Thank God Its not Tuesday today!

Wisconsin has been hit hard by rain the week. It’s hot and humid, stifling really. Aside from the fact that it makes exercise more tiring, it does some funny things to a girl’s hair. Tuesday was no exception on the hair front. The humidity was so high, my hair was a frizzy, poufy mess. When I got home from work and looked at it, I thought I was looking at Roseanne Roseannadanna in the mirror. Big hair – huge.

So I pull the Brillo pad back into a ponytail and start thinking about SWAT workout Tuesday evening. Man it was going to feel good to jump into that pool and swim some laps! As I stand at the kitchen counter working on a pre-practice snack, my son ambles up to the counter and says, “Yeah, there was a little problem with the laundry….. I spilled a little of the soap.”

Understatement of the year. Sunday, I cracked open my new super-economy size jug of Tide HE super-concentrated detergent, 110 loads worth in all. I used a capful, the rest was left sitting atop my washer. I hesitantly headed down to the laundry room to survey the damage. There was Tide on the ceiling, running down the walls, standing an inch deep on the floor, spilling out of the room over the approach soaking into the BEIGE (now blue) carpet in a large semi-circle. It had run under the machines and was soaking into the baseboard woodwork and the wall behind it. It was running down the front of both the washer and the dryer. There was a small laundry basket filled with blue soapy towels. There was one towel on the floor in front of the machines, I think for the purpose of holding the soap in one location, which incidentally was under the washer and dryer and up against the plaster walls and baseboard wood. I stood and looked in disbelief, pretty sure there was steam blowing out of both ears at that point. Bad words were said. Thankfully, there was plenty of soap available to wash my mouth out……..

I could tell immediately by looking at the scene what happened. We (and by we I mean my almost adult, think we are all grown children) stuffed the HE washer with as many awkward heavy imbalanced items as possible. We pulled the jug of detergent forward to fill the cup. We did not push it back so it was more centered on the washer, we just left it hanging from the edge because that was easier. As soon as it hit “SPIN” the first time, the jug plummeted from the top of the washer, hit the floor, backsplashed upwards to the ceiling and wall, cracked open and leaked out the bottom. We of course were playing video games or otherwise not paying attention and went back several hours later to transfer the wash to the dryer. Surveying the mess, we used a couple towels to wipe up a little bit then placed a towel in front of the washer so it quit leaking forward where we could reach it. Then we went back to our video games.

The carpet cleaner was out of the closet and standing all farfled up just outside the room on the carpet. It was full of water, which was seeping slowly into the carpet. I picked up the attached hose to move the machine onto the tile and realized too late the hose was filled with soapy water that were the remnants of a failed attempt to use it to extract the soap from the carpet, so soap and water went running everywhere out of the hose. More bad words were said. Looking closer at the carpet on the threshold of the room, I noticed that the carpet cleaner beater brushes had frayed the carpet badly along the edge where it had been used.

Lucas had to go to orientation at Papa Murphy’s, so I sent Nick to give him a ride and wait around. Truth be told I may have poked someone’s eyes out had they stuck around for the clean up, already knowing how well the first attempt had been done. Before long, Mike was home and together we spent roughly 2.5 hours sliding around mopping up soap. We scooped soap into a dustpan and poured it into the utility sink. We pulled out the machines and scooped, and scrubbed, and washed and rinsed and mopped behind them. We wiped down the walls, the ceiling, the woodwork, the cabinets, the door, the machines and everything else in the room. Ever tried to wash up soap? It’s harder and slipperier than it sounds.

Cost of that load of laundry:
- $30 in detergent
- $?? repairing/replacing the carpet
- $?? replacing the woodwork
- $?? refinishing the mushy soapy plaster, repairing the wall, painting
- $30 for replacing the two now ruined mops
- our time in missed training hours – PRICELESS!

Needless to say, by the time we were done, we had pretty much missed most of SWAT practice. The sky was darkening, so a run or bike on our own was ruled out too. I was frustrated. We missed our workouts Monday too due to rainy weather.

We headed out instead to do some errands so hopefully we could be back on track Wednesday. In the car, I noticed that the skin on my hands and feet and forearms were starting to feel a burning sensation. I quickly realized that it was a chemical irritation from the ultra concentrated detergent we had been swimming in for hours. Looking at my feet I could see where the detergent had actually started eating away layers of my toenail polish. I looked at the palm of my hand, which was also sore and noticed it was bruised along the area where I was holding the mop handle and the scrub brush. I remembered earlier that I had noticed my wedding ring needed to be looked at because it needed to be sized again. Looking at it closer now, I saw it was bent and actually broken after the soap cleanup. So while we were out, we stopped at the jewelry store to drop it off for repair.

We stopped the car and going around the backside of the Envoy, I cut the corner too tight and ran into Thelma (the bike rack) who bit me pretty hard in the ribcage. OUCH.
After dropping off the ring, we went to see my good friend Vicky since we were at the Mall and collect on my coupon for free PINK flip flops. Vicky’s Secret by the way is that her underwear is uncomfortable and is not that much better than Wal-Mart…...

I have never looked so forward to a day being over in my whole life. Once we were home, Mike and I worked on our Bigun tribute song, which was so much fun, it almost made the farfled up mess that was my evening worth it.

Thank God It’s Wednesday, that’s all I have to say today! I still have Roseanne Roseannadanna’s hair though. Hope that isn’t a sign of things to come today……..

Ran a 10Kwith Mike after work tonight so we are back on track again. Yeah.

I used the training assistant on RWOL today to tweak my training plan for the Half Marathon in September and tonight I will be working on that some more. We’ll see how it goes. It just doesn’t seem like there is enough running to get ready for a race of that size, but we’ll see. After all, they are the experts, I am a mere mortal so what do I know?