The Boom: the Sequel

To recap part one of The Boom, my wife was making smoothies when the beverage somehow became animated, escaped all containers and spread its raspberry-pomegranate hues over appliances, hardwood floors and walls. Clean-up wasn’t difficult. We thought the incident was over.

But now…here is ‘the rest of the story’….

I left the master suite’s hallway late Christmas day and headed for the kitchen. The weak winter sun had already abandoned us. Lights were required. I went to the switch plate. Four lighting systems were controlled from that location. I clicked two and glanced up to assess, was this enough light?

The sight that I saw left me gawking. “Oh, my, God.”

Our kitchen has a vaulted ceiling. It rises from about seven feet up past fourteen. A pattern of dried smoothie resembling Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island chains was spread across the ivory ceiling at about the twelve foot altitude.

I regarded it for a number of minutes, considering what we’d initially seen, trying to reconcile the two scenes. The distances…the quantity….

Something like this needed company. I  hunted down my wife. She was in the snug. “Hey,” I said in Mister Casual’s voice. “We missed some of the smoothie spill.”

“Where?”

“You need to come see this.”

She went into the kitchen. I lagged behind her. She searched the floor and appliances. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look up.”

My wife did. She gasped. “Oh. My. God.”

“Yep. What the hell happened in here?”

Staring at the mess, my wife shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t explain.” Bewilderment glistened in her eyes. “We might need to paint that.”

“We’ll see. Let’s try cleaning it first.”

It would need to be me cleaning it, or painting it, should it be required. My wife would never be able to reach it. She’s too short. With cats warily inspecting my activities, I got out the ten foot step ladder to begin the cleaning process and set it up in the kitchen. Climbing up to the third rung from the top, I surveyed the mess.

It was worse than we thought. From here, I could see that another wall – ten feet away and fifteen feet up – displayed the Aleutians. Smoothie was on the walls above the cabinets and above the small artwork over the window. Smoothie speckled the dining room ceiling another eight feet away in the opposite direction.

Unbelievable. Studying it all, I wished again for Dexter to come in and analyze this mess. Turning on the Denver and KC football game for companionship, I began cleaning. Soap and water was tried.

The mess chortled at my puny efforts.

I doused a section with Windex and scrubbed.

The mess sniffed. “Is that the best you got?”

I conducted an Internet search. Magic Erasers were tried.

Magic Erasers failed.

I returned to the Internet. Another cleaner was recommended.

I tried it. “No,” the smoothie mess cried. “I’m disappearing…oh, what a world, what a world.”

By the third quarter, I had it all cleaned. A slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream was consumed to celebrate.

If you ever need to clean a berry stain from paint, I highly recommend OxiClean.