I Have Had Some Embarrassing Moments

Can you believe I'm still running free?

One morning I finished the dishes from a big family dinner the previous night. I left them in the drainer (if God wanted me to dry dishes, He wouldn't have made air) and when I returned to the kitchen I heard a strange, rhythmic, steady ticking noise, like an alarm clock...or a bomb.

I walked closer to the noise, trying to tell where it was coming from. I couldn't isolate it. I went upstairs to make beds, and when I came down, the kitchen was still ticking.

I called my boss, who had been an electrician. "Do you think it might be faulty wiring someplace?"

He didn't. "I'd more likely think it's the siding on your house, expanded in the heat."

I hung up the phone and the kitchen was still ticking.

As usual, not considering whether I was making a spectacle of myself, I hugged the wall by the driveway and pressed my ear against it. I listened for a couple of minutes but could hear nothing. Until I heard, "Excuse me?"

I turned around to see an Asplundh truck at the end of the driveway and a man leaning out the window. He had a funny look on his face.

"Can I help you?"

"We're looking for so-and-so....really, never mind," And they drove away.

Perhaps he didn't want to ask directions from a woman who'd just been listening to her HOUSE.

When I went back inside, the dishes were dry and I put them away, still not knowing why my kitchen was still ticking.

The last item I picked up was a Mason jar I'd turned upside
down on the counter because there was no room for it at the inn.

The ticking stopped. I put the jar down again and the ticking resumed. Up, no ticking. Down, more ticking.

That was it! The moisture dripping down the inside of the jar had made the jar, loosely sealed to the counter top, to lift up and set down, rhythmically.