Saturday thoughts

Finished painting the house exterior today, and it looks fantastic. Of course in the process, I discovered several new projects that need to be undertaken. Home ownership's such a joy...

As a follow-up to last night's "wild tire" incident (see below), I heard from one of the participants that after I left for the second and last time, they somehow again wound up at the base of my neighbor's driveway shining lights into the grumpy neighbor's yard, presumably looking for the "creature" again. At some point, a flashlight apparently swept the grumpy neighbor's bedroom window once too often and all of the grumpy neighbor's exterior lights were switched on. And knowing that guy, I'm sure that paranoia-inspired plots of revenge are even now being hatched over there. Every neighborhood has that one guy who is a few sandwiches shy of a picnic. Well that's this guy. And the Tire-Hunting Safari members have rattled his cage yet again. It won't matter that they didn't mean to. I made it a point while at the store today to get some popcorn so I can eat it while waiting for for the next act in the never-ending "crazy city neighbor" show. (We call him that because he's fairly new here from the big city and just can't or won't adapt to rural country life.)

And while I was at the store, I bought some dishwashing powder since I was out. And as I always do whenever I see a box of dishwashing powder, I remember back to my college days when I got my first apartment that actually had an automatic dishwasher in it. (My first apartments only had sinks and until I moved into this new place I'd been living with a somewhat domesticated chick who did the dishes anyway.)
So the first time I went to use my new automatic dishwasher, I'd filled it wish dishes and glasses and silverware, and then looked through my boxes of stuff for some dishwashing soap. I could not find any of the powdered stuff like I vaguely remembered my mother putting into dishwashers like this one, but I did find a bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid--the same stuff we'd been using to wash dishes in the sink for so many years.

OK, I know that all the woman reading this are laughing now. Every woman that I've ever told this story to knew what was coming next by the time I got to this part.

So innocently and quite cluelessly, I filled the dish powder tray in the dishwasher with the Dawn liquid, closed the door, and turned it on. Then I left the kitchen to enjoy the last few blissful moments that I'd have for a while.

Some minutes later, for whatever reason I went back into the kitchen to get something and found that the entire kitchen floor was covered with suds about 8-10 inches deep, from the dishwasher clear out into the hallway on the opposite end of the kitchen area. The foam was just flowing out of the dishwasher like a soapy Niagara Falls and it was EVERYWHERE!

I don't remember how long it took me to clean that all up, but I know that it was a long time. The hall carpet got soaked too and I had to steam-clean the whole hall and living room carpet to make it all look the same again. And the dishwasher did this again to lesser extents the next three or four times that I tried to use it--with the right soap now--until all of that liquid soap's residue was gone. I still hate dishwashers. I hate them only a little less than I hate washing my own dishes by hand.

And to this day I'm still trying to find just one person who will admit to not knowing that this would happen when you put dishwashing liquid into a dishwasher. But even the guys that I know won't fess up. I guess I'm the only person in the industrialized world who didn't know that liquid dish soap is only for sinks. (sigh...)

To this day I cannot look at a bottle of the liquid detergent or a box of Cascade powder without recalling that traumatic day in my life.