word to the wise

do not ever drop a baby food jar on tile - or anything hard enough to smash it. it will explode. at least mine did. it was crazy. there was glass EVERYwhere. one little earth's best jar. receycled too many times? i don't know.

it has always driven me nuts when either of my parents, and now my husband, would warn me to be careful while picking up glass that has broken. uh, yeah. i mean, are you kidding me? anyway, i've seen them all have a go at it and no one has any special technique. in fact, now that i am mentioning it, i'd venture to guess that everyone does it the same way. big pieces first, then put the little pieces into the big ones, yeah? yeah.

so this little jar breaks and there are very few big pieces. i grab them all and start to work on the little ones and i am holding the small shards in my hand. loosely, which i assume i don't need to mention. but despite holding them loosely, when i dumped them i had 3 separate little slices in the palm of my hand. which actually hurt considering their size. i started to get nervous about missing tiny little bits of glass that would make their way into, and ultimately move through, my hand because somewhere along the line, i was told that it is important to make sure you never miss a piece of glass that is stuck in your skin because glass never works its way out, it just travels inward. i don't know if this is true, but i believe it, and spent the next 5 minutes with my face in my hand carefully examining it from every angle. let's not talk about the quadruple cleaning the floor got for fear my new crawler would be cut.

so my point is, you can go ahead and pick up shattered wine glasses, broken mirrors and picture frames any old way you feel like, but if you break one of those tiny little jars, you had better be careful.

here's a somewhat related two-for-one word to the wise for you - don't ever put in or buy a house with any shade of white tile floor in the kitchen. every microscopic drop of water that you didn't see when you thought you wiped the floor will turn into a dirty spot. AND you can't see broken glass very well on it either.