Spring, 2012


Who Stopped the Payment On My Reality Check?

I stared at the Ziploc box, confused. Why the hell was a container of rice sitting on the counter? I picked it up and shook it. Okay—why are there parts of a cell phone in a box of rice on the counter?!

The back door opened and Ducky came in, toeing out of his muddy gardening shoes and leaving them outside the kitchen door. I help up the container with a silent, 'Hunh?'

He gave me a wry smile. "Mother was helping me with refurbishing the dratted goldfish pond this morning. She wanted to try skipping stones before it was filled with fish. She mistook my cell phone for a rock."

"Okay, but…" I shook the box gently. "Por que arroz?"

"Why rice?" Lexi chirped from the breakfast table.

"Well," Ducky said, slipping into loafers and padding over to the table, "In this case, rice is a desiccant. That means it is a drying agent. It removes moisture," he explained.

"Wike a sponge?"

"I hope so."

"Why didn't the sponge work?"

"Well… I didn't try a sponge. See, the sponge is—relatively speaking—a solid item. Like this book."

"But a sponge is smooshy."

"True, but it is still a solid shape. It's not a liquid, it's not a gas…" I gave a low whistle and tossed him a clean sponge from the sink. "Thank you, dear. Now. Let's pretend this salt shaker is my cell phone." He laid the cellar on its side and put the sponge on it. "So. The sponge will absorb water on the top. But what about the bottom?"

Lexi pursed her lips, looking just like Ducky tackling a weighty problem. She carefully picked up the salt shaker, wrapping the sponge around it.

"That's an idea… but what about those curves? The sponge won't get into the crevices." Lexi wrapped her hand around it and squeezed. "That would help… but it's going to take at least a day for all the corners of the cell phone to dry out. I wouldn't want to sit and hold that allllllll day… alllllllllll night… for a couple of days. However…" He gently pulled the sponge from under her hand and held up the salt shaker. "See how the salt flows into all the bends and curves?"

You bet. Try washing that stupid SOB. It takes forever to completely dry, even in the dishwasher on hot dry cycle.

"The rice is like the salt. It can get into all the small areas of the cell phone, but it won't clump up like wet salt would. Once all the water has been absorbed, the rice will still be loose pieces that will shake out of the phone."

(We hope, anyway.)

"Now, what are other ways of drying things?"

"The cwothes dryer!"

"Yes. Now, why wouldn't I put my cell phone in the dryer?"

"It would make a godwawfo noise!"

"Alexandra!" He laughed through his disapproval, while I choked on my gulp of tea.

"That's what Mommy said when she put my tennies in the dryer!"

He gave me a mock glower. "Well, I can't argue the fact that shoes do cause a dreadful noise. And so would my cell phone. Plus, it's not meant to withstand great heat. What else can you think of?"

"The sun!"

The discussion continued. Lexi's sticking point was why not use salt—it was smaller than rice and would fit in all the little places on the phone, wouldn't it?

"Well, for one thing, the pieces of salt or sugar are so tiny, they would get into the workings of the phone and never get out again. Also, with enough water, they would dissolve."

"We made wreaths and it didn't mewot!"

Ducky gave me a baffled look. "You missed arts and crafts last month," I teased him. "We made flower wreaths for the field trip to Raspberry Patch Faire. We dried flowers in silica."

"And the sawt didn't mewot!"

"It isn't salt, sweetie. Remember how only the teachers and helpers were allowed to put the flowers in the drying box?" She nodded enthusiastically. "That's because it looked a lot like salt or sugar and we were worried someone might eat it by mistake."

"But why isn't the rice mushy?"

I missed the jump. "Sorry?"

"Why isn't the rice mushy?"

Ducky figured it out and held up a hand. "It depends on the ratio. If you have a certain amount of water, it will just make the salt wet. If you have more, it will start to dissolve—or, melt. But rice needs a lot more water."

"So the rice isn't mushy?"

"Okay. How do we make rice for dinner?" I asked.

"Inna pot!"

"Right." What the hell; I'll make rice pudding later on. I poured a cup of rice in the pot. "So. One cup of rice." I poured in water. "Two cups of water. That means we have twice as much water as we do rice." I brought the pan over to the table. "Is that what rice looks like when it's at the table?" She laughed and shook her head. "No. While the rice cooks, the grains of rice get bigger, and it ends up fluffy. Well… sort of sticky-fluffy. It's not hard, anyway. That's because the dry rice absorbed the water."

Her eyes widened. "Won't the phone be mushy?"

"I dried off the phone, there's very little water left—but cell phones don't like any water. So there's perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon of water, but three cups of rice."

"Three cups of rice would need six cups of water to be mushy." I dug out a set of measuring spoons and dumped a quarter-teaspoon of water in a clear measuring cup. "We have a long way to go for just one cup."

"But it fewo in the pond. It's reawwy wet."

"I dried it off as much as I could before putting it in the rice," Ducky explained.

"Like when we go swimming at Grandma and Grandpa's. We wring out the towels before we throw them in the dryer. It takes less time and the dryer doesn't have to work as hard," I added.

"The less water you start off with, the faster it will dry." Lexi looked fascinated, but a little confused. "All right. Let's do an experiment. We'll take three tea towels, get them soaking wet and hang them to dry. We'll leave one thoroughly sopping, the second one…"

I went back to prepping dinner—and, thanks to the impromptu pot of rice, dessert.

They ended up spending a lot of time over the weekend working on experiments on water, absorption, drying (they even made a MacGyver dehydrator in a window, thanks to Alton Brown's website), starting rock candy in a sugar solution, and generally turning the house into Mr. Wizard's playhouse.

Which might explain why there is a soggy Cuddle Kitty shoved in the middle of a three-pound box of oatmeal that now resembles so much wholesome cement…