My bad example

I am always trying to do too many things at once. And invariably, it gets me into trouble. Important things get forgotten, hashbrowns get burned.

Like this morning. I was trying to take a newspaper out of a plastic bag, carry a coffee pot with yesterday's coffee still in it, as well as the coffee filter-holder thingy that had to be rinsed out because there were still a few coffee grounds in it.

All while walking.

Consequently, something had to give, and it was the coffee in the pot.

I finished taking the newspaper out of the the plastic bag and only then realized the coffee pot I was carrying had been emptying its contents on the floor. Correction: On the CARPETED floor.

It was, I must admit, a coffee trail worthy of a few cuss words.

Which I emitted.

With nary a squirt of carpet cleaner left in the can.

I ended up using the last squirts of carpet cleaner on three of the four spots, and dish detergent on the fourth one. Turns out dish detergent is a better carpet cleaner than carpet cleaner. In fact, it reminds me of a line in a movie, Aliens, to be exact, when Ripley says to Newt, "Uh oh. I made a clean spot here. Now I've done it." The clean spot created by the dish detergent put the supposedly clean areas of the carpet to shame. (So THIS is what the original color of this carpet was? Whoda' thunk it?)

But the point of this is not that dish detergent is better than carpet cleaner. The point of this is to pose the question: "How much time has been wasted cleaning the carpet because I was trying to save time doing three things at once?

Food for thought, folks. And if I save just one person from my bad example, my work here is done!