Wednesday, November 4, 2009

An Extra Hour – for Cleaning!

Sunday's Blessing was an extra hour due to the change from Eastern Daylight to Eastern Standard Time. I wish they’d just leave the time alone, but must admit I enjoy the benefit of falling back in the fall – springing ahead just messes with my biorhythms too much.


So I woke up Sunday at the new 6 am and collected the papers from the porch. I set up the coffee pot and sat at the table to start reading the papers while waiting for my first cup of coffee. In retrospect, I’m very glad I didn’t immediately go up to my “office” and my prayer chair for my morning devotions (and writing in my blessings journal) as is my usual routine. After a few minutes, I became aware of a different dripping noise than the coffee pot usually makes – a quick glance brought me dashing across the kitchen – I had forgotten to put the pot into the coffee maker. Coffee was dripping over the grounds basket onto the warming unit. I wasn’t sure what to do first – try to put the pot under the stream of coffee, or wipe the warmer. I did a combination of both, and began a half hour long process of cleaning up 10 cups of coffee (and grounds) that didn’t quite make it into the pot – the top became clogged with the combination of coffee and grounds that continued to overflow the basket until the reservoir was empty. I used two dish cloths and finally resorted to the dish towel before I was finished. I rinsed everything out, threw the cloths into the laundry, and started over again.

Later, I put some soup in my crock pot to take to church for a lunch with members of the Praise Band. I carefully rubber banded the top, and set it into a low square box I keep solely for transporting the crock pot. As I pulled out of the driveway, I saw the level of the soup tilt backwards, and ooze out over the side just a little. As I approached the stop light at the corner (a slightly bigger slope), slightly more soup came out. It wasn’t until I went up the decidedly hilly driveway into the church lot that it came flowing over the side. My great relief was the cardboard box with newspapers in the bottom that caught the overflow. I well recall a college classmate describing her emergency stop by the side of the road to scoop chili out the passenger door of her car on the way to our class – it had been her turn to bring the main course for our shared meal midway through the evening class. So once inside I pulled out the paper towels in the church kitchen and proceeded to clean up the mess before plugging in the soup for later consumption.

I don’t know what the intention of the “extra” hour was originally – more time for farmers to harvest crops or something, I think. But I spent my hour on Sunday cleaning!

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