My last few posts have all been a little serious…so I decided I needed to lighten the mood in here. If you know me well, you’ve probably heard me reference my “top list of blonde moments” a few times. I feel one of the best ways to avoid personal humiliation via public mockery is to expose your most embarrassing moments yourself. So here they are, over the next 3 days – the top 3 Stephanie Blonde Moments:
#1 – The Pumpkin
I’m really not good at moving. I blame being in a military family. It wasn’t until our last move, after my Army dad retired, that I realized normal people actually have to wrap and box up all of their own belongings themselves. So, as a result, when I had to move out of my first rental home and asked for my friends help, I was not fully prepared the morning of moving day. If you ask my friends, they’ll say that’s the understatement of the century – almost nothing was in boxes and there were still items in every room. Needless to say, they were a bit disgruntled with me when they showed up and saw the work still needing to be done. However, being the awesome friends they are, we all got to work packing things up.
As I worked on cleaning out my refrigerator, I heard some rather disturbed screeching coming from my laundry room. Amongst the garbled words, I heard the phrase “what IS that??” Knowing my past history with hoarding (that's a story for another time), the yelling set off an alarm in my head and struck fear in my heart. What had they found exactly? I started flipping through the catalogue of my brain to try and quickly assess what item I had shoved up there and forgotten about – and that’s when I heard someone yell “wait a minute….is that….IT’S STILL IN HERE?!” – and that’s when it hit me. With those words, I knew exactly what they had discovered.
I hurried to the laundry room, where George – my older, wiser, much respected Bible Study leader and youth pastor at our church – was clearing out the cabinets above the washer and dryer. That truly is such an inconvenient space for short people – so hard to reach. It’s where you store uncommon items that you don’t need constant access to – things like old dingy beach towels or potpourri baskets you received in a white elephant gift exchange. They might also hold random holiday decorations. For example, the LIVING pumpkin I had bought at the grocery store the previous year for Halloween.
Let me interject here to provide some small explanation in my own defense – when I bought the pumpkin, I intended to use it for decoration purposes, but for some reason, in my own mind, I thought that if you didn’t cut it open, it wouldn’t rot. So, naturally, it would be perfectly acceptable to store it up in the cabinet for use in future Halloween festivities. Ok, feel free to let the utter ridiculousness of that thought marinate, and then revel in my utter stupidity for a moment. Now let’s move on.
As I walked into the laundry room, I looked up into the offending cabinet, and there it was – a large, white, fuzzy mound in the corner. It was covered with so much mold, you couldn’t quite tell what the original shape of the object was. Now, we haven’t even gotten to the worst part of the story yet. The worst part of all of this is, I already knew what to expect when I walked into that laundry room, because this wasn’t the first time I had discovered the moldy gourd.
Several months prior to moving day, I had stumbled upon it myself during my regular cleaning process. That time, it took me quite a while to figure out what it was, since I was too afraid to even get close to it for a better look. Once I remembered what it was, I understood with great horror, what a terrible mistake I had made. Too disgusted to even deal with it at the time, I chose to pretend I had seen nothing and simply closed the cabinet and quickly walked away. On a side note, I learned that’s a great way to handle your problems – just pretend they don’t exist. That really helps solve them.
A couple weeks went by, and AGAIN by accident I discovered the moldy art form growing in the cabinet. It shocked me just as much the second time. Yet again, I chose not to confront the situation and ignored it completely. At the following Tuesday bible study, I decided to poke fun at myself and regale the story of finding the hideous pumpkin with the other members of my small group. As usual, they were fully entertained by the tales of my madcap shenanigans, and we all laughed marvelously at how silly I am. Unfortunately, in that moment on moving day, standing in front of that same cabinet, George was no longer laughing. Our conversation went something like this:
As I worked on cleaning out my refrigerator, I heard some rather disturbed screeching coming from my laundry room. Amongst the garbled words, I heard the phrase “what IS that??” Knowing my past history with hoarding (that's a story for another time), the yelling set off an alarm in my head and struck fear in my heart. What had they found exactly? I started flipping through the catalogue of my brain to try and quickly assess what item I had shoved up there and forgotten about – and that’s when I heard someone yell “wait a minute….is that….IT’S STILL IN HERE?!” – and that’s when it hit me. With those words, I knew exactly what they had discovered.
I hurried to the laundry room, where George – my older, wiser, much respected Bible Study leader and youth pastor at our church – was clearing out the cabinets above the washer and dryer. That truly is such an inconvenient space for short people – so hard to reach. It’s where you store uncommon items that you don’t need constant access to – things like old dingy beach towels or potpourri baskets you received in a white elephant gift exchange. They might also hold random holiday decorations. For example, the LIVING pumpkin I had bought at the grocery store the previous year for Halloween.
Let me interject here to provide some small explanation in my own defense – when I bought the pumpkin, I intended to use it for decoration purposes, but for some reason, in my own mind, I thought that if you didn’t cut it open, it wouldn’t rot. So, naturally, it would be perfectly acceptable to store it up in the cabinet for use in future Halloween festivities. Ok, feel free to let the utter ridiculousness of that thought marinate, and then revel in my utter stupidity for a moment. Now let’s move on.
As I walked into the laundry room, I looked up into the offending cabinet, and there it was – a large, white, fuzzy mound in the corner. It was covered with so much mold, you couldn’t quite tell what the original shape of the object was. Now, we haven’t even gotten to the worst part of the story yet. The worst part of all of this is, I already knew what to expect when I walked into that laundry room, because this wasn’t the first time I had discovered the moldy gourd.
Several months prior to moving day, I had stumbled upon it myself during my regular cleaning process. That time, it took me quite a while to figure out what it was, since I was too afraid to even get close to it for a better look. Once I remembered what it was, I understood with great horror, what a terrible mistake I had made. Too disgusted to even deal with it at the time, I chose to pretend I had seen nothing and simply closed the cabinet and quickly walked away. On a side note, I learned that’s a great way to handle your problems – just pretend they don’t exist. That really helps solve them.
A couple weeks went by, and AGAIN by accident I discovered the moldy art form growing in the cabinet. It shocked me just as much the second time. Yet again, I chose not to confront the situation and ignored it completely. At the following Tuesday bible study, I decided to poke fun at myself and regale the story of finding the hideous pumpkin with the other members of my small group. As usual, they were fully entertained by the tales of my madcap shenanigans, and we all laughed marvelously at how silly I am. Unfortunately, in that moment on moving day, standing in front of that same cabinet, George was no longer laughing. Our conversation went something like this:
George: “is this the pumpkin you were telling us about months ago?!”
Me: “ummm…..yes?”
George: “you mean after you found it the first time, you didn’t clean it up?!”
Me: “well…..no. obviously.”
George: “WHY NOT?!”
Me: “ew, are you kidding?! It’s disgusting! I wasn’t about to touch that.”
George: *facepalm*
At that point, the rubber gloves and roll of paper towels was handed to me, and everyone cleared out of the room so fast you would have thought a countdown for total annihilation of the building had just commenced. Now it was time to pay seriously for my poorly chosen act of procrastination. The longer the pumpkin had sat in the cabinet, the more time it had to…deteriorate. The moment I tried to lift it onto the pile of newspaper I laid down (that poor Bakersfield Californian never knew what hit it), it fell to pieces in my hands.
I won’t torture you with further details of the cleanup. Needless to say, I had to face further inquiry afterwards as to why on earth I had decided to leave the mess after finding it the first time, and have been teased mercilessly about it ever since. Still to this day, the topic of pumpkins in general cannot be brought up without some form of taunting directed my way. I only have myself to blame.
#2 Blonde Moment
#3 Blonde Moment
I won’t torture you with further details of the cleanup. Needless to say, I had to face further inquiry afterwards as to why on earth I had decided to leave the mess after finding it the first time, and have been teased mercilessly about it ever since. Still to this day, the topic of pumpkins in general cannot be brought up without some form of taunting directed my way. I only have myself to blame.
#2 Blonde Moment
#3 Blonde Moment
You are just too funny Stephanie...
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