Northwestern was non-competitive and I ate soap

If you'll forgive me, I'm going to bury the lede: Northwestern Wildcats football is dead and buried, a 31-3 loss to Minnesota in which they used four quarterbacks, each less effective than the last, its death rattle. They cannot stop the run, cannot establish the run despite a dogmatic conviction to doing so, and cannot fathom what has gone wrong to bring them to that point. They will just Execute Better next week.

That is not the point of this article, friend. But it serves to set the stage.

After the game, I made dinner for my wife. It was nice! Salmon, asparagus, sweet potato, some bougie mac and cheese, a couple New Glarus beers for the table...a pleasant time was had by all. The kid started crying, so my wife left to feed her, and I started to clean up.

We hadn't been doing dishes at the cabin all weekend -- we just leave them on the counter and do them all at once, so I started to put a little soap in the sink and wash off a couple utensils we'd need for dessert. It was a little of that soap they use to clean off the ducks who swim in oil slicks. Gets the job done. Cap's loose on the soap and is caked with old soap, so I had to pop it back on.

For some reason, as I started to run the sink, it was imperative that I clean the mac and cheese out of the pot and put it in the fridge. Don't ask me why.

So I grab an old plastic tub of ice cream out of the plastic container drawer. There's a cover underneath it. Aces.

I fill the container, put the cover on: it doesn't fit. HOW. Annoyed, I locate a different container. Looks like a deli container you get potato salad in. Cool. That'll work.

I start to shovel it from the ice cream bucket into the deli potato salad container. Were there four pyrex dishes that would've worked great right behind it? Of course! That's not the point. I was going to use meaningless plastic rather than exert myself any extra. The mac and cheese would be stored.

Somewhere along the way, a single noodle tumbled out of the ice cream container onto the counter. Not wanting to be wasteful, I pop it into my mouth. Seeing a little moisture on my finger and thinking "Mmm, cheese," I lick off the residue.

It was soap. Shit.

Seething, I put the mac and cheese away. I do some of the dishes. I put the kid to bed. The taste of soap will not go away. My tongue is on fire.

My wife made brownies for dessert. We top them with ice cream and play cribbage. I almost get skunked, and I do not care.

Because I cannot get the taste of soap out of my mouth.

This is hell.

It has been 40 minutes at this point. And my mouth still tingles. THEY PUT THIS ON DUCKS?!

"Did you run it under the sink to get the taste of your tongue?" my wife asked.

"Why the fuck would I do that?" I replied, indignantly. "I'll have a beer while we play cribbage."

It has been an hour, and the taste is still there. I have not run it under the faucet, and I just keep drinking beer.

If Pat Fitzgerald doesn't have to learn, why do I?