Coffee Light, No Sugar

If I’d followed the dots, I could have saved myself a mess, but at the time, I looked at each incidence without thinking of cause and effect.

I had been grocery shopping, and failed to bring enough bags so the one bag I had was overloaded, and heavy. My daughter carried it in and set it on the stool in the kitchen. After she left I put everything away, and at the end noticed some wet marks on the fabric covering of the seat.

Something must have leaked, I thought as I scrubbed a wet sponge over the seat to clean it. I did check the bag and found the dampness that had leaked through. I washed it and set it outside to dry. Groceries were put away, the mess cleaned up, everything taken care of, or so I thought.

This morning I was making my first cup of coffee, and opened a new bottle of the vanilla, low fat, soy creamer that I use. It did occur to me, when I had to literally pull it from the fridge where it seemed stuck to the shelf, that I needed to add the fridge to my cleaning list.

It was early, and I’m not my best early in the morning. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.

Grasping the bottle, to add creamer to my freshly brewed mug of coffee, I squeezed, holding it tight as I pulled the seal from the opening and found I had a mess over the counter.

Obviously it was leaking, but from where? And then I saw it, the narrow slit in the side of the bottle, made when a knife slid across the tape that sealed the carton. I’ve seen that tell-tale slit before, but it had always been on a box of cereal or crackers. This was the first time I’d experienced it on something liquid.

Of course, the empty bottle I’d finished the day before had gone out in the garbage, so I used an empty water bottle to save as much of the creamer as I could. I should take the empty bottle back to the store and ask for a replacement.

From now on, I plan to squeeze plastic bottles before putting them in my cart, in hopes of saving myself a mess, a waste of money and a return trip to the store. Sounds good, but I’ll never remember, and what are the chances I’d get a damaged container again? I’ll go with the odds.