Mornings! I hate ’em. I headed for the kitchen for a cup of coffee, hoping it would help open my eyes so I could see how to brush my teeth.

I stopped at the kitchen door and rubbed my bleary eyes. Bubbles drifted in the air and my daughter floated by. I must still be asleep.

I rubbed my eyes again, but she didn’t go away. She was in the kitchen dancing with the mop. Why anyone would be mopping at this hour, I wondered as she and the mop danced by again. Why are there bubbles in my kitchen?

“What’s going on?” Obviously something was. My kitchen doesn’t suddenly decide to take a bubble bath.

“You should have seen it before,” she sobbed, in tears. “I walked in this morning and it was sea of blue soap. It came rushing at me in a big wave, like a tsunami.”

A tsunami in my kitchen? Surely, I must still be asleep, I thought. Unfortunately, I was not.

She continued the story. “It was the cat — the stupid cat. I’m going to kill it!”

It seems that we had left the brand new 60 oz. bottle of liquid laundry soap setting on the kitchen counter when we unpacked the groceries. Somehow, the cat had managed to knock it off and when it hit the floor, the bottle split and a flood of liquid soap flowed out.

“There was too much soap to mop up,” she sniffed. “I had to shovel it up with the dust pan. I’ve been shoveling for an hour. When I started mopping it only became worse,” she continued. “The more I mopped, the more bubbles there were.”

So she looked on the Internet to see what to do.

You mean this happens to other people? People besides us spill entire bottles of liquid detergent? It’s on the Internet? By now the bubbles were starting to subside a bit and my daughter was only up to her ankles instead of her knees.

“It said to add cooking oil.” she said. “I was a little bit leery but figured what could be worse than this?”

What could be worse? Maybe an oil spill? I can’t believe it, a tsunami and an oil spill in my kitchen on the same morning. Is this a disaster movie?

But the oil worked and the bubbles were finally contained. She and the mop skated away on the oily new skating rink I used to call a kitchen floor. “Do you need some help?” I asked. I guess I didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

“No, I’ll do it. It’s my cat.” Glad she remembered that. Speaking of the cat, we never did figure out how he escaped from the kitchen without even getting soap on his feet.

Eventually most of the soap was gone, but the floor remained sticky. Our shoes clung to the floor with every step. “How can I get rid of this stuff?” She asked.

Good question. Maybe vinegar? Vinegar will clean just about anything, Actually, I wasn’t sure if it would work on a tsunami, but we were desperate. So, she tried vinegar and finally was able to get rid of the last of the mess.

I have the cleanest kitchen floor in town now, and it smells wonderful. Something about that oil and vinegar smell makes me hungry for a tossed salad, though.

Copyright 2010 Sheila Moss