One More Cup of Coffee for the Road. . .

So the song goes.  Mr. Dylan keeps me company in my head while the carpet cleaner  screams in my ears.  Cleaning the little red pickup, Donk is his name, is on the list of Things I Get To Do Today. 

It was obvious that the floor mats needed to be vacuumed.  The floor itself, yes, that, too.  And the seats.  Then clean the windows and I’d be finished.  But while vacuuming the seats, and I have to admit I noticed two or three on the floor as well, I became aware of some light brown spots.  So now the task is not so simple, not so quick. 

A-lick-and-a- promise approach makes for a bitter, cranky feeling in my gut.  If you are doing a task that you do not enjoy, even the slightest little bit, I have always maintained that doing the task better will produce, if not a “like” for the job, at least a much higher degree of satisfaction during the process and upon completion of the task.  After a very short mental discussion about how to proceed, I rustled up a pan of water, some rags and the cleaning solution.  Two minutes later, I hauled out also the carpet cleaner and adjusted it to the “tools/upholstery” setting at highest sucking power.

I shifted into compound low—just-anybody-try-to-stop-me-now mode—and headed for Donk.  He shivered a bit after seeing the pan of cold water but saw my mood and offered no resistance.  Soap, water, scrub, suck, rinse, suck, rinse, suck!  The seats looked remarkably better in short order.

The floor was next—those areas I had hardly notice earlier—it was their turn.  The little brown areas just disappeared.  Now that was cool.  But wait!  The water being sucked up by the howling equipment was a rich, coffee brown.  Carpet looked clean.  Water coming out was brown.  Better go over the area again. And again.  And again 5 times.  Another 5 times.  Lost count at this point.  Just how many cups of coffee has slipped from the drivers’ (correct playing of apostrophe, since my daughter had used Donk in college, and many, many of her friends had driven this sweet, hardworking little pickup) hands and ended up on the floor.  They were all in the dehydrated state between the carpet and the floor boards.  And I’m sucking them up, cup by cup.

The rich coffee finally became weak in its color, and I knew there was no more “juice” available in the dregs that remained.

And now as I'm heading out on an errand, sitting on a towel to keep my pants relatively dry on the still-damp seat and very carefully balancing a drink in my hand, I feel sweet satisfaction.  “One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.”