It was a gloomy and cold morning. I spent my morning and early afternoon catching up on some work. I am working from home right now until my leg is better. After staring at the General Ledger and Payroll for 5 hours, I decided to take a break and clean my coffee maker. I have one of those computerized coffee makers. When I clean it, I am suppose to pour 1/2 pot of vinegar into the machine and press the "clean" button. I hobbled back upstairs and decided to log on to Bettermost for a few minutes. A few minutes suddenly turned into an hour, and I forgot all about the coffee machine. As soon as I remembered, I went back downstairs to see if it had finished its' cleaning process. When I walked into my kitchen I saw it. For some reason, the vinegar had flooded out of the coffee machine. There was vinegar all over the kitchen counter and all over the floor. The entire downstairs smelled of vinegar. As I was bending over to clean up the mess, Cody (my dog) came bolting out of the utility room, skidded across the vinegar puddle and slid into me. Both of us were covered in it.
Well, I just felt like crying. Just as I was about to go into my "drama queen" mode, I heard a news report on MSNBC about a suicide bomber who detonated himself somewhere in Iraq, killing several people.
Suddenly my BIG vinegar problem didn't seem so big anymore. There are wars raging in far away places like Iraq and Afghanistan, people starving and dying in Darfur, and my biggest problem of the day was an overflowing coffee machine and some trouble balancing the payroll. I have never felt so ashamed. It's so easy to make our small problems into big ones while forgetting how bad life is for others.
I hope that vinegar smell stays around a few days longer. I hope everytime I smell vinegar from now on, I will remember the lesson I learned today.
In summary, Cody had a bath, I had a shower, the mess was cleaned up and the payroll and GL was balanced.
.... and people are still dying overseas.
I hope I never act like that again.