Coffee, Caribou, Clean Carpets, and Plain Ol' Dumb Luck*

Today was "Cooler Fest" at Caribou Coffee. They were giving away their cooler drinks, and since their Caramel Cooler is my drug of choice for summer, there is no way we could pass that up! It was a 12 oz cup (which is smaller than the regular "small" at 16 oz.), but, hey folks, free coffee is free coffee. We won't mention that we might have accidentally dropped by the Monona Caribou before going to our "regular" Caribou that is a couple of blocks from our apartment.

At our Caribou, they had a poor soul dressed up as a caribou (though all the other customers in the store insisted on calling him a moose) that was standing on the corner with a sign advertising the event. We happened to drop in during his (or hers...I didn't think it would have been polite to lift up his/her tail and check, so we will just call it a "him") break, so he was just walking into the shop when we pulled up. He disappeared into the back just as we were coming in, so we thought we had missed him, but after we got our coffees, he came back out. Both kids shook his paw and then played peek-a-boo with him while he was standing in the entrance. They were both completely taken by the 'bou. Bug got all silly and giggly and Bean just stood and stared with big eyes the whole time he was in the store. We left shortly after he headed back out to the corner, so we drove around the block so the kids could wave good-bye to him.

Since I am finally getting caught up around the house and back to normal after coming home from vacation, I took advantage of a couple of warm, sunny, relatively low humidity days to start shampooing the carpets. We have a shampooer, so at least we don't need to rent on and do the whole house in one day, which is good, because with one not-completely housebroken dog and little ones that have a tendency to run around with no diaper on and/or to spill all manner of thing anywhere, anytime, we need to shampoo more often than the average Joe. Anyway, yesterday I did the rug that is under the table on the dining room carpet (does anyone else think the whole concept of "dining room carpet" is just plain fundamentally flawed to begin with??? Even without kids, stuff winds up on the floor, or is that just me?) and laid it out over the clothes drying rack and storage bin on the back porch. After that I did the dining room carpet. Not a huge accomplishment, but not bad for the third trimester!

The plain ol' dumb luck came after leaving the rug out on the porch overnight. Usually I do these things and the procrastinate putting them back inside until they get rained on and have to stay outside to dry and get rained on again, etc. However, this morning, I was looking out the back window and decided to be a big girl and bring the rug in. With lots of kid help (that makes any job just that much harder ;o) ), we got it in and rolled it out and got the table and chairs put back where they belong. Not five minutes later, I looked outside and it had started raining! Now, I am one of those people that ALWAYS gets the bright idea to move the rug five minutes after it starts, so I was more pleased that I should have been! The other thing that could be filed under "dumb luck" (but would be more appropriate under "every cloud has a silver lining") is that today's rain wasn't the good rain associated with a cold front that brings cooler, dryer weather, but a garden variety Midwestern rainstorm that just leaves everything kind of muggy and icky, so the forecast is for more humidity over the next few days, so I may be off the hook with the next section of carpet cleaning for a little while.

* you wouldn't believe how long I wracked my brain to come up with a clever synonym for plain ol' dumb luck that started with a C. *sigh*