After a recent grocery shopping expedition I was faced with the horrendous task of trying to make room in the refrigerator for the most recent acquisitions. This was no easy feat because my husband and I horde condiments, dressings, and sauces as though they were spun out of gold. We have enough bottles of various hot sauces to choke a horse, as well as a half dozen almost-empty containers of salad dressings that are months old. Because you never know when you'll need a teaspoon of organic sundried tomato, lemongrass, and tofu dressing.
In order to make room for our latest groceries I had to dispose of a few items. One of these was an almost-empty dish of blueberry cobbler, which I placed on the kitchen counter in an out-of-the-way place so I could load the refrigerator with more salad dressings and hot sauce. Conventional wisdom would dictate that I toss the remaining bit of blueberry cobbler down the garbage disposal and stow the empty baking dish in the dishwasher, but anyone who knows me can tell you that conventional wisdom rarely applies where I am concerned. We have no garbage disposal since our house was built around the time some guy named Moses trotted down the side of a mountain with a couple stone tablets, and even though it's been on our To Do list for ages, we've never actually installed one.
So anyway, the covered dish with the cobbler was put in a corner. I didn't want to put it all in the garbage since we'd just taken out the trash and it didn't seem like a good idea to have that goop sitting in the bin for the few days it would take before the trash was ready to be taken out again. I figured since the dish was covered and had just come out of the refrigerator it could hang out for a day or two until I could throw it out into the full garbage and dispose of all of it.
Long story short, that dish was pretty much forgotten. I know that sounds like we are used to a kitchen that is littered with moldy, dirty dishes, and while my housekeeping skills aren't what they could be, I'm not quite that bad. Besides, with these 57 poodles I have living in the house it's hard to keep track.
Earlier today all the forces of the universe aligned: the trashcan was full and in need of emptying, the dishwasher was filled and ready to run, and I encountered the blueberry cobbler dish that had been tucked away between the mortar and pestle and the stack of cookbooks. I removed the lid to throw it out and noticed some movement. Ye gods. Little white globs were wriggling around in there and after a few seconds I realized they were maggots. I ran outside, yelping and whimpering the whole way, dumped the contents into the trash, and jumped up and down in the driveway frantically shaking my hands in a stupid attempt to remove the contamination. While I was wondering where a Silkwood shower was when a girl needed one, a neighborhood resident walked by, saw me and smiled, and started running in place in a very exaggerated, animated fashion. Apparently she thought I was doing Jazzercise in my driveway and wanted to join in.
My body and the kitchen surfaces have been scrubbed, but oh, the trauma remains. There is one good thing that may have come out of this horrifying experience though. For years I've been trying to convince my husband that we need to hire a part-time housekeeper, and I think this whole maggot episode may have tipped the scales in my favor.
