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Post by disarray on Apr 16, 2010 21:22:21 GMT -5
I repainted my bedroom ceiling a month or so ago. I have multiple cluttered shelves in my room, and I didn't really want to move all my stuff out of the room just to paint the ceiling.
Instead I just covered the shelves with plastic tarps. Result? Things came tumbling off the shelves as I was painting and even while I was putting up the tarps. I broke five different items. One I fixed. One is okay broken. One I replaced. One still needs to be glued back together, and the last one I had to throw out because it was broke beyond repair. Yeah, I'm a little clumsy...
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hopehope
Banned
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 3,815
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Post by hopehope on Apr 17, 2010 0:36:06 GMT -5
howardsgirlfriend!
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Post by yearning4order on Apr 17, 2010 3:05:43 GMT -5
Hmmmm I have to confess--it's not that I don't sometimes do things like these things that have all been described. It's that usually it's a social situation where I make a fool of myself, like the time when I lived in Brazil and one day while watching TV with my roomates, I wanted to say "Oh how boring" and instead what I said was "Oh what a c*$t". Or the time I was trying to ask if it was ok to wear a tshirt and shorts to an event, and instead I asked if condoms worn with shorts would be ok. Or when I told my friends that over the weekend I'd gone traveling with a family and we stayed at a motel--not realizing that a motel is a place to rent a room for a period of hours to have sex, and a hotel is where you rent a room for lodging while traveling. Or that a drive in is not a type of theater in Brazil, it's much like a "motel", except you can drive your car in to the space and have sex.
You know, those awful situations where simply changing one vowel or swapping a couple of letters makes soooooo much difference or where things really don't jump translation well.
What came to mind while reading Disorganizedragon's magnum opus was that my ex-husband was the guy who could create unintentional disaster. Like clockwork. Wrecked our cars several times, one time while trying to find the beginning of a rainbow--while he was on a busy highway.
But the even that comes to mind is when we sold our house and moved. He was bringing the last load of things from our house, which included a vacuum and some planter stakes, things from the garage like extension cords, twine, etc, all sort of heaped in a big tub at the back of the truck bed, with boxes and other things in front. The camper shell was part way open, because some of the things wouldn't have fit otherwise.
Normally he was really good about tying things down, but this was the last run after a very, very long day, it was late, and he had an hour drive ahead of him to get to our new home.
At some point he realized he heard a funny noise, and looked in the rearview and saw sparks flying. This worried him, and he assumed it was actually the semi behind him that was the source of something so ominous.
So he decided it would be wise to put some distance between himself and that spark-generating menace, and sped up. Except the noise persisted, and the sparks didn't seem to be getting any farther away.
By this time he realized that he was in fact both the source of sparks AND noise and decided he needed to find a safe place to stop. He very deliberately sped up even faster to *pass a semi in front of him* (later he realized that actually he probably didn't need to do this), and then pulled off at the nearest exit.
What he found was that the tub had fallen out and that the collection of extension cords and twine had kept everything attached to the truck bed. The sparks had been coming from the metal garden stakes (the 3 or 4 foot tall kind) that he had been dragging behind him, and the strange noise was actually our vacuum cleaner, which he "highway tested" for who knows how many miles.
Years later, we agreed that vacuum cleaners are unsafe on the freeway at any speed.
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Post by disorganizeddragon on Apr 17, 2010 7:01:34 GMT -5
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Post by eagle on Apr 17, 2010 21:24:30 GMT -5
Y4O, I can only imagine what it would have been like if you were still married to your ex AND living in Brazil. Double jeapardy, most likely, yes?
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Post by yearning4order on Apr 18, 2010 0:02:09 GMT -5
Haha Disorganizedragon, there wasn't much more to that story other than camiseta and camisinha were the words I confused. Camiseta I believe is t-shirt. I accidentally discovered that camisinha (which is pronounced "cam-i-zeen-ya") means condom.
Typically every time I made those kinds of language mistakes there were initially looks of horror, or gasps because sometimes I was accidentally saying a very, very bad word. People then usually would laugh at me.
I have a Mexican-American friend who always liked to tell stories about the well-intentioned anglo priest who ministered to the Spanish-speaking population in her parish. His goal was to be able to perform his services all in Spanish, and so he set out to study Spanish, and practice at every opportunity.
One time during a wedding, when he was intending to ask for the presentation of the rings, he instead asked for presentation of the gonads. Amidst the shocked looks of the families and friends in attendance, it was noted that the groom in particular looked very uncomfortable, as if he thought the request was specifically aimed at him.
The priest then realized he must have said something wrong and asked for help with that part of the service.
And yes, I still howl with laughter when I think of my vacuum cleaner being drug behind our old truck, amidst the showering sparks of garden stakes flying down the highway, with my now ex deliberately trying to pass a semi!
And Eagle--yes what is especially funny is that he has a knack for languages so I'm certain he would have spoken fluently within a few weeks while I would have continued to embarrass us both horribly!
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hopehope
Banned
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 3,815
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Post by hopehope on Apr 18, 2010 17:40:38 GMT -5
I can no longer ask the local sherpas to teach me to say something in tibetan, as they thought it was howlingly funny to teach me something forbidden and claim it was 'here is the cup.' or something.
although they did teach me tashi delek which thank God came out of my mouth after being long buried in some historic brain cell, when the dalai lama's monks were sitting in front of my building and the white-haired one looked apoplectic at the notion of a skirt-wearing female chatting so animatedly with his fellows.
and when i was a storytime lady I once said tengo hombre instead of hambre, to the howls of the nannies.
(I have man, not I am hungry)
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hopehope
Banned
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 3,815
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Post by hopehope on Apr 18, 2010 18:02:14 GMT -5
I hesitated to include it, because it's not funny.
I hired someone who had responded to an ad I put on craigslist -- and whom I'd talked to a while before. it was thursday, the week before the inspection.
he couldn't come until some hour in the afternoon. was late, stood outside the apartment jawing with me for another 20? minutes -- then walked in, looked at the kitchen -- our area of interest -- from the door -- "swept it with a glance" -- said, "Oh no, I have my headshots to think of." then started to add insult to injury.
His answer to my ad had said "guaranteed reliable." I had not minced words about the place.
he left, i went into hyper-overdrive, hauled bags, dishes, pots, cups, glasses whatever. and was down to floor.
hyper -- is not healthy. I had some broken jagged stoneware tile pieces in a thin opaque plastic bag. when I reached for it something reached for me, through the bag, and bit into the inside of my wrist.
this is very tender skin, somehow. and bleeds. and -- it was not lost on me -- is a preferred method for suicide.
I couldn't possibly reach my bandaids -- and I didn't have a butterfly, which might hold the edges of this gaping wound together.
I walked into the local cancer hospital, in the rain, and asked this darling chubby male nurse if he had a butterfly bandage. he took one look, and said, "you have to get stitches."
he was a doll. I went to an er and got stitches.
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Post by disorganizeddragon on Apr 18, 2010 20:54:00 GMT -5
Hope, unless you were advertising the sale of your entire kitchen on Craigslist, he had no right to register any reaction at all about its condition.
That was just rude. He's a jerk.
As we say in my neck of the woods, "His momma didn't raise him right."
I'm sorry you had to get stitches.
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Post by Butterfly on Apr 18, 2010 23:49:39 GMT -5
...As we say in my neck of the woods, "His momma didn't raise him right."... , DisorganizedDragon! I think you and I must be from the same neck of the woods. Hope, I, too, am sorry that you were injured and had to get stitches.
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Post by eaglesflight on Apr 19, 2010 7:51:09 GMT -5
I had recently learned how great OxyClean was for cleaning stains and disinfecting. For some reason I got the brilliant idea that I could soak the antique silver that my aunt had just given me in OxyClean solution to remove the tarnish. I think I removed the finish. When I later tried to use actual silver polish to remove the damage I had done, the silver wouldn't polish up to a nice bright silver gleam. It turned a dull yellow.
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Post by mouseanne on Apr 19, 2010 19:08:41 GMT -5
Fa-tha has a mania about water hoses. i.e. that nothing is clean unless it is hosed down. When he buys a used fridge, he hoses it out on the sidewalk. When i bought my house, he hosed out the stove that came with it ... hauling it to the sidewalk & back inside. sigh...
That's just the background...
So, mom & fa-tha had a 4 story victorian house, 2 levels, basement, and attic, 3 staircases. (cool house)
Spring came, and he got the wild hair idea to hose out the upper window inner sills...
Ah, yes, manic crazy man, ladder & hose.
I had the job of wiping them down from the inside.
It was madness and mayhem all rolled into one.
There was water everywhere.
I yelled out the window for him to stop.
You can spray more water in a window and move to the next window and do it again... and the next...
way way way before the inside person can finish the first window.
I yelled. I yelled.
He cackled and kept hosing windows.
I went outside and turned off the hose.
What are you doing?
Shutting off your water.
Why?
You are making a horrible mess.
....
Until they sold the house years later, above the first floor windows, there were these two muddy trails down from the ceiling.
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Post by messycowgirl on Apr 20, 2010 12:43:37 GMT -5
Yeah, write me up under the category of "Hair and vacuums". I told it on the old board.....
But to sum it up I was vacuuming the dining room and I had extremely long hair at the time. I was using the hose but was not aware that on this vacuum that when you have it upright, the beater bar still runs.....
I was trying to vacuum under the book shelf, flipped my hair and The suction sucked up my hair, the bar caught it and I was caught in this sitting position and unable to reach the off switch nor could I reach the plug to cut the power. My ex husband walked up behind me int he middle of it all, and just as the vacuum died from being overheated, asks "What the heck are you doing?!?"
It's hilarious when I think about it now, but not then. Oh my, I bawled my head off as I sat helplessly as ex-h untangled my hair.
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