Early this morning I was awakened by loud thunder...AND sirens heading towards the hospital. Yay. I will be so glad to move to our new quiet little neighborhood. Of which, surprisingly, many residents of this town are unaware. It's a very cool little loop around a 9-hole golf course - cool because all the houses are different. Sizes, shapes, decades, you name it. Very fun.
But I digress.
Aaron and I were hanging out here the other evening, and heard a strange crash/smooshing sound. I was on the phone, but I did check the kitchen, and nothing seemed to be out of place.
Later I went downstairs to switch loads of laundry, and there I discovered the source of our odd noise. Apparently our dryer does quite a bit of shaking while it does its job, because it had shaken the bottle of liquid detergent right off the top. And when it hit the floor, the top broke right off, so there was a clean-smelling blue puddle on the concrete floor.
I started mopping it up with a paper towel, and that's when I had a genius idea. I grabbed a nearby dust pan and started shoveling up the goop and pouring it back into the bottle. It worked great, and if I really had wanted to, I could have reused that detergent. But I didn't.
Paper towels easily cleaned up the rest, and you can't even tell anything happened.
This reminded me of other odd "we weren't even in the room!" occurrences:
1. As part of our Christmas decorations, we had some blue and silver glass bulbs in a tall glass vase (for example) half-filled with water. This vase sat very happily on top of our 13" (and only, at the time) TV for several weeks.
And then one night, while Aaron and I were in the other room, we heard a crash that could have woken the dead. On investigation, we found, of course, that the vase had fallen off of the TV. There was a slight decline on the top, and it must have been gradually heading down that slope until the perfect moment to make us both wet our pants.
2. Yet another night (these things seem to only happen when it's dark!) both of us were sharply awoken to yet another loud crash. I got up to check it out, and when I got into the kitchen, I found that a plastic photo collage had un-stuck itself from some of its magnets and fallen off the fridge, slapping onto our laminate floor. Such a small thing, but such a loud noise!
In our current house, the hardwood floors make almost everything sound like a cannon going off: Ben kicking his feet in his bed, Leah jumping out of bed (directly above the dining room light fixture with its glass globes), Aaron crutching over to get the newspaper, and just the other night, Leah dropping her sippy cup of water onto the floor at 2am. That, however, was easily fixed, unlike a mountain-fresh mess of blue goo.
Like a waterfall in slow motion, Part One
2 years ago
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3 comments:
One of our odder wake up calls was the sound of rustling. We thought it might have been 18 month old daughter T. up and about. A glance in her room (it was light) indicated she was asleep in bed, yet the sound persisted. Great...a burgler and being the alpha male I need to go out and investigate. I walked on and peered into the family room only to encounter a squirrel sitting on the back of a chair chair. It had been rocking the chair which hit the wall and made part of the racket. Eventually we got a live trap from NDSU Zoology and captured the squirrel by evening. We think T. had left a door open which gave the squirrel an opportunity to get from the garage, into the kitchen, and under the cabinetry where we had heard mouse-like sounds the previous night.
One time I heard a noise in the living room at night. I was afraid that it was a mouse or something, but it turned out it was a werewolf. True story.
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