I am afraid of electricity, and my appliances know that. They're out to get me.

Do household disasters follow you, too? Anything ever explode on you? Ever start a grease fire? Do you at least break a glass every time you wash the dishes? (I do that, too.)

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

Answers

I've never set an appliance on fire, I'm sad to say, but I'm a bigtime dropper. Drop the cup while I'm pouring coke into it. Drop the knife while I'm spreading peanut butter on a piece of toast. Turn to the table to put the aforementioned piece of toast on the table, and it flies off the plate and lands on the floor (peanut butter-side- down, naturally). Open the pantry to get a can of something-or-other and knock a few cans onto the floor. I've perfected the Dropper's Two- Step, wherein you dance quickly out of the way before whatever you've dropped lands on your toes. I used to get peeved when I dropped stuff, but it happens so often that I just sigh deeply and pick it up.

http://www.bitchypoo.com/bitchypoo.html

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

First off, I gotta tell you, your November website is outrageously cool and wonderfully designed. You added some stuff and I caught myself amazed that you could make one of the best online journal websites even better.

I was so worried when your hard drive bit the big one. Damn those computer fairies! (I'm just kidding, you little cuties. Please, please, ignore what I just wrote and don't take revenge and mess up my computer.) I was worried I'd have to wait forever for more Bad Hair Days entries.

Anyway, now on to today's forum topics. I want to tell you, Beth. that I think one of your little fairies saved my life. (Are you reading this, little fairies. See, I am expressing my gratitude about a wonderful thing you did, so please keep my computer running well.)

My son was watching tv one day, and I told him not to lie around the house all day in front of the boob tube. I needed him to help me out and clean our place up. This had been an ongoing battle between us, and it had been all but impossible to motivate him. I was becoming pissed and more pissed with each passing day at his lethargy when it came to housekeeping.

Well, when I arrived home that evening, the house was a pigsty and there was my offspring lying on the couch in the bed clothes he wore the previous night with the tv blasting and blaring in full force.

Zoomer's anger-earthquake Richter Scale instantly hit a ten-plus and I grabbed a pair of scissors and I grabbed the tv cord and proceeded to cut it.

Let it be noted here, Beth, if you ever need to do this to make a point, calm yourself down and unplug the tv first.

There was a loud crack, some smoke, and an electrical smell. (Thank God, it wasn't the smell of my flesh burning.) My son's mouth and mine dropped open in amazement that I was not electrocuted. Nevertheless,the electricity did burn a hole in one of the blades of the steel scissors I was holding!

Those fairies must have protected me. Either they like me, or they enjoy watching my teenage son torture me with his teenager-ness.

PS-your evil twin is very beautiful. Does she resemble any older, single aunts and are they willing to start a online romance with a single, nutzoid, tv-less dad? (Just kidding.)

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

Oops. I gave the wrong email address. It should be the one I entered above. (Hey! I wonder if those fairies messed with my mind. I'm sorry you little cuties! Please forgive me!)

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

Make that: the email address should be the one entered BELOW. Oh, God, this is scary. I feel like I'm in the movie, "The Fairy Witch Project. Is that some itty-bitty pebbles piled up on my monitor? (You'd have to see "The Blair Witch Project" to know what I'm writing about.)

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

It is an on-going joke in our family how I am really terribly bad with appliances. After having three different washers, we finally gave up and got a brand new one, figuring I had plenty of time to wear it down before the warranty runs out. The old ones only took a year or two for me to break. I teach craft classes too, and in one class where we were using a toaster oven to bake our clay creations it, of course, caught fire. Smoke, blue flames, whole nine yards. Lots of witnesses. My stove still doesn't work by the way, just the burners function. I'm almost to the point of buying a new one of those. That will be my third. Hand-held mixers I gave up on after killing God knows how many of those... I now have one of those 'industrial' ones.
Same with toasters. Coffee pots don't last for anyone. My hubby says our microwave doesn't count; it died a natural death, very gradually. I won't even get into what happens when I drive our car or truck, but its always when I'm in it. I can't walk thru the house without knocking something over, or plowing into one of the kids (they're always right behind me when I turn around). I constantly trip over things, stub my toe on the bed frame (every other time by it), and bash my shins. I injure myself on a regular basis. Last night I burned my finger on very hot tangerine-scented candle wax. A nice oval bubble right on the pad of my index finger. matches the blister on my thumb from shucking corn last week...
I always find a new bruise somewhere on my body whenever I dress for bed, usually on my legs. Unfortunatly, the kids seem to inherit this. At the local hospital, we don't need directions to the "Minor Suture Room". ;-)

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

Oy vey. I'm embarassed to be confessing this, but what the hell. I broke my microwave. My mom and I were living in my house, after my sister went away to school, and I decided that I needed a mug of tomato soup for a perfect midnight snack.. I don't remember if it was a school night or not.. so I got the soup out, mixed it up and stuck it in the microwave, remembering to cover it, of course, before I closed it and turned it on. So it wouldn't splatter. I went into my mom's bedroom to talk to her for a minute while the microwave faeries were doing their thing with my soup (teehee), and I heard the most horrible noise. I ran out into the kitchen to see the front of the microwave's glass completely spiderwebbed. I closed my eyes and reached up and turned it off and felt really dumb when I realized why - I had covered my soup with.. (drumroll please..) ALUMINUM FOIL. That's why I opted not to bring the fancy schmancy new microwave out to school even though my mom offered. No fires for me. Hehe.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

I don't tend to break things very often. What I do is contribute a sort of electronic entropy to my environment. VCRs and computers degrade much more quickly in my presence. I think all the appliances in my house are plotting to send me to Tibet or Peru or someplace where I will no longer trouble their kind.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

I once came home from a long weekend away to find my microwave running. It wasn't actually heating, but the light was on and the fan was running and the turntable was spinning.

And when I opened the door...it kept going. That's just one of those things that is almost scary, it's so wrong. I've opened microwave doors hundreds of times while they're running, and they stop. That's what they do. It turned out to be a known issue with that model and it was replaced.

Two years ago, our stove blew up. I was making tea, and the burner I had the kettle on apparently had a hot spot. When it blew, it blew a hole in the coil, and a hole in the kettle, emptying the entire contents of the full kettle down into the stove and all over the flaming burner. Somehow this all shot a fireball off the stove and into the kitchen. Luckily, I had just walked out, so I saw it but I wasn't standing in the path.

We cooked on a griddle after that, so I feel your pain about not being able to boil.

I also have very bad luck with over/under freezer/refrigerators. I guess I yank too hard opening the freezer, as I am generally greeted with projectile frozen items. I was once hit in the head by a frozen Vidalia onion at my parents' house.

I must have guardian grease fire fairies, because I *should* have set many of them in my time, and I never have.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

I do break glasses a lot, and I knock stuff out of the fridge, off the counters, etc. a lot. Mostly I run into things (smacked my head on the open microwave door yesterday).

I have reduced the number of disasters I actually cause, by maybe learning from experience. I did set spaghetti on fire once, though. And another time boiled the pot over so much it flooded the stove. But I don't think I've actually broken any appliances. They just plod along around me, working erratically but unable to get up the heart to just die.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

Our appliances seem to like us, but lately we've been having a lot of car trouble. the most recent was a leak in one of the hoses of the cooling system of the car I drive. this meant that once the car heated up, it would have a lot of steam coming from under the hood. It's a truck, so that was pretty dramatic. Guys would keep pointing this out to me - "Hey lady, your radiator is gonna blow!" "Thanks, I know about it - it's a hose leak. we're gonna fix it this weekend!" and then tehy'd want to advise me about where to take it, how to fix it, etc.

thank god that Pat really did fix it yesterday.

anyway, I hope the appliances stay in line.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

last year my computer sounded like it had hamsters running around in it for a while. and it's been spontaneously rebooting lately, but other than that ...

well, theater lights beginning to flame during shows doesn't count, does it? and that screw gun i put through my thumb the other night. sheesh.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 1999

No, but I blew up my car this weekend. Wanna come to a funeral for an '83 Escort? BTW, Beth, I have an old microwave in Mom's garage, if you want it...

Sunshyn

-- Anonymous, November 08, 1999

Now that you mention it, I think they are trying to kill me.

I've blown up a microwave. I put in a small amount of stick butter to melt, set the microwave for about 20 seconds, and turned around to work on the stuff on the stove. Turned back around a few second laters because something didn't sound right. Arcing, blue flames, and smoke. And yes, I did take the foil off the butter before I put it in the microwave. It was just its time to die. (But it didn't have to try to take me with it.)

On my first weekend at my new abode, some nine years ago, I decided to clean the oven using the self-cleaning option. I set it and went off to do other things around the house. A loud crash alerted me to the fact that all was not well in the kitchen. The glass in the front of the oven had exploded outward, all over the kitchen floor and counters.

I got the chopping blade of the food processor stuck in the food processor to the point where I had to send it back to the manufacturer to have it extracted.

I mistakenly put a Pyrex glass baking dish on a hot burner for a few minutes. Once I realized my mistake, I took it off, and everything seemed fine. I used to it bake some fish and then put it on the sideboard to await cleaning. I was working on the computer when I heard an odd noise coming from the kitchen. The dish had exploded into millions of tiny pieces. At least I wasn't washing it when that happened.

I just moved into a new apartment, and I'm afraid to use the gas stove/oven now. I know they are plotting against me.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 1999