‘Dumb Stuff’

I come back from most of my trips to see my family complaining that ‘I feel dumb’ , or ‘I always do dumb stuff’. Now this isn’t exactly true, I am pretty sensible, can be highly organised, and am sometimes capable of intelligent conversation and a few humorous remarks. But. It’s how I feel. Here are some of these times. Let’s share.

Relations

(The * are a running total of mistakes.) We all wanted to get food from a local Turkish restaurant. We spent an extra long amount of time working out what everyone wanted, then walked down to the shop to get it. We didn’t order by phone and pick it up *1. It started raining. We eventually stammered out our order to the busy man behind the counter, complete with additions and revisions. My sister and brother went to wait outside. We watched the man make all our food, and we roughly calculated how much it would cost. The total came to less than we thought *2 so when I took the food outside I asked my sister to check we had everything. We were missing a ‘mixed mezze’. She refused to go inside to get it, because I had said previously that I may need to use my own money, which I hadn’t needed to in the end*3. I also said I’d given a portion of the rest of the money as a tip, because we’d been there a few times and the guy knew us and was always friendly (Apparently you don’t tip in those places *4) But, instead of saying that, it came out as ‘but I know him that’s why I tipped him- we had personal relations!’ Say what? Seriously? ‘Personal relations’? I was mocked. Mixed mezze may have become my nickname that weekend. And guess what? I found the receipt in my coat pocket the next day, and we’d paid for the mezze anyway.*6

This time

Colour catcher sheets saved the day.

That time

This is what a pizza looks like when it’s been in the oven for over half an hour, rather than the 10 minutes it needed.

Bad Day, Good Outcome

This is more a series of unfortunate events. It was the day of one of my interviews. I got dressed, ate and went outside to de-ice my car. Went to open the door to find it frozen shut. Crawled in through the passenger door to reach the de-icer, and proceeded to de-ice the car. Drove to city centre, got lost, multiple wrong turns, even though I had a sat-nav. Eventually found a car park, and went in. Tried to park in the first space I saw thinking it was very busy. In trying so hard to avoid hitting the car next to me, I scraped the rear wheelarch against a concrete column. Reversed out and found plenty of spaces a little further on. Walked up to the University, completed all the tasks, four hours later walked back down to the car park. Someone was using the upstairs machine so walked down to the machine on the level where my car was. It was broken. Walked back up, paid, got in my car, drove to the barrier. Reached for ticket to let me out, couldn’t find it. Reversed back a little and continued searching. Was beeped at for being in the way, even though I had left space, so I moved. Continued searching. Worried my time was going to expire, frantically ran to where I’d been parked, ran back to the car, found the ticket and left. Turned wheels to the left only to realise it was a one-way street and swiftly turned to the right instead. Made it home without incident. Got an offer a week later.

And The Little One Rolled Over

I was at work. She was standing on the bed, playfully refusing to change out of her school uniform, making a lot of noise. So I put her pink blanket over her head and went to help her sister. Next time I looked, she hadn’t taken off the blanket but had instead lain down and rolled all the way over to the other side of their high double bed, and cracked her head on the floor. This photo was taken because she wanted to see what it looked like. She was fine, she went to A+E and had some glue put on. But seriously, oops.

 

And these are just a few from a choice of thousands over my lifetime.