Today I had this brilliant idea to clean out the pantry, which was the only thing on our to do list. Not that there’s nothing else to do, it’s just that it’s the only thing we’d written down.

As I was organizing something on the top shelf, as if in slow motion, the bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce was knocked over and fell to the floor, which popped off the top and sent hot sauce LITERALLY FLYING ALL OVER THE KITCHEN. I seriously found hot sauce like 5 feet away.

I hate hot sauce.

I hate the smell. I hate the taste. In fact, the ONLY REASON I buy this is so we can make buffalo sauce. I NEVER use this on its own.

And suddenly it was all over my (new) pants, my (just washed) favorite shirt, and my freshly showered feet. I reeked of hot sauce. The kitchen reeked of hot sauce. and my plans of quickly organizing the pantry and and being on my way slowly slipped away.

I rolled my eyes, took a picture for good measure, and then realized there was nothing to do but clean it up.

There’s been a LOT of stuff in my life that I just don’t like but lately have felt covered in. Like gravity and a bump of the elbow, things beyond my control have fallen at my feet and it’s been up to me to mouth-breathe my way through cleaning up a mess that makes me gag.

As I stood there, eyes straight up rolled to the ceiling, I realized that sometimes my tendency is to walk out of the room when gravity pulls crap to the floor in front of me. I like to just say “I didn’t do this,” and refuse to address my responsibility to clean it, regardless of if I “DID” it or not. Sometimes if you stop and look around and there’s no other party to clean up the mess, job’s on you. Not because you DID anything, but because there are consequences to walking away (like even smellier hot sauce, sticky floors, hot sauce foot prints in every room of the apartment).

So here’s to being responsible and putting things on hold to tend to messes that fall at our feet regardless of our participation in the making of them.