A Hot and Soapy Fourth of July
Much to my children’s amusement, I drank soap last week. To be honest, it wasn’t a LightenUp stunt. It was a simple act of desperation at the end of a family vacation. We had enjoyed a few days of solitude (well as much solitude as possible with 2 children and an infant) up high in the Entiat River Valley.
The last day of our wilderness excursion was a hot Fourth of July; we stopped at our favorite organic farm, just outside of Chelan, WA on our way out. Rafael, our favorite farmer, had just loaded us up with apricots, cherries, onions, shelling peas, hazelnuts, walnuts and tamales. The back of the van was now extra full and my boxes of leftover pantry items were precariously placed near the door.
We stopped at Bear Foods, our favorite natural market, for a few snacks on the way to my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Wenatchee where we’d be for the fireworks that night. In my rush to keep the family moving along I opened the back of the van and the pantry boxes fell out splat on the pavement. Glass jars and all.
Amazingly nothing broke. But there in the mess was my special bottle of liquid supplement that I usually keep in the refrigerator or cooler while traveling. It’s a particularly expensive supplement that I’m taking to support my immune system post birth of my son. So it’s pretty important to me.
The lid was cracked and in the heat and chaos of the moment I kind of overreacted…in a graceful way, of course! I thought “what’s this doing out of the cooler, I’d better have some before it goes bad in the heat and spills out everywhere.” So I snatched it up and took a swig. Eeew! It already tasted like it had gone rancid, souring up my mouth and the back of my throat.