Just a side note. =0)

Win a unicorn from @PocketTheMoon! (except I already called the purple one.) http://fb.me/CErcQ8lP

Domestication Fail #5: Before and After

As a kid, I always loved commercials that had before and after shots. It seemed so magical to see how some new carpet cleaner really got that stain out.

As an adult, I'm not so mystified. (Though oddly enough I tend to love movies that feature a "before and after" theme. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Chocolat, Hook...you get the idea.) But for once I caught myself in the act of a domestication fail and was able to capture the essence of my destructive side on camera. So for your viewing pleasure, here's a before picture of the beautiful kitchen mats I received from my in-laws at my bridal shower.

Nice, aren't they? Oooh, and they're so squishy and soft on my feet. I love them. Plus, I have this sort of "Fat Italian Chef" theme going on in my kitchen, so they looked great.

Looked. Past tense. Here's an after picture.

Hubs said it'd be okay to run them through the washer. He lied.

I have to get out to the store and replace them before my mother-in-law comes over and notices they're missing...

Lesson number two in catastrophes: Cover your tracks. Destroy all evidence.

Going Once...Going Twice...

Here's a funny story submitted by Shelia of Greenville, Illinois.


I just had to share what was possibly the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me in quite some time!

Last night, Mom and I went to a quarter auction. Click here to find out exactly what a quarter auction is. We got looking to see what was being sold, and one person was selling all kinds of sex toys.

Oh shoot! Here I am with Mom and trying to avoid the darn things. Finally, we get to the table that is selling them and she starts looking at it and asks "What is this?!?!"

"Um Mom...Let's just go over here and not talk about it!"

The auction was fun, except we didn't win anything until the end. And guess what I won.... You guessed it!

What's Mom do? Slings this thing out of the bag and screams as loud as humanly possible, "Haa! She is getting married in May! I bet this will come in handy!"

  "Mom! Just shut up already!"

So I guess I know what I'm getting for a wedding gift from Mom.

I did win a cake topper for .50 though!

It's All Gravy, Baby!

Here's a domestication fail submitted by Alaina of Clinton, Indiana.

My fiance mentioned the other day that he was really craving some eggs, biscuits, and sausage gravy. Being the good fiancee that I am, I decided that I was going to pick up some sausage and make him some homemade sausage and gravy. How hard could it be, right? Heh heh, wrong.

I cheerfully headed home from work today, even calling my father to get his recipe. It seemed simple enough: sausage, flour, milk, salt and pepper. I told my fiance to step back and I was going to whip him up some of the best darn sausage gravy in the world. This, mind you, was immediately before I caught him texting his mother to get her recipe. I got started with browning the sausage in my spiffy little pan and watching it cook. After a few minutes, I noticed that there was minimal grease production. “What the eff?” I thought, and proceeded to crank up the gas.

I should have known something was extremely wrong when this sausage wasn’t producing any grease, but I honestly didn’t give a damn.

The sausage finally gets done browning, and my fiance is looking up recipes on Google. I tell ye of little faith to chill, because I’ve succeeded in browning the meat! The rest should be cake. So, I start adding the flour. It starts to smell. My fiance adds more flour (I deny ever telling him to do so), it starts to smell even worse. At this point I am telling him to add the milk! He’s all like, “What about the salt and pepper?” I give him the “are you friggin' serious?” look and tell him we can add that after the milk goes in.

After what seemed like eternity, he finally got a little bit in. I keep stirring and create a really nice black cloud that even smoke signal enthusiasts would be jealous of. What now? Add more milk! At this point, my fiance tells me I should just stop now. I get irritated and say, “Why?!” He looks at me, trying his best not to laugh, and says, “The milk is frozen.” Frozen.

So what do I do? I beat the living crap out of the milk jug and attempt to melt the frozen pieces. This, of course, doesn’t work. The entire endeavor was a complete and “udder” (ha ha, get it? Udder!) failure.

Oh, and my fiance wants to know what’s for dinner now?

The Friender What?!

I know it's after Christmas, but can I please have one of these?

(in my best commercial spokesman voice) "It slices! It dices! It gets rid of the evidence! It's...

THE FRIENDER BLENDER!"

And the crowd goes wild...

What an amazing idea for someone so prone to domestication failures as I. Set my girlfriends on fire making mojitos? No problem. Electrocute Hubs asking him to plug in the toaster? It's alright! Friender Blender cleans up the bodies as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Step one: Plug in your friendly Friender Blender near the closest corpse.

Step two: Beginning with the extremities, carefully place your deceased inside the Friender Blender Friend Container. Add ice, Svedka brand vodka and pepper to taste.

Step three: Enjoy!

Haha...that's just so wrong...

Happy New Year!

To ring in the new year, not only have I totally remade the site layout (ya like it?) but I'm going to attempt a new tradition. A contest! Yay!

The DF Contest

You don't have to be married or own your own house or even be a woman to suffer a domestication fail. So lets hear some of yours! The winner will receive a copy of Sara Crawford's album "Unsent Letters" as well as having their DF posted on the site. Prizes will change monthly, so you can keep sending them in. Enter as many times as you want!The winner(s) will be chosen on the first of each month.

Please send your entries to domesticfail@rocketmail.com and include:
- Your first name
- City and State
- Your story
- A photo to illustrate (Doesn't have to be of the DF itself. I never have a camera around when I'm setting things on fire.)

Good luck!

A Story for Dr. Freud

I'm secretly convinced that my darling husband and his father are really twins. I mean I get genetics. We all look like our parents. But this...

...is just uncanny. One of them is stealing a lot of hair dye. I haven't decided which.

It's due to this striking similarity that I managed to accidentally reveal to my mother-in-law my attraction for older men, as well as engage myself in a full-on foot-in-mouth spaz attack.

Now I'm the kind of gal who gets nostalgic pretty easily. I don't even have to be looking at photos of my own family to daydream about happier times and "the good ole days". So I was quite enjoying myself one quiet afternoon as my mother-in-law was showing off her collection of old family photos. I found it quite pleasant to hear her stories about the St. Bernards and the family vacations and Hubs dressing up for Tacky Day at his high school.

As we were looking through them, I caught sight of the most adorable photo of a scrawny teen in bright red short-shorts and a white shirt, roller skating in the driveway. Picking it up, I gazed at the photo lovingly, sighed, and turned to my mother-in-law.

"Thank you." I said, with a grin.
"For what?"
"For making such a hot son for me to marry."

I handed the photo of the smexy teen to her. She looked at it for a moment and looked at me. Then looked back at the picture and back at me. An awkward silence began to filled the room.

Then she said, "That's my husband."

*facepalm*

Domestication Fail #4: Revenge of the Potato

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson the first time I attempted mashed potatoes for Hubs. But no. By the time I was making my second attempt, the mishap with the blender was long forgotten.

Hubs and I were newly engaged when this DF took place. He had decided to invite his parents over for dinner. A wonderful idea. I love my in-laws. Plus, this would be a great opportunity to prove to my future-mother-in-law that I could take care of her son just as well as she could.

I was gonna cook dinner. And it was gonna be awesome.

The set up for this story is pretty much the same as last time. I put the dinner rolls in the oven, chopped veggies for the salad, and handed the steaks to Hubs to take out on the grill. But this time I remembered to start the potatoes early.

As I was in the kitchen slicing and dicing, I was having a wonderful conversation with my (then future) mother-in-law, while she sat at the kitchen table enjoying her cigarette and watching me work my wifely magic. My fingers were flying as I fell into the pace of my cooking foods, and I recalled a memory of how graceful my own mother looked when she cooked. Dancing from one side of the kitchen to the other, stirring and seasoning like a culinary ballerina. I thought it would be impressive to mimic the moves I'd seen her throw down. But my mother didn't called me Grace for nothin'.

I pranced to the pantry like I knew exactly what I was doing. I was so cool. So confident, as I grabbed the shaker of garlic salt and unscrewed the lid with a flutter of my hand. Spinning back to the dutch oven, I upturned the shaker over the boiling potatoes to season them just a little.

The entire shaker of garlic salt spilled out into the pot.

As I've said before: The first sign of catastrophe is the smell.

In my haste I hadn't stopped to notice that the garlic salt had a flip top lid with little holes in it. I thought it was a screw off lid. The stench of garlic filled the room. My in-laws burst out laughing as Hubs ran over to quickly strain them. Five second rule. Maybe they could be saved.

Or maybe not.

I'm quickly learning to enjoy pizza.

Domestication Fail #3: Give Detailed Instructions

If you want me to throw your work pants in the dryer, let me know. I'm happy to help.

If you want me to turn the dryer on...you have to tell me that too.

Murphy's Second Moving Day

"Have you heard the news?
Bad things come in twos."

~Danny Elfman

They most certainly do. Did you think my moving catastrophe had ended with two wet cats, two icy dogs, and a waterbed full of cold water? Ohh no. It got worse.

The morning after The Great Animal Soak (that's what I'm calling it now), Hubs and I were still desperate for a shower. We had spent the night atop an icy cold water bed because we had no hot water. And we were dirty from the move the previous day. We were just pretty miserable in general.

But determined to keep up our spirits, we assured each other that it couldn't get any worse than it had the day before, and set out with the trailer back to our old house. The top things on our collection list were some extra towels and the washer and dryer. We just. Wanted. To get. Clean.

About five miles from our new house, we both noticed that the car was driving kind of funny. So we pulled into a gas station to put some more air in the tires, just to find out that the trailer we had rented had a flat. So we called Home Depot and explained the problem. They told us to call AAA, who would fix it. We called AAA. They refused to fix it, saying they only fixed vehicles and not flatbed trailers. *sigh* So we called Home Depot back. After about an hour of back and forth calls, the Home Depot store manager finally got on the line. Ten minutes after Home Depot had closed, she finally agreed to fix our flat herself. Well, that's all well and good, I guess. Except that she had no knowledge of the area that we were in. And she was over an hour away.

About the time that Hubs got off the phone with her, it started to snow.

Four hours later, the store manager shows up with a spare and a tire iron. What's the first thing she says? "I've never changed a tire before."

So with a sigh, Hubs gets out in the cold, changes the tire himself, and we're on the road again.

We get to our old house and pick up the towels and the washer and dryer, and actually manage to make it home with no problems. As if that wasn't a turn for the better, we now officially have hot water as well. Yay!

I shouldn't have let myself get excited.

Hubs was in the laundry room attempting to hook up the washer and dryer as I was unpacking dishes in the kitchen. Suddenly, a loud metallic groaning sound pulled me out of my daydreams. Before I had the chance to say, "What was that," I hear "FUUUUU**K!" "WSSSSSHHH!"

Of course I drop everything and come running, thinking that Hubs had gotten himself hurt again. That tends to happen when he tries to fix things. But the sight that I witness upon running into the laundry room was so much worse than a jammed finger.

A geyser of water was spraying from the wall behind the washer...straight into my ceiling. Hubs yelled, "Go turn off the water!" Yeah. Cause I totally know where the water cut off is. Sure.

Thank goodness Hubs had the forethought to check where it was when we bought the place. He dashed into the basement and cut it off before it could get too bad. Apparently the threaded connector on the hose was so rusted that when Hubs was trying to unscrew it from the wall and screw it into the back of the washer, the piping snapped. He broke the piping before he could get that hose unscrewed. Mmm...strongman...

As sexy as it was to see my guy be all muscly, we now had another problem. There was no way to hook up the washer, we had gone from having not hot water to no water at all, and I had to use every last towel we had grabbed to clean up the water.


We still needed showers.

Epilogue:

To ice this little cake of disaster that was our moving experience, I have to add that the next day, the plumber charged us almost $500 to fix the piping. In the middle of his work, our neighbor, Awesome John, came over to see what was up. When Hubs explained the situation, Awesome John proceeded to tell him that not only did he have all the tools to fix the piping for free, but that he'd done it before. Go figure.

Domestication Fail #2: Don't Bother Cleaning

The circumstances under which I had come to live with Hubs as his roomie were not exactly pleasant ones. I had entered into a sort of rough patch and was desperate to escape everything I knew in order to collect myself. Hubs had offered me a little corner of his bachelor pad, provided I paid my way with the ever-coveted back scratches for him and his buddies. Pretty good deal, I'd say. They'd sit there and drink and noisily battle in rock band, and I'd have my wine and draw pictures in the wrinkles of their shirts with my claws. It worked out well for everyone, and we were a popular hang out spot for quite some time.

One night, while Hubs was off at the Hoe Show filling ice coolers, I had decided I was going to use the opportunity to show my appreciation while the house was relatively quiet. I was going to tidy.

I'm not very good at tidying.

Hubs, in a sign of true friendship, had bought me a cute little stuffed puppy to try and ease the pain of being alone on Valentine's Day. I named him Scruffy. Well, Scruffy happened to be lying on the floor in a kind of not tidy way. So I reached down to pick him up and put him somewhere a little more convenient. Like atop the beautiful black corner table with the glass top.

Maybe I had a little too much wine. Maybe I don't know my own strength. Maybe Scruffy just hated that table. My goal was to set the stuffed toy down. What happened was that I set the stuffed toy down...on the floor. Because my entire arm had gone through the top of the table.

I had shattered it into a million little pieces. And of course the first thought through my head was, "That table looked like something my grandmother would have had in her condo. Oh my God! What if his grandmother gave him that?! What if it's all he has left of his sweet little granny! Oh what have I done!!!" (Note: Hubs's granny is alive and well, as I came to learn in the following months.)

Terrified that I was about to lose my only sanctuary, I frantically dialed Hubs's cell and explained to him what had happened. It was bad enough that I was scared out of my wits and felt horribly guilty. But then he started to laugh at me.

The table had cost him five dollars at a thrift store.

I didn't bother cleaning after that.

Murphy's Moving Day

Murphy's law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused with Muphry's law.

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".


And let me tell ya...it did.

Shortly after the wedding, Hubs and I began casually house hunting. Neither of us were exceptionally happy with the area in which we were living, and we thought it'd be nice to have a new place north of Atlanta, where I grew up. Our friend Awesome John happened to mention that the house next door to his was up for sale, and upon scoping the place out, we fell in love. It was an adorable little four bedroom with a big deck overlooking a beautiful koi pond and an in-ground pool. As quick as we could manage, we laid claim to our new territory, and before we knew it, moving day was fast approaching.

We had been moving small car loads of boxes over the course of about three weeks, and were preparing for the much-anticipated "big trip". You know, the one that means you can finally sleep over at your own house. So we took the waterbed apart, shoved the couches out the door, and loaded up. The very last thing to grab were our furbabies. We have two dogs named Laci and Griffin, and two cats named Shoka and Gootie. Laci and Griffin happily jumped into the back of the car, and as we only had one cat carrier, Gootie and Shoka had the pleasure of each other's company for the hour long drive.

About ten minutes from the new house, Hubs and I pull off at a gas station to pick up a bag of kitty litter and some gas. As Hubs opened his door to get out, a breeze wafted into the car...

The first indication that a catastrophe is about to take place is usually the smell.

Whatever I was smelling, it was absolutely rank. Like nothing I could even begin to describe. Thinking Laci had gotten yet another case of motion sickness, I quickly jumped out of the car and opened the back door to check on my babies. But it wasn't Laci. You see, Shoka had only ever been in a car once before and it was when she was a little kitten. So being stuck in the carrier with a not-so-happy Gootie scared the crap out of her. Literally. There was cat crap everywhere inside the carrier. Hubs got back in the car, I explained the smell, and we proceeded to the new house in a less cheerful state.

Upon our arrival, my very first to-do was to get the cats out of the carrier and bathed. I felt like such a terrible mother for making them so miserable. So I carried them into the guest bathroom, and shut the door so I could go hunt down the box of kitty shampoo and towels.

As I'm searching, Hubs kindly reminds me that the dogs most likely have to potty after our little adventure. So taking a short cigarette break, we step out onto our back porch and let the dogs out. Within two minutes, Laci had jumped into the pool. (A word to the wise: If you live anywhere in the Continental US, Mid-December is a bad time to move!) She immediately realized just how cold it was, and attempted to climb out. Of course, she had no idea where the stairs were, and had never been in a pool before. So you could literally see the panic on her face as she went under.

Hubs immediately ran down the stairs and yanked her out of the pool, only to turn around and see Griffin falling through the icy koi pond. I now have two turd-covered cats and two frozen wet dogs. And I still can't find a towel.

Ripping open box after box, I finally found the one towel that Hubs and I had managed to pack. He used it to dry off our slushpuppies as quickly as he could, and slung it over the deck railing to dry out a bit. After coming back inside, he offered to bathe the kitties himself, as he was already cold and wet and dirty. Believe me, I felt bad that Hubs was so miserable. But I was certainly grateful that he offered.

So as I began unloading the pieces of the waterbed and bringing them upstairs, I was a little confused when I heard Hubs shouting all the profanities in the English language in alphabetical order. Dropping everything, I ran to the bathroom door to inquire as to what was wrong. His reply was that there was no hot water. Lovely. It's ten degrees outside, and no hot water. The heater had been set to "vacation" because the house had been empty. So for those of you keeping track, I now have four icy, wet animals. And one very pissed off husband.

I guess the kitties weren't too happy either. Especially when Hubs asked me to go get the towel he had used to dry off the dogs, and I went outside to find that it had frozen to the deck. Shoka and Gootie spent the night in one of the spare rooms, huddled next to the heater in attempts to drip-dry.

Finally it seemed as though all our animals were situated and safe, even if they weren't too pleased with their current circumstances. It was nearing 4:00 AM and Hubs and I were absolutely exhausted. We desperately wanted a shower, but as there was only one towel (which was still filthy and frozen to the porch), we were going to have to do without. So we set to work on rebuilding the frame of the waterbed. As we were using up the very last of our strength to get the 300lb. bladder into the frame, a thought occurred to me: No amount of body heat on this big and beautiful earth is going to warm a California King size waterbed filled with icy water.


It was a cold and restless night.

Domestication Fail #1: How NOT To Make Potatoes

Hubs and I had only been dating a couple of months before the urge to prove my domestic prowess took over. Unable to paint the walls of his drab little bachelor pad, I decided to settle for something slightly more subtle. I was going to cook a nice big meal for my man. And it was going to be amazing. I planned it all out: Steaks, dinner rolls, salad, the whole nine. Of course what's a good old fashioned Irish boy to eat with his steak? A hearty helping of mashed potatoes, of course. Yum!

Trying my best to obey the laws of a good housewife, I allowed Hubs to take the steaks outside and grill them himself. (Honestly, I was, and still am, absolutely terrified of the grill. I've never grilled anything in my life.) I stayed busy in the kitchen, dicing veggies for the salad and mixing nilla wafers into the banana pudding mix. In my excitement, I had completely forgotten about the potatoes. And if you've ever tried to make mashed potatoes from scratch, you know you can't just whip them up five minutes before dinner is served. It takes a bit.

So in a rush, I pulled out the dutch oven, scrubbed and diced the potatoes, and set them to boil. The second they were done, I strained them and...

"Hubs? Do you have a hand mixer?"
"A what?"
"A hand mixer. You know, the thing your mother let you lick cake batter off of when you were a kid."
"Oh. No, I don't have one. Why?"

At this point I'm thinking "Shit, shit shit!" Yeah, I could mash them with a fork. But by the time I've finished that, the steaks will be gross. So I came up with an ingenious plan. Hurriedly, I tossed the diced potatoes in a blender, added some sour cream, shredded cheese, butter, and a bit of milk. Hey, it should work, right?

Wrong.

At first, it seemed like it would work. At least the blades at the bottom seemed to be spinning. That's good, right? But then came the smell of burning wires. Oh yay, I've started an electrical fire.

The motor overheated and a foggy smoke started to rise up from the bottom of the blender. As quickly as I could, I unplugged the machine, picked it up, and slam-dunked it straight into the garbage can. I don't know why I thought that trashing the entire blender would conceal the evidence of my domestication fail and appliance homicide.

At that moment, Hubs walked in from the porch carrying a plate of delicious looking steaks. The first thing out of his mouth was, "God! What's that SMELL?!" There was nothing I could say, really. I just lifted the lid of the can and sighed in defeat. Hubs, being the awesome guy he is, just laughed and dumped the steaks in on top of it. As good as they looked, we had both lost our appetite to the reek of melting wires.

But the pizza that night was awesome.

A Fairy Tale Romance...sort of.

Hello, All! I'm The Captain. Er...that's not really my name, of course. But that's what Hubs calls me all the time. Hubs, obviously, is my husband. We've been married for three months now. And everything about our relationship has always been kind of...odd.

For example, the way we met seemed to come straight out of a fairy tale romance...assuming, of course, your idea of a fairy tale includes intoxicated strippers, a case of Miller Lite, a tattoo of the Grim Reaper, and half a pack of Turkish Royals. That's right. My introduction to Hubs took place while I was dancing the cupid shuffle in nothing but a pair of platforms and a garter. I've always liked to do things thoroughly, and I guess in that sense, he got to know the "real me" PDQ. After my stage set, I proceeded to interrogate him about his tattoos and long hair. He slowly unloaded the case of beer behind the bar, and I chain smoked like a chimney. We were both trying to stretch out the conversation I think.

He was a gentleman though, and we became instant friends. Three years later, we said our "I Do's", and now I'm no longer a dancer, but a happy little housewife. Or well...I'm trying to be. It just doesn't seem to be working out so great.

So I've made this blog to detail some of my adventures as a domestic engineer. Most of my stories are pretty funny. Some of them are just downright "facepalm" sad. Hopefully we'll manage to share a few laughs at my expense. 

Enjoy!