I should not be allowed anywhere near anything resembling domestic chores unsupervised. Seriously. This is not merely because I abhor housework (which I do) but primarily due to the fact that I will inevitably injure myself in ways that are not only excruciatingly painful, but apparently hilarious to friends and family. This will, in turn, cause me to complain endlessly about the injury while all around me are too busy laughing to feel any real sympathy.

And to make it all even more humiliating? I can do a full renovation on my home or build an entire Haunted House with extreme power tools, 8-foot pieces of lumber and countless nails and screws and emerge unscathed other than a few minor scrapes and bruises. Let me near a freezer, stove or household appliance, however, and it’s a miracle I don’t spend every moment of my free time in the ER. Or in traction.

I hate cooking. Hate it. If it doesn’t involve butter, sugar and chocolate, I’m not going to enjoy the culinary experience in the least. Unfortunately, when we’re all sick to death of eating out, I can no longer avoid it and must make the dangerous expedition into the kitchen. Think about it from my point of view for a moment…stuff happens to me…..I’m a klutz…..I’m accident-prone….the kitchen is full of hot burners and sharp implements. Does that sound like a match made in heaven to you??? I thought not.

You would assume I could at least manage to re-heat a store-bought rotisserie chicken and some baked beans without catastrophe, correct? You’d assume wrong.

I managed to get the chicken into the oven without spontaneously combusting or anything. I felt invincible and decided to multi-task. I can do this with great success at work….in the kitchen, not so much. I put the baked beans into a glass bowl in preparation for putting them into the microwave. So far, so good. I’ve got the dinner rolls on a plate, got the butter out of the fridge, got the table set and then….BOOOOM! Crack! Splat! Yep, just like a Batman fight scene.

Turns out, when you put something into a glass bowl and set it on the stove-top it’s probably not a good idea to turn the burner on. The same burner that bowl happens to be sitting upon. When you didn’t even NEED a burner on in the first place. I have no idea why I do the things I do, I just run with it. Needless to say, I had bits of glass and baked beans covering every square inch of my kitchen from floor to ceiling and back again. The reaction from my family? After the hysterical laughing died down, I heard, “Luuuucy, you’ve got some explosion to do”. Yeah, he got to clean it up.

I don’t learn my lesson from these things, either. I continue to venture into the kitchen without full body armor, a welding helmet or an armed escort. I live on the edge.

I’ve never had any altercations with my stove-top grill, so when my youngest stated he wanted flank steak for dinner I had no qualms whatsoever when it came to agreeing to this excellent idea. All I had to do was head out to our extra fridge in the garage and pull the steak out of the freezer in preparation for the next night’s dinner. Simple. Non-threatening. No chance whatsoever of incurring bodily injury that will maim me for life. Uh huh.

My freezer is full of stuff. I go shopping with grand plans and then throw everything in the freezer for the day when I will have the time and inclination to cook it all. When the planets align just so. When hell freezes over. And by the look of my freezer contents, that day might just have arrived.

Anyway, my flank steak was easily located but it was stuck fast to a pork roast. I tried to pry them apart. They weren’t cooperating. It would have been easier to get two hormonally-charged teenagers to separate than these two. I was trying not to focus too heavily on the reason for this intimate moment between the two of them and just get my damn flank steak. I’m pulling, I’m tugging, I’m swearing, I’m banging them against the side of the freezer. That did the trick! Sort of.

I’ve got small hands that are apparently incapable of handling both a large pork roast and a slab of beef simultaneously. Either that or the damn hunks of meat were getting revenge. The end result was the same. I was able to cling to the steak for dear life, but the pork roast had to be sacrificed. I watched, in horrified slow-motion, as the roast tumbled from my fingers and headed for the floor. No, wait, there’s been a mid-flight course correction and it’s now tumbling straight for my foot. My tiny, defenseless, bare foot. The odds against it actually hitting the 1 ½ inches of exposed toe are probably fairly astronomical, but that’s in the real world. In my world? Yep, direct hit. After I finished hopping around on one foot and inventing new and colorful expletives I came to the realization that my toe was broken. The worst part was not the mind-numbing pain and throbbing. No, no, no. The worst part was the knowledge that I had to tell people my toe was broken and….. <shudder>….. exactly how that accident transpired. I can’t put an ounce of weight on that foot at all, can’t walk, and my only concern is just how hard they’re gonna laugh. And yep, they ALL did. Every. Stinking. One Of Them. It belatedly occurred to me that I should have just said I’d dropped a 2x4 on it. Or an industrial-sized drill. Or anything but freaking pork roast. And yes, I’ve already heard all the jokes I can take about flying pigs, thank you very much. Don’t even go there!

Ah, laundry. Laundry is safe, right?  I even vaguely enjoy it. The smell of all those warm, clean, toasty clothes coming from the dryer….mmmmm. The fact that the word “laundry” is even on this page is proof positive that even that one small chore that I found tolerable has been forever tainted in my memory. Granted, the connection here is tenuous at best, but apparently I have a low tolerance for any rebellion in my household whatsoever.

I have furniture. I have dogs. Dogs who drool and shed in copious amounts. The coexistence of these two truths in my home means that I have to either a) live with the dirt or b) get furniture that cleans easily or c) replace my furniture on a weekly basis. Options “a” and “c” are both tempting, to be sure, but my budget can’t handle the latter and my nose can’t stand the former. That leaves me with “b” and my new, washable couch. Yes, every inch of fabric on this thing comes off and can be thrown with abandon into the washing machine leaving me with lovely, clean, upholstered surfaces. Ha! And some of you scoffed when I bought my “couch in a box”. All I have to do is tip the couch this way and that, unzip a few zippers and remove four screws and the fabric is at my mercy.

This weekend was dedicated to some cleaning. Serious cleaning. The kind that involved washing the upholstery from the aforementioned sofa and getting up on a ladder to vacuum my ceiling fans. When I pulled out the vacuum my youngest looked at me with horror and exclaimed, “Are you crazy? You’re going to vacuum???” Yes, you’re right, the ladder should have worried him more since it’s me we’re talking about, but if you’ve known me for any length of time you’ll understand I have a morbid and all-encompassing phobia of vacuum cleaners. That’s another story, though, for a later time.

To continue….if you were paying attention, you’ll recall I said I had to remove four screws in order to remove some of the upholstery. This is hardly an issue. I am, after all, Handywoman Extraordinaire. Or something.

I manage to remove all of the fabric, unzip all of the cushions, unscrew all of the screws and get all of the pieces into the washing machine. Without incident, I might add. I know, worthy of a standing ovation! All was right with the world until I decided to put everything back together. Sofa back fabric in place? Check. Right sofa arm fabric in place? Check. Left sofa arm fabric in place? Check. Left sofa arm screwed back onto the sofa frame? Check. Right sofa arm….BAM…oh my deity of choice and all that I hold dear and holy good golly Miss Molly ow ow ow ow ow @#$ &$#@ $%*(#!!!!  Um yeah, see, here’s the thing….I was in a rather peculiar position on the floor in order to screw this stuff back together. In my haste to move on to the other side, I managed to hit my knee …no, make that slam with horrendous force…. into the bare wooden frame of the couch. My knee-jerk reaction (ha ha ha ha) was to cradle the injured body part while curling into the fetal position on the floor. Since I still had the screwdriver in my hand at the time for some inane reason, it’s a miracle I didn’t impale my eyeball while I was at it. I did give my hair an impressive part, though.

My knee has now swollen up to the size of a healthy grapefruit. My broken toe is still purple and horribly painful. To make matters worse, each injury is on a different side of my body. Have you ever tried limping with a broken left toe and a messed-up right knee? I’m not the most graceful person to begin with and now I’m scuttling around the place like some sort of deformed crab with an inner ear imbalance. And yep, they’re all still laughing.