Duct tape does it again

I was standing with one foot on the Jeep frame, and one foot on the shelving unit in the garage. I thought for sure there was a roll of red duct tape somewhere on one of the top shelves.

I stretched upward, and moved a plastic tote to the side about a half an inch.

That's when it happened. I heard a CLANG!! and a clatter. And a loud whooshing noise. Like air leaking out of an inflatable raft. Or water spraying.

And I was being 'misted' by something.

Is that a water hose leaking? We don't have any water hoses hooked up in the garage. Do we? Did someone just throw a tear-gas bomb in here? Why would someone DO that?

All of this happened in a split second. Moments later, the whooshing stopped, and I gathered my bearings.

I slowly started to realize what had happened. My shifting of the tote had caused a can of spray paint to fall from the top of this shelving unit onto the floor of the garage. And the fall caused said can to indiscriminately release its contents.

The entire bottom half of my body was speckled with beige spray paint.

Better than neon green, to be sure. But still decidedly NOT AWESOME.

I checked the Jeep first. I didn't see much spray paint on it, but it did feel a little sticky. (Although, I'm not entirely sure the Jeep isn't always sticky. At this point in its life, it's composition is about 75% Bondo and 15% chewing gum anyway.)

A tarp near the bottom of the shelving unit suffered some residual damage. But it's a tarp. It's not designed to be pretty.

So, aside from my lower legs and my denim shorts, most everything in the vicinity was remarkably unscathed.

The day improved from there, certainly, except for when Ben called to say he'd be late home because he was in the shop with the truck to the tune of $350 worth of repairs, and then when I went into the kitchen to investigate that clinking noise, found that the dog was standing on the stove helping himself to Ben's broiled Parmesan tilapia dinner.

But, to redeem all the mishaps of the day, the kids and I worked on a craft we could take with us to Canada. We settled on these plastic 1-liter bottle sailboats. They're a big hit, and they actually float.


That was the reason I had been looking for the duct tape in the first place. I never found it, so took the kids to Meijer, where they got to pick out fancy duct tape instead of boring old red.



Oh, and Noah solved one of the mysteries of the universe: Mom, I think it's called duck tape because it sounds like it's quacking when you tear it off with your teeth.

I guess everything all worked out in the end.