The fact that I have no pictures from today is a true testament to just how crazy things are right now as we prepare to uproot our lives and move into a new house.

Following my gym workout early this morning I took a phone call from a distraught breastfeeding mother only to have the call go much longer than I anticipated and be forced to end the call leaving barely enough time to throw together a packed lunch and rush out the door to meet up with our realtor for the final walk through of the new house before closing tomorrow morning to leave for our next destination in another rush to get to Ava’s homeschooling class before returning home to an answering machine full of messages to listen to while getting dinner prepped and then realizing I left my camera in my purse and I left my purse in Ava’s classroom in the basement of a church 30 minutes away.

I then decided instead of posting about dinner with no pictures I would write a random post that began with the longest run on sentence of all time with the hopes the Guinness Book of World Records might take notice and ask to include me in the next edition of their book.

This, my friends, is why I have no pictures of the cabbage and bean soup I made for dinner tonight. My insanity ate my homework.

Maybe I’ll take pictures of leftovers and post them with and a recipe tomorrow if nothing more exciting comes up. Until then, here we are. Just you and me and some words and no pictures.

Well wait. I suppose I do have a hard drive full of pictures. In fact, I actually have a story. I’ve been holding on to some pictures for just the right day and apparently the day has finally come. I might lead you believe that I’ve had these pictures for months when really it’s only been about a week. But that’s neither here nor there. Do you want to read my story or not?

Last week on a run I passed a brand new bottle of apple juice on the side of the road.

I see all sorts of things on the side of the road when I run. Regular garbage, bottles, cans, plastic bags, broken objects, old socks, a lone shoe.

I once passed a rolled up dirty diaper for weeks before it was finally picked up. Not picked up by me of course, although I would feel much more noble writing about this today if I could say I went back to fetch and dispose of that diaper after passing it for the 20th time and then even went on to pick up all the trash I saw on the side of the road that day.

Sadly I’m not that noble though – in truth I just never thought about that diaper after I ran by it until I saw it again the next time, only to promptly forget about it again.

On this particular morning though when I ran by a full bottle of apple juice – I got to thinking. How exactly does this happen? How does a brand new bottle of apple juice end up on the side of the road?

Was a kid so excited to have apple juice that they begged to hold the bottle after leaving the store, only to accidentally toss or drop the juice out the window on the way home?

I sound like I speak from experience.

Did the parents threaten to throw the apple juice out the window if the kids didn’t stop pestering each other in the back seat?

Again, I sound like I speak from experience.

Maybe the driver set the bottle of juice on top of the car while getting in, forgetting it was up there and driving off with the bottle on roof, only have it roll off and as the driver swerved when reaching for their coffee/cell phone/lipstick/laptop/overdue library books?

I did that once actually – set something on top of my car and drove off forgetting all about it. Except I didn’t do it with a bottle of apple juice but with my wallet instead. Thanks in part to my awesome driving skillz and also in part to the roof rack on my car that kept my wallet from sliding off, it made it from our last rest stop to our final destination, 50 miles down the road. My wallet was covered in bugs, but still on the roof nonetheless.

Or (and probably the most likely scenario) did the trunk of the car fly open just in time for crow to daringly swoop down and reach into the grocery bag and swipe out the bottle of juice with it’s talons believing it was a dead animal carcass? Once the crow realized it was a plastic jug of juice instead dead squirrel, raccoon or bag of my neighbors garbage, it dropped the juice to have it land gracefully on the side of the road.

Damn crows.

After running by the bottle, I let these various new-bottle-of-apple-juice-on-the-side-of-the-road scenarios play out in my head for the rest of the day. OK, that’s a lie. I spent the next mile or so contriving stories until I got home and then promptly forgot all about it.

But what do you know though – I remembered the bottle the next morning well before I left on my run and had enough forethought to bring my camera along with me. I had to investigate further and to capture clues, CSI-style, to see if I could figure out just how this bottle met it’s fate on the side of the road. And then blog about my findings of course.

A dirty diaper to pick up and throw away, do my part to clean up our environment and honor Mother Earth?

Nope. Out of site, out of mind.

Garbage that might someday be worth blogging about?

Ooooh where’s my camera?

So here I am, a day later and instead of just running by or picking anything up I simply stopped to take pictures.

Take only pictures and leave only foot prints, isn’t that what they say?

It was then that I discovered this wasn’t a brand new bottle at all. The seal was broken and it had been opened.

But the bottle was in fact full. How did I know it was full you’re most certainly wondering?

Well, I kicked it. That’s how.

This story would probably be much more interesting if I could say that the bottle was actually a bomb and exploded when I kicked it. I was forced to dive head first into the ditch like MacGyver and narrowly escaped harm.

Or I wish I could say a genie came out of the bottle and granted me three coupons for free Wegmans brand apple juice.

Or better yet, it might be most interesting to say that I opened the bottle and found a key taped to the inside of the bottle that just so happens to unlock the door of the classroom where I would eerily leave my purse and camera at a later date.

Freaky.

But no, it was just full with what appeared to be some brown liquid that sloshed in the bottle when I kicked it and that was it. I didn’t open it. It didn’t explode or even gurgle a little. It just moved a couple inches forward and that was it. It didn’t even cross my mind to pick it up and carry it home to empty it and then recycle bottle. How boring.

I promise I won’t forget my camera tomorrow.