Silver linnings

Friday afternoon found me in my kitchen, busily massacring this recipe. I stared out by burning my onions. When it came time to add the broth, I started pouring and though "my, my ,that's awfully dark for chicken broth" and it was. You know what it was the color of though? Beef broth. Makes sense, since it was beef broth. I stopped pouring, put the beef broth in the fridge and poured in the chicken broth.
It was about that time when The New One started fussing a bit and the phone rang. Since nothing was in danger of burning, I answered the phone and made my way up stairs to investigate the fussing.
When Zizza saw me coming, she started yelling something about Enzo and cups. The New One, rather than pinned under her big brother, as I expected her to be based on her whimpers, was playing with toys on an uncharacteristically dark portion of carpet. Bits of popcorn, the remains of the afternoon snack, were strewn about the room.
The effort of taking all of this in and trying to make sense of it impaired my conversational skills such that my friend asked "Do you need to call me back?" Thats when Enzo came down the hall clutching his popcorn cup to his chest. He stopped, there in the hallway, and dumped.
That was the part of the scene I's missed before. Suddenly, it all made sense. "My two year old has been dumping cupfuls of water on the carpet" I said, laughing. I turned and took another look at the New One, the dark cast of the carpet around her now perfectly logical "and on the baby. I'll call you back"
I put Enz in time out, picked up the New One and stripped off her wet clothes. I really did have to get back to my soup though, lest it be subjected to further damage. THe mess would have to wait. Just a few ingredients remained to be added. When all was compounded and safely simmering. I went back to deal with the mess, the fugitive, and the Zizza who didn't see fit to share the news of water dumping until I was about to discover it myself, putting her in danger of shared blame.
"I cleaned it up Mamma" said she as I entered the room. "I had to use a lot of towels though"
The best part is she really had cleaned it up. That is how she avoided a long and detailed scolding about the difference between tattling and telling me things I need to know.
I finished off the afternoon by over simmering the soup so it was more the consistency of a casserole and scalding the bottom of the poor injured dish.
The best part, in this case, was that it was still so crazy good I couldn't wait until the next day so I could eat it as leftovers.