Adventures with salt

Salt is a curious thing. It’s small and square and although it doesn’t feel good on a paper cut we still sprinkle it onto our food. Well, lately salt has been my friend.

Salt has made my life so much easier. My third boy, Ben, loves eggs. LOVES THEM. He loves to eat them almost as much as he loves to throw them. One of the things that he is famous for is grabbing the carton of eggs and then sneakily he will hide somewhere in the house and throw them all over the floor. Thankfully he has only catapulted them in non-carpeted areas. He waits until the perfect moment. It is when I am happily reading to the other boys or taking care of business on the computer. His brothers are usually distracted with other projects. His dad is generally not home when these incidents occur. However, dad has been fortunate enough to witness them a few times. It’s the sounds that always give it away. At first I would think that it was newspaper being crumpled up. But now I know better. That’s not newspaper that I hear. After hurling myself to the kitchen to see the disarray, the truth of the sound is revealed to me. It is not newspaper being crumpled up. Yes it is Ben gleefully watching the eggs splat on the floor. He sees me and instead of trying to escape the wrath of mom, he quickly throws as many eggs as he can. Then he scampers and hides beneath one of the kitchen chairs while I scream in anguish over my newly splattered kitchen. On the bright side, I have learned how to successfully clean up raw eggs. After all, cleaning up that stringy, gooey sludge was not exactly what I had envisioned as part of my day. I soon discovered that it would take several paper towels to get one egg off of the floor, and as everyone knows, I’m cheap. And I value those paper towels! My laziness and frugality was in conflict with the egg mess. I needed a solution so that my frustration and inertia could live simultaneously. Salt was the answer. When salt is generously sprinkled on the raw egg and then let sit for a minute or two, the egg congeals and then with a single paper towel, the egg comes right off the floor.—disinfect afterwards of course. With salt, I was able to pry Ben out from under the chair and instead of being crazy frustrated with him, I was able to logically/rationally/lovingly deal with him. I was also able to quickly clean up a mess that previously would have me pulling my hair out. I love salt.

Salt made me laugh the other day. The salt shaker was empty. So the logical thing to do was to fill it full of salt. I turn over the salt shaker, remove the stopper and commenced to fill the shaker with salt. I keep pouring salt and pouring more salt….and more salt. How in the world is all that salt fitting into the shaker! Well, it is then I realize that the salt will pour out of the salt shaker through those little holes when tipped upside down and salt will end up all over the floor. At least it was salt and not eggs that I had to clean up.

I love salt!