Pass the Salt

I'd like to think I've learned my lesson.

How many times am I going to think or say something smug and/or judgemental, only to have my feet crammed none-too-gently into someone else's shoes?

I'd give you a few examples, but they're too embarrassing, which is why I can't tell you how I totally earned myself the following experience:

Last night I was helping my daughter create scale models of the 3 types of Redwoods (I know a LOT about redwoods right now), and went back to my office to get some cardboard from which to cut tree shapes.

My "office" is a small room between my laundry room and garage that has all of my sewing supplies/photo album stuff (See Marla? I did NOT say scrapbooking)/office supplies/giftwrapping/ . . . you get the idea . . . on many, many cluttered shelves. I offered it to the kids as an extra bedroom, but nobody liked sleeping in a room that had an exterior door (I'm thinking this opinion will change dramatically in their teen years).

Also, said exterior door gets left open all the time. NOT BY ME. Somehow nobody thinks it should be closed, and since it's in the back corner of the house, I don't realize it's open until I'm starting a load of laundry and I feel a draft.

So, back to last night. I went back to my office for cardboard, and didn't bother turning on any lights. As I stepped on the threshold to my office (it's just a lot faster to type than "Horribly Cluttered Storage Room"), my foot squished something cold, and wet, and horribly slimey.

I looked back, and saw in the dim light the outline of a SLUG! (I can't even type it without shuddering.) Obviously he oozed in the open door recently, and judging from the trail, has had a heyday in one corner of the room.

Just so you know, in the interest of our kids' innocence, I filter our TV and movies for language, and since I'm generally surrounded by young children, people don't swear around me much. I have many, many vices, but swearing isn't one of them. In fact, I can count on one hand the times in my life I've sworn out of anger/shock. (Plus one apron, but that wasn't anger . . . just shocking.)

I'm running out of fingers to count with.

Because when I saw the offending organism, what leapt from my lips for my entire family to hear was, "WHAT THE HE (brief pause while I grasped for self control and found none) LLALALA (if I turn it into lalala's, will they notice how it started?) LALALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!"

And then, still totally abandoned by any self-discipline I ever had, I heard myself yell, "THAT WAS WORSE THAN THE TIME (anonymous elderly male relative-in-law) KISSED ME ON THE LIPS!!!"

To which my eldest replied, "HE KISSED YOU ON THE LIPS?????" She followed me as I hopped on one foot to to secure the means to slay the dragon slimey little beast, repeating the question over and over.

After the fifth time, in exasperation, I blurted, "He was drunk at the time, OK?"

Brief silence.

"HE WAS DRUNK????!!"

She repeated that a few more times while I sat on the edge of the bathtub and scoured my foot (FYI - Slug Slime does not rinse off). Did you know that screaming mild profanities at garden pests can give you quite a headache? I finally convinced her to go to bed, where I cannot promise she had sweet dreams.

And as my own personal Jerry Springer hour drew to a close, I recalled a night some 10 years prior, when I earned myself that nauseating little intruder. It's too humiliating; I'm not telling the story. But I had that slug coming. I deserved it in every way.

Which makes me think I have an embarrassing apron in my future. I've earned that one, too. Twice.