Domestic Bloopers

WARNING: This post is long!

Sometimes I think I should read my tarot cards when I get up in the morning. That way I would know whether it was a good day to start/finish/work on the various projects I have on the go around here. Today would have been a good day to know that I should have just read a book or sat in the dark.


I was having a good week last week. I actually had some cupcakes in the fridge and candy fruit slices in the cupboard so the kids could make butterfly cupcakes. It's not often I'm that prepared.

I stitched up some sweet little robin eggs:

I made some vanilla sugar with the left-over vanilla pod I used to make homemade ice cream. I made jam for the first time in, oh, 18 or 19 years. I was really feeling in the domestic groove. "Yes", I thought, "I am now someone who 'puts by'". I was thinking of putting little red circles of gingham fabric around the tops. I bought more jars to make more jam. I own a canning pot now, and made a list of canning projects to come.

Mr Crafty World and I had put a new French door in our hallway. It was 30 inches wide, and we found out our doorway is 29 3/4 inches. I told M.C.W, "Just go by a planer and buzz the 1/4 inch off." By a stroke of fate electric planers went on sale for 50% off the next week. I picked one up; he buzzed off the 1/4 inch, and the door fits. I set to work painting the thing and removing all those little plastic rectangles that covered the glass.

I noticed my jam looked a little soupy in the jars. Two of six didn't seal. "No problem", I thought, "I'll just open them up; reboil everything with a bit of extra sugar and re-jar it". I filled up my new canning pot to sterilize the new jars for the re-invented cherry jam. I re-boiled my jam. The water in the canner was not boiling. It was taking forever. Not liking to stand around, I put the jam on low, covered it to keep warm and went to install the doorknob on our newly painted French door.

I learned that we shouldn't have "buzzed off" the side the door knob was supposed to go on. You know this little thing-y? It's pretty important. You also can't cut any of it off to make it shorter. When I put it in the door, it sticks out 1/4 of an inch. The same amount as what Mr. Crafty World took off with his planer. Short of buying a new door and trying again, there's nothing I can do to fix it:(

Feeling good and sorry for myself I took that thing-y out and just put the door knob on. When you have a door knob and no thing-y inside to make it a "working" door, it's called a dummy. Ironic huh?

While this dummy was installing that dummy, My Favorite Girl came to find me to "tell me something". Usually this has something to do with her being hungry or bored or reporting some injustice done by her brother. Anticipating such things, and not being happy at all, I let out one of those exasperated, "What do you NEED?"

"There's red stuff coming out the top of your pot and down the sides", she said. I had an instant flashback to four years ago, when I left my spaghetti sauce on the stove for less than two minutes to get My Favorite Boy out of his crib. She met me at the bottom of the stairs to tell me my sauce was "flip-flopping". Indeed it was; all over the stove, floor and ceiling.

Back in the present, I ran to the kitchen, and my cherry jam was boiling over the pot and all over the cooktop, even underneath the canning pot that still hadn't come to a boil.

After much cursing, I tasted the jam (it wasn't burnt) and ladelled it into what I hope are sterilized jars. I started with 6 jars and ended up with four and a half. That means there was 1 1/2 cups of sticky cherry jam all over my stove top. I ordered the kids out of the kitchen in case the jam under the canning pot caught fire, and waited for my four pathetic jars to have their water bath. When that was done and the jam was cooling on the counter, I heard the distinctive plink, plink, plink, plink of all jars having sealed. These plinks weren't met with glee this time, and I don't think anybody is getting a red gingham hat anytime soon.

Oh, but my morning wasn't over. The kids had made remarks after breakfast about there being brown mud on Our Favorite Girl's shoes, and could I please clean it off? I totally forgot about it until after the doorknob and jam fiascoes. Thinking I might as well do something properly today, I went outside to clean off the shoes. When I saw the 'brown mud' I didn't know what to do. All this drama between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.

Then I just laughed. What else was there to do? After all, how many raccoons do you know who can so accurately poop in a size 13 shoe?

This summed up my morning perfectly.