Vick's View

It's His Fault

Posted

That is my favorite saying…It’s his fault. And never was it more true than yesterday. It was all his fault.

We had to go to the grocery store. Not WANTED to go…we HAD to go. If you remember the old nursery rhyme “Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone, but when she got there the cupboard was bare”… and that was exactly what was going on in my home. My poor little dog did not have a bone. We had run out of his favorite treats, and those of us on two legs were pretty much out of food as well.

So we got in the car drove to the store, and shopped till we almost dropped. And while our cart was rather full, it was incredibly sad how much that all cost. But I thought of my little dog looking pleadingly up at me with his big brown eyes and had no choice but to get the pricey treats. He had better be glad he lives with us in America, because in another country people might consider him a delicious treat.

Anyway, we loaded the groceries into the car and drove home. As we proceeded to unload the hatchback, I grabbed a 6 roll package of paper towels under my arm and picked up a full plastic bag with the same hand. And that’s when the disaster happened.

I felt the bag’s handle slipping from my fingers, and sure enough, it fell crashing to the ground. At first I thought it would be okay because I knew there were canned goods in the plastic bag, and when I looked down I saw a plastic bottle sitting upright in the bag there on the concrete driveway.

But when I looked closer inside I knew I was out of luck. A $9 bottle of olive oil had broken inside the bag. And not only had it broken, but it had slashed the bag on the bottom and slippery oil was oozing out on the driveway.

Sighing, I stood there looking at the huge mess. My husband came out of the house to get another load of groceries and saw me standing there with my hands on my hips.

“What happened?” He asked.

“The olive oil broke in the bag because it slipped out of my hands!” I said, frustrated. “And it’s all your fault! “

He stood there staring at me with disbelief. “How is it my fault? I wasn’t out here.”

“It’s your fault because you wouldn’t let me tie the bags anymore!”

Now I must stop here and reveal a previous discussion the two of us had about the plastic bags filled with groceries. For eons as the cashier would fill the bags, I would grab the handles and tie them in a knot. In my opinion, it’s the easiest way to deal with the groceries. You can load up each bag and haul them in and out of the car with ease and nothing will fall out. I began doing this because my husband had left several items in the car when they had fallen out of the bag. Everything spoiled and stunk up my car. So it made sense to me to tie the handles.

But my husband complained that it was a pain to try to untie the knots. I told him to just RIP the bags open. He said that was ruining perfectly good bags he might need for something else. I looked up on top of the refrigerator where I had about 400 bags stuffed inside another bag.

Seriously?

So that brings us here today for me to tell you that I quit tying the bags just for him. And on this particular day as I grabbed the bag handles, one of the handles slipped and the shifting weight inside the bag jerked it out of my hand. And now in my driveway stood a puddle of olive oil.

My husband reached down to pick up the bag and I shrieked and told him no. This was going to take some effort. So I told him to bring the trash can and I would pick up the mess as quickly as possible and put it in the can that had a trash bag liner. We did that and I discovered that oil had dripped down the outside of the trash can that goes in my kitchen. Now I had a new mess. So I went into the house, got my Dawn dish detergent and cleaned up the outside of the trash can. I dumped all the oily canned goods in the sink, gave them a good scrubbing, but it was no use. Oil was everywhere. So each can got its own plastic zip lock bag to go on the shelf.

Next, I went outside with two boxes of baking soda and poured it all over the puddle. I knew it would absorb a good bit of the oil. When I ran out, I used flour. And it was the only thing I had on hand. I could have made a thousand biscuits with it all.

This morning, I went outside and with a stiff brush, scraped off the oily powder, swept up the rest and dumped it in the trash. Then I hosed off the excess baking soda. There is still a spot there, but no more puddles.

Later, however, my husband lifted the bag liner out of the trash can and set it on the kitchen floor to tie it up and take to the dump. He left it there most of the morning and after a while he told me he was going to load it in the car. When he lifted up the bag, I about had a heart attack.

There was a huge yellow oil spot on my kitchen floor. Evidently, there was a small hole in the trash bag liner and oil leaked everywhere. We spent our morning cleaning up olive oil from the kitchen floor and putting the trash bag liner in another trash bag.

My husband had to get down on his hands and knees with the dawn dish detergent and clean up all the oil. It served him right. None of this would have happened if he just had let me tie the plastic bag handles. It was all his fault. And I told him so.

I bet he’ll let me tie the handles next week.