced across the room was really nothing at all compared to the puddle I was standing in.
When I turned on the lights – and they did turn on (see I told you I was okay as far as that Bridesville fellow’s sad tale went) – I saw what had caused the flood. The metal sink strainer/stopper thing had been pushed down and was plugging the water from draining. The situation was compounded when the faucet was left on just enough to get a pretty steady rate of drip to be going into the sink.
What happened when the sink got full was actually a blessing of sorts. Instead of being lower at the back of the sink it was lower on the front corner so that’s where the flood had dribbled and dripped through the night, creating a nice pond in the corner of the kitchen.
Mops are an example of how Special K and I have had to learn to accommodate each other’s attitude about what’s normal. When I grew up, plastic was brand new on the market and it had a few problems – like durability. It broke when you dropped it. It broke when it was cold. The term ‘cheap plastic’ really meant something then.
So I learned to distrust things made out of plastic. By the time Special K came along, though, the industry had already worked out a lot of those kinks.
When we got married and moved in together we found we had one too many mops. She had a plastic thing that squirts onto the floor and I had the old fashion mop and pail.
She convinced me that we didn’t want that dirty unhygienic mop in the house anymore. I think I bought into her line of reasoning when she said that if we kept the mop and pail that I was the one who would be mopping the floors.
I was sure glad I’d stored it out in the shed instead of tossing it. I don’t think that plastic squirt mop design would have helped me much. Unless maybe they design in a microchip so you can change the squirter into a slurper.