It Only Takes a Second to be Distracted

Where is my spatula? I just had it in my hand. Where did I put it? I need that spatula now. I know I saw it. I took it from the dishwasher.

As you can see, I did have the spatula. I did put it away. But I put it away in the metal container on the hutch that is for scissors, markers, pens, and pencils. Definitely not for kitchen utensils. It only took one tiny bit of time for my brain to be distracted, and there went the spatula.

One of my favorite 'got distracted' stories happened years ago. (See? It's not all age-related.) I was making something that needed milk and peanut butter. Really, I don't remember what else there was besides milk, but it went in the cupboard where the peanut butter was stored.

Nothing unusual happened. I made my food item and off we went. Several hours later, I wanted to make something else that required milk. Probably macaroni and cheese, as my children were in that stage. But the milk was not in the fridge. I knew we had some, as I had used it earlier the same day. I wracked my brain for several minutes, trying to figure out what had happened to the milk.

And then I noticed the peanut butter in the milk spot in the refrigerator. Uh-huh. Guess where the milk was?

Spoiling in the cupboard in the peanut butter spot, right where I put it.

Only a very short distraction and the milk was a goner.

Today my husband became distracted. I was getting something from across the room. He was standing by the huge vat of coleslaw I had just made for our Oktoberfest party tonight. He glanced over, saw my backside as I was bending down to get a bowl, stared at that instead of what he was doing, and smacked the spoon in the coleslaw so that a huge scoop went flying out on the counter.

Ah-hah! Caught him sneaking a peek AND making a mess. Only a small distraction (ok, this may have been a bit larger of a distraction than small) and we had a mess to clean up.

How about you? What have you done in 'distracted-mode' that a) made a mess, b) got you in trouble, or c) ruined something?

I'd love to hear. Let's commiserate with each other about our little condition of distractability.