Dry Wall, Sour Cream and Slinkies

     Drywall compound, a Cabot sour cream container and a Slinky:  Until a few minutes ago, I never would have believed they had much in common.  First start with a job that needs doing (no shortage here).  Today's task is redoing the stairway to the function room.  Which means filling the umpty-frat zillion dings and dents that occur in a busy corridor.

     Rather than lug around a 5-gallon pail of drywall mix, I decanted into an old 2-quart Cabot sour cream bucket  (tall and narrow) and began at the bottom of the stairs.  At the top, I set said container on the newly recarpeted floor and worked my way up to the ceiling. 

     As I stood on my step stool working on the ceiling, I turned in horror at the first gloppy thump, knowing already what I was going to see.  My giant dry wall cup of wet compound had flipped over onto the first tread.  You know that's gotta be messy--professionals call it "mud" for a reason.

    I got off the ladder to grab it and start cleaning up the mess.  Imagine the look on my face when before I could quite get it, it flipped onto the next tread--this time open end up.  Now I had it cornered.  I went down a step and reached for it.  And just as it was nearly within my grasp, it flipped again.  Mud side down of course.

     I had a few unpolite words to say at this time about the now double piles of goo on the carpet.  Went for it and it flipped again. 

    The part of me that knew I had to clean up this gawd-awful mess was now at war with the scientist in me wondering just how long this would keep up.  A third part looked for the hidden camera.  The "I don't want to clean it up, camera be-damned part" won and I wasted my time on a fourth futile attempt to lasso the wayward sour cream cup.

   Suffice it to say that I never did get it before it made it to the landing, an odd number of steps thereby enabling it to finish its maneuver in the "butter-side-down" position.  Apparently the thick compound moving around inside acted like a slow motion wave similar to what makes a slinky move down stairs.

     I'm still chuckling about it as I write this even though it was every bit as much fun to clean up as I'd imagined.  Luckily, dry wall compound has no color and dries to a powder, so all I have now are some damp spots on the carpet.

Thanks for reading,

Lon Henderson, a bemused innkeeper
Sunset Hill House
Sugar Hill, NH