It should have taken me about 5 seconds, tops. Somehow I managed to turn it into five plus minutes of increasingly absurd decisions. Here’s what happened. We were on the road, pulling our camper behind us, when I realized that I’d forgotten to take our supper out of the freezer to thaw it. Next time we stopped, I went in the camper, retrieved the quart bag of sloppy joes out of the freezer and threw it in the sink, putting the cover over the sink. Done and done…except for the fact that I had a thought.

“By the time it thaws, it will be hard to get out of the bag. I should cut the bag off and put the sloppy joes in a bowl to thaw.” This was the first illogical decision out of many to follow.

I cut the bag open, stuck the frozen chunk of sloppy joes into a largish plastic bowl (without a cover) and put it in the sink. Done! But then I realized something:

“As we drive and it thaws, the bowl will be tipping over and the sloppy joes will thaw right into the sink and be all over it – what a mess!”

You’d think I could have worked that out in my head before cutting the bag open, but it was too late now. I was stuck with a frozen chunk of sloppy joes that needed a place to thaw.

“I know! I’ll put it on a plate and put it in the fridge!” You’d think I’d have learned the lesson of not thinking things through, but I did not. No sooner did I have the thought when I made it happen. By now, of course, little bits of frozen sloppy joe were getting on the counter, the sink and anything else that it touched. But too late, I realized…

“Oh, as the sloppy joes thaw, they’ll slide right off the plate which will be careening back and forth on the refrigerator shelf while we drive. It will be plastered all over the inside of our refrigerator.”

Hmmm, what to do?

“I know! I’ll put it in a leftover container that has a tight fitting cover and then put that in the sink. Perfect!”

I rummaged through our leftover containers and found one with a cover. Giving absolutely no thought to the appropriateness of the size, I threw the frozen chunk of SJ’s into it. Sadly, and predictably, the container was a little too small and I couldn’t get the lid on. The little bits of SJ continued to multiply over everything as I kept moving it around. The absurdity of the whole situation began to strike me at that point. It was like watching an episode of “I Love Lucy.” In fact, the more I thought about it, the funnier it was.

I started laughing as I was trying to figure out what to do next. At around this juncture, hubby showed up at the camper door, wondering what was taking so long. He poked his head in and I laughed even harder, to the point where I couldn’t talk. How do you explain something so completely illogical?

Convulsed with helpless laughter, I grabbed an even larger plastic bowl and put the sloppy joes into it. I put that in the sink. I took the first bowl and turned it over onto it. Then I took the leftover container and squeezed it in, hoping that if I had enough items in the sink, nothing would tip over. There were no more viable options.

I was still laughing when I got in the car, laughter that brought tears to my eyes. It took me a while to sober up enough to explain the whole thing.

You’ll be glad to know that the sloppy joes stayed in the bowl in the sink, although more than once I imagined them escaping and being splattered over everything in the camper by the time we arrived at our destination.

I’ll probably delete this sloppy post in the morning.