An Hour of My Life..........GONE

I mentioned before that we are lucky to get our milk fresh from a local farm.  I make cheese, yogurt and, on occasion, my husband will make some butter.   I bake with it, we drink it and you can skim the cream right off the top to put in soups and stuff.  (I felt the need to tell you all this so that you would think I was some incredible housewife and how lucky my family is to have me.....I want you to keep all this in mind as you read on..........)

Last Thursday I went to pick up our milk and didn't have enough room in the cooler for all the jugs so I strapped one into Francesca's car seat.  When I got home I noticed a little milk had spilt in her seat but since I am the QUEEN OF DENIAL I promptly removed it from my mind and went about my business (of cooking, cleaning and serving my family in every capacity, so wonderful am I).

Fast forward to Monday morning......................

OH MY WORD.

I open the van door to take Fia to school and it slams us right in the nostrils...................the WORST SMELL IN THE WORLD.  The two older kids are screaming about how gross it is and how much it stinks and it really, really does.  Plus I still haven't cleaned out the van so all that recycling is still all over the place and the popsicle is stuck to the armrest.  It is appalling.

Yet I still seem to block it out of my mind upon arriving home.  (I think that Francesca inherited this from me because she plopped right into her stinky seat and rode all around  town while reading her Dora books - rancid, sour milk under my butt?  Not a problem, got my Dora.)

That night Joe finds out about it and is understandably horrified, yet we have been married long enough that no shock or surprise is registered.

I am thinking that Joe will handle it.....or little elves that come in the night........or someone......ANYBODY OTHER THAN ME.  I go to bed without a thought about the carseat or the smell or cleaning any of it up.  I am so positive that it will be taken care of.

The next morning we go to get in the van to take Fia to school.  I open the door.

OH MY WORD.

It was like crawling up the butt of something that had died 10 days prior.  Obviously Joe is trying to teach me a lesson or was tired and did not fully comprehend my expectations of him for all time (such as he will always be in charge of cleaning up anything in the car).  No elves came either.  It was time to admit defeat.  Further evidence of this was taking Fia to school and a little friend behind her said hmmmm, you smell.....you smell like....a pool.  Fia said yea, my car smells.  I was a tidbit embarrassed for our smelly van and the mom in charge of driving the van.

So I went home and told the kids that I was going to clean the carseat and I lifted it up to take it out of the car AND CURDLED, NASTY MILK CAME POURING OUT OF THE CARSEAT ONTO THE DRIVEWAY.  One more time........

OH MY WORD.

The milk had soaked through the carseat, through the blanket folded up underneath the carseat and had soaked into the chair.  Milk from Thursday afternoon.  We had been driving around town with curdled milk resting in the base of my baby's carseat.  The shame of it all.

So I spent an hour disassembling perhaps the MOST COMPLICATED PIECE OF EQUIPMENT that we own - the carseat.  I actually had to get tools out.  It was ridiculous.  And it was then that I made the vow to NEVER EVER DO THIS AGAIN.  It wasn't the smell that sent me over the edge it was all the dang time it took getting that dang carseat apart.  But it's done now.  Well, actually I did clean it all and wash the fabric parts but when Joe went to put it back in and opened up some secret compartment that I didn't know about - milk spilled out again.  So we just put in a carseat from Joe's car.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the milk out of the chair in the van.............................