The Turkey Soup Incident

I suppose this is my version of snuggs lighting her ass on fire.  I have told this story so many times, I could repeat it in my sleep.  I wrote it as a comment over on snuggs' blog, but since it seemed to amuse folks and also because it keeps me from having to write anything original for today, I thought I would repost it here on my own blog.  I present:


This incident happened during my "in between" single time when it was just me and four Abyssinians (cats) in my little house.  I had gotten into the habit of having dinner with my parents often, and my mom would invariably send home leftovers...in this case, turkey soup.  It was in a tall, round Rubbermaid container inside a plastic grocery bag.  I pulled into the garage, got out of the car, and started in with my soup.  Something in the garage caught my attention...can't remember what...but after setting the bag with soup on the kitchen counter, I stepped back out to take care of it. It required climbing on a little stepladder to a high cabinet, and when I did that, I banged my head severely on a 2X4 that my ex had bolted to the beams or order to hang a pull-up bar.  I got so pissed off that I banged my head on his f-ing 2X4 that I got down, got a wrench, and started removing the bolts to take the damn wood down right then.  There were at least 4 big bolts in all, so this task took me a while and got me out of breath in addition to being pissed off.

Meanwhile, there that soup sat on the counter...or so I thought.  Finishing the last bolt, I put my wrench away and walked into the house, only it was like walking into the House of Turkey Soup Horrors.  One of the cats -- I suspect Sonny -- had climbed onto the counter to investigate the soup (actually, they probably all did that) and was unlucky enough to put his head through one of the "handles" in the plastic bag in the process.  When he jumped down, down came the bag and the soup with him.  I figured the "Boom!" of that container hitting the tile floor right behind/beside/on top of him must have scared the bejeezus out of him, because it appeared that he ran like a crazed lunatic through the entire kitchen, dining area and living room with that scary soup chasing him the whole way.  At some point, either on initial impact or one of the many impacts of bouncing along the floor/walls/furniture, the poor battered lid on that container popped open, thus spewing a trail of turkey, noodles, vegetables and broth in Sonny's wake.  Of course he just HAD to jump on my brand new sofa in his frenzied dashing to evade the Soup Monster (my ex had taken all of the living room furniture, and I was so proud of my new sofa).  There was soup EVERYWHERE, and I mean EVERYWHERE.  It had spilled and splattered on every square inch of every surface in those three rooms.  And there were my four Abys, crouched at various spots along the trail of soup, furiously consuming whatever particles of my mom's delicious soup that they could gulp down.

My first reaction was to SCREAM, which startled the cats but did nothing to deter their eating...if anything, they picked up the pace, knowing that the buffet would likely be closing soon.  Then I sat down and cried.  I cried about my sofa, my carpet, my walls, the time I would have to spend cleaning the mess, my lost soup, my lost marriage...you name it.  Then I called my mother and cried over the phone to her.  Of course, she offered to jump into her car and come over to help me clean, but it was late and I felt guilty asking her.  So I dried my tears, locked the cats in the bathroom (where they licked their chops for the next two hours) and set about the task of de-souping my house.  I managed to do a pretty good job, although I was finding pieces of petrified carrot and celery for a while afterwards in the oddest places.  Even so, I think my house smelled like turkey soup for about 6 months after that.  And Sonny never stuck his head into a plastic grocery bag ever again.

The End.

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