Ok, no need to flog me, I know I've been very remiss in keeping up with my blog, but this Redhead, despite the rain, has been a busy gal. You'll be happy to know, I survived Mother's Day, kept my caffeine addiction up to snuff, been working out very hard, riding my motorcycle more, and feeding my OCD with cleaning my condo with every soapy cleaner and rug shampoo available. Funny how a little cleaning obsession can teach you a life lesson if you look at it from the right angle. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but so I can pass on the valuable lesson, I need to tell you the tale of the "Oppressive Onion" in my closet. It all started with a smell. Now this wasn't any ordinary smell, it was a downright putrid stink; one that I wouldn't wish on my enemy's nose. Being such a clean freak, I really hate to admit that an odor like this was emitting from anywhere in my house, but to make the situation even more ironic, the stench was coming from my broom closet...yes, where the cleaning supplies are kept. It was just one of those things that I let go, figuring I'd get around to it sometime, when I had a free moment in time (a very rare thing for me these days). After a while, it became almost a mental battle. Who could outlast whom, me or the apparent dead something or other in my broom closet. After the battle of wits was through, the thought of investigating the source of that awful odor was beginning to terrify me. What could it be? Am I really that dirty to produce such a stink? Maybe this where Hoffa was buried! Simply put, when push came to shove, the smell overtook my kitchen (along with a swarm of fruit flies that seemed very odd to me at the time), worse yet, my house guest noticed the smell too (how embarrassing!). So I dove in, nose first, to the bottom of the broom closet, wincing all the way. Low and behold, there it was, a red onion, in it's produce bag, so spoiled it was nearly completely in liquid form and surrounded by what seemed like thousands of fruit flies. Like Mom always taught me, you store your onions and potatoes in a cool dry place. Since my little condo is just that, little, my broom closet tends to serve a multitude of purposes. Apparently, this red onion of significant size at one time had a purpose in my home but was henceforth forgotten and left to decompose in my broom closet of dark solitude. Suffice to say it was quite a cleaning extravaganza by this point. The closet had to be emptied and scrubbed, the kitchen floor mopped, the closet fumigated, yuck!! A gross tale, I know, but if you look at this true story from the objective side you may see it as I do...as a lesson to be learned by all (or perhaps my way of hiding my sheer embarassment). If something strikes you as needing your attention, or something you feel you need to accomplish, for Pete's sake don't wait. Attack it full on. Go get 'em. Why wait for the smell to get overpowering or the onion carnage to fester when you could solve the problem right away at the first whiff. In a nutshell, people, never let things fall by the waistside. If it needs to be done, do it. If you want to do it, go for it. If it needs to be said, say it. No one else is going to do these things for you and procrastination only leads to rotten vegetables (I should put that on a t-shirt!), so don't wait, and enjoy the onion rings. Until next time, keep your helmet on. -Ang