Lesson Learned

Today I learned another life lesson. One that I knew in the back of my mind that the outcome wouldn't be good. Still, the little bad voice in my brain overruled the sensible good voice once again.

It all began when Gareth and I decided to do some cleaning today. He decided to rake some leaves outside while I cleaned up the kitchen. All was going well until I loaded the dishwasher with dishes and found that we had no dishwasher soap left. My hair and t-shirt were wet with sweat and all I wanted to do was finish the chore, get a shower and rest for the evening. As I pondered what to do I looked at the regular dishwashing liquid and thought, hmmm.....

Now most of you that used a dishwasher before must be thinking, no you didn't. But yes, I did. I thought a little drop of this won't hurt anything, even though a faint voice in the back of my head was trying to shout this won't be good.



Deciding my chore was almost done, I took two cans of Coke out of the cooler and went out back to see Gareth and give him a refreshment and rub in the fact that I was done with my chore and was going to get a shower and start to enjoy my evening. As we stood outside bantering back and forth, I noticed one of my cats sitting at the entrance of the kitchen, his head bobbing back and forth and up and down at something in the kitchen.


Making an excuse I went inside to the kitchen and at this point I could almost hear the footsteps of the little bad voice running to the back of my head yelling "You should have known better." and the good voice now yelling loudly, "Oh No!"



As I rounded the corner I saw two things. My cat staring at me with a WTF look on his face and a floor full or water and soap suds oozing from the dishwasher. I quickly turned it off and it took a moment before the water and suds stopped oozing out onto the floor.


Gareth had just done the laundry the day before, so I couldn't grab a bunch of towels and use to soak it up, so I grabbed two rolls of papertowels from the closet and started soaking it up before the water could go under the appliances and counters and as they got soaked, I threw them in the sink. I got the mop and started to clean up the water that I now contained in the middle of the floor.



After about half an hour I got it all cleaned up, threw the papertowel in the trash and decided I better go buy some dishwasher liquid and some paper towels and cat treat to keep him quiet. At this point I was so stressed out that I just changed shirts, put a baseball cap on and went to the discount store and bought what I needed.


I thought all would end well until I got a call while in the car on the way home. It was Gareth who asked me if I had something to tell him? Turns out I forgot to clean out the suds that were in the dishwasher itself and when Gareth opened the door to put the dishes away for me, he was greeted with water running out onto the kitchen floor and soap suds filling the dishwasher. I also found out that unless you let the dishwasher run through its cycles, it doesn't drain the water.


My choices now are to decide if I'm stupid and didn't know any better or I knew better, but did it anyway because I'm an idiot. Either way, its not looking good for me.


Still being the optimist that I am, Gareth has kicked me out of the kitchen tonight and he is cooking dinner for us and doing the dishes. Guess life lessons aren't all bad and from the smell coming from the kitchen, they taste good too.