Beech Tree News Network

Over the course of two days, my granddaughter, Sabria, and I made two of the biggest messes that have ever been made in this house. Hers involved Easter egg dye.  Mine involved liquid makeup.  Mine was by far the worst.  Let me explain.

On Thursday, after we made her soccer game at 5:30 and her art show at 6:45, Sabria and I returned home, where I had set up a dozen hardboiled eggs and cups containing a TBS of vinegar each, in order for her to get right on the egg-dyeing project.  She dropped a dye tablet into each cup, I added the ½ cup water and she stirred until every tablet was dissolved.  There were nine cups.

We’ve done this before, so she knew how the process went.  I left her to it, and as she was putting eggs into the cups, I went into the living room to watch TV with Garey.  A few minutes later, I heard a cup hit the floor and Sabria yell, “Gee!  Come quick!”

Garey and I both rushed into the kitchen, where we found Sabria splattered with red dye—of course it was red dye, it couldn’t have been the light yellow or spring green.  Not only was Sabria splattered, so was the table, three of the four chairs, the floor and three of the cabinet doors beside the table.  

I grabbed paper towels, old hand towels and Clorox Wipes, and we went after it.  We had just put down a new floor in October, and the lighter pattern in the design was quickly turning red, so I rinsed hand towels for Garey and Sabria then went behind them with Clorox wipes.  Sabria climbed under the kitchen table and said, “Uh oh, Gee.”  I got down to see what the “uh oh” meant.  She was pointing up to the underside of the table top.  I gave her a handful of wipes and told her to work on that while we finished the floor.  It took us thirty minutes to clean the entire area, as well as Sabria, whom I scrubbed down in the shower.  I put her cracked red egg in the refrigerator, and the cup into the sink—it still contained 1tsp of dye.  

Here is the mystery:  The cup contained 1 TBS of vinegar, 8 TBS of water and 1 dye tablet, yet it had somehow splattered everything within a three-yard area, as well as Sabria.  There was half of a roll of paper towels in the trash, 3 red-stained hand towels, and an empty canister of Clorox Wipes.  And there was still a tsp of dye left in the cup, as well as a cracked red egg in the refrigerator.

The second biggest mess to ever happen in this house occurred on Saturday morning before the soccer game and Easter egg hunt.  I was in the bathroom putting on makeup when Sabria wandered in.  She was wearing a brand new mint green shirt.  I mention this fact because the biggest messes only occur when you’re wearing new clothes.

Sabria wanted a dab of liquid foundation for her freckles, so I let her get a dab out of the lid.  She smeared it across her nose and cheeks, and as I leaned over to smooth it out a bit, I tipped the makeup bottle and poured it down her shirt.  As I jerked the bottle back, it sloshed onto her hair, my shirt and a 6-inch area on the bathroom carpet.

I quickly removed her shirt and my shirt and put them into a bucket of water.  I took a wash cloth with some shampoo and scrubbed the makeup-laden area of her hair.  (We didn’t have time to get her into the shower.)  I sprayed Spray and Wash on the carpet, and we went to the soccer game. 

 Between the soccer game and the egg hunt, I checked the shirts in the bucket.  The water was clear, because the makeup had coagulated on the shirts.   It looked like tan cottage cheese.  The Spray and Wash had also beaded up on the carpet, but hadn’t affected the makeup stain.  I scrubbed the area with Clorox Wipes to no avail.  I went back to the shirts, removed them from the water, which clearly was not working, and wiped off as much makeup as I could with paper towels.  I used Tide, a Fels-Naptha laundry bar and a citrus cleaner for adhesives on both shirts and the floor, and finally got most of the stain out, although there is still an annoying film in my sink where I scrubbed the shirts that will probably only come out with bleach.

Here is the mystery: The makeup bottle contains one fluid ounce of liquid foundation.  I had used a quarter of the bottle before Saturday morning.  After drenching Sabria’s and my shirts, a section of her hair and a 6-inch spot on the carpet, the bottle was still half-full, which means one-quarter ounce of makeup made that entire mess.  Somehow, over the course of two days, Sabria and I have defied the laws of science.