Beer Geysers and Flooded Laundry Rooms

Man... This is only my third day on leave, and I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

After poor, sick LW recovered from her bout of laughing at me and coughing from the smoke in the kitchen, taking pictures of my "quesadillas" (the "before") and her "quesadillas" (the "after"), and asking if I wanted mine "cajun style" (blackened), we sat down to a nice Family Movie Night of the Bee Movie.

Aside about the movie: I enjoyed the second half of the movie I was able to watch and hear, more to follow on that...

Now for my second installment of Stupid Kevin Tricks (in the same evening no less):

I plopped down in my la-z-boy recliner, put my feet up, reached for my bottle of Sam Adams next to my chair... and knocked it over with the tips of my fingers. I quickly uprighted the bottle, and the amount actually spilled wasn't that bad, but my bottle of Sam Adams suddenly turned into this frothy, sky-rocketing beer geyser, spewing brown foam up out of the bottle like some kid's "volcano" science experiment.

I was dumbfounded. For a moment, I just froze and couldn't figure out what to do. In hindsight, I should've been like that little boy in Holland and just plugged my finger in the hole of the bottle.

So you're saying to yourself, "Self, if he didn't do the obvious immediate action and put his finger in the bottle to stop the beer from spewing all over the recliner, the end table, the lamp, the carpet, the legos on the floor, the children sitting on the floor watching the movie, the couch he ran past, the bookshelf behind the couch, the kitchen floor, the kitchen counter, and finally the sink, then what DID he do?" Well, I grabbed the bottle and ran with it into the kitchen to dump it in the kitchen sink... while the spewing geyser left frothy brown splotches on the carpet, the lamp, the end table, the recliner, the kids, the legos, the couch, the bookshelf, the kitchen floor, the kitchen counter, and the kitchen sink.

It was kind of like falling down a flight of stairs. It was like someone pushed the "slow motion" button on my life and I just couldn't seem to make it to the kitchen fast enough.

For about the next half hour, I was wiping up beer along the kitchen floor and dabbing at the spots on the carpet and the furniture with paper towels while LW got the spot-bot and started treating the areas of the carpet along the trail of brown spots I had left. The boys were annoyed by all the noise from the spot-bot that made it so they couldn't hear the movie.

Aside: If you have small children and don't have a spot-bot, why not? It works like a champ, and we've used ours A LOT.

Like I said though, the second half of the movie was pretty good.

Between the stench of charred-black quesadillas and the frustration of the mess I made with the beer, I was pretty exasperated when I went to bed.

Today's a new day though... right???

So there I was... Not long after waking up and coming downstairs, I was sitting in my recliner catching up on my blog and news readings. There was this nagging voice in the back of my head though. At first, it was one of those subconscious, sixth-sense type of nagging voices, but it continued long enough that it eventually crossed the threshold into consciousness. I said to myself, "Self, what's that noise?" Gee, Self, it sounds like running water. One of the boys must have left the water running in the bathroom.

I told ES to go turn the water off in the bathroom. He walked over to the bathroom and told me it wasn't on in the bathroom. I asked him where the sound of running water was coming from. He said it was coming from the laundry room. [Cue warning light and alarm going off in the back of my head.] I got up to investigate. As I walked through the kitchen, the sound of running water got louder and louder. When I rounded the corner of the kitchen counter to where I had a clear view of the laundry room, I discovered a pool of water spreading across the laundry room floor and into the pantry and kitchen.

Okay, self, let's not screw up the immediate actions for THIS casualty. Let's see, what was the first step? Sound the alarm and announce the casualty. I yelled loud enough for LW to hear upstairs, "FLOODING IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM, BRING TOWELS!!!"

I felt like a kid splashing in puddles out in the street on a rainy day as I stepped barefoot through the water into the laundry room to identify and stop the source of the leak. I found the deep sink was plugged and the water faucet was on, so there was a sheet of waterfall flowing over the countertop onto the floor.

Now for my third installment of Stupid Kevin Tricks in less than a 24 hour period:

I said to myself, "Self, you need to quickly secure the source of the water and then unplug that drain so the water goes down the drain instead of on the floor." My hand darted to the faucet and shut off the water, check. Then, without taking into account WHICH faucet I had just turned off, my hand immediately thrust itself downward into the sink to pull the plug on the drain.

In spite of the speed of my hand going down into the water, my hand didn't make it to the drain before a new alarm bell started sounding in the back of my head, "HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT! PULL YOUR HAND OUT OF THE HOT WATER YOU DUMB-ASS!!!" Yes, it was the HOT water faucet that I had just turned off.

I went splish-splash-splish-splash back through the pond into the kitchen and grabbed a pair of barbecue tongs, then splish-splash-splish-splashed my way back into the laundry room and pulled the plug from the deep sink with the tongs. LW showed up with a bunch of beach towels from the upstairs closet and threw them on the floor in the kitchen to create a dike and pushed the water toward the laundry room. Whew! Crisis under control.

GMJ always says bad things happen in threes. I say WE'RE DONE.
1) Proving I can't even cook a simple quesadilla without filling the house with smoke.
2) Dousing everything between my recliner and the kitchen sink with Sam Adams.
3) Flooding the laundry room.

We're done. No more. Nada. I hereby declare that the remainder of my vacation shall be PERFECT. Murphy and his gremlin minions can go bother somebody else now!