Clumsy Jane Mode

You know how things seem to happen in three’s? Well, not for me, evidently. I seem to be working in multiples of three’s. I knocked over three things in a little over 24 hours and figured I should be done…but last night disproved that theory as I knocked over a fourth thing. Gosh, I’m getting tired of being clumsy. Not to mention that I’m tired of breaking things. Plus, I’m really tired of cleaning up stuff!

It all started on Friday morning when I went downstairs for breakfast before work. Last week was one of those weeks when I did not exactly bound out of bed to prepare myself for the day in enough time to have a leisurely breakfast. Instead, I stayed in bed until the last possible second and then rushed through my morning routine, sometimes even skipping – gasp! – the eye shadow application step. I made it downstairs with only a minute or two to spare for breakfast. Hey, what can I say? Some weeks are like that. Oh, all right, I’ll admit it – most weeks are like that! If I could sleep in every morning and show up at work sometime around 10:30, I’d be one happy camper!

Anyway, Vince had made us yogurt fruit smoothies for breakfast, which was smart on his part because I usually grab mine as I’m walking out the door and drink it on the way to work. The lid wasn’t yet on my insulated cup, which turned out to be disastrous. Before I even managed to take a sip, I knocked the glass over. Thick purplish-pink yogurt smoothie spread out all over the tablecloth, chargers, cloth napkins and everything else on the table.

Messes like that so early in the morning are not a good thing. I uttered a string of pretty inventive curse words and then pulled some paper towels off the roll to start the clean-up process. I was mentally kicking myself the whole time because it was an absolutely mess and I couldn’t believe I had done it. I mean, shouldn’t it be a pretty simple process to pick up a glass without knocking it over?

Vince, trying to be the voice of reason, calmly murmured some soothing words and helped clean up. Actually, he did most of the cleaning up because I was pretty ineffectual by that point.

Once he’d gathered up the dirty tablecloth and napkins, he cleaned off my messy insulated glass and shared some of his yogurt smoothie with me. Then he securely fastened the lid (!), and sent me on my way.

Surprisingly, I managed to keep it together at work. I neither shorted out my keyboard by knocking over my water glass nor upended a filing cabinet. And I was kind of proud of myself that I didn’t even kick over the trash can that was filled with those stupid packing peanuts. Woohoo – things were looking up.

Not so fast there, Skippy.

When I got home, we celebrated the end of the work week with a glass of wine. Yep, you guessed it. I knocked over my glass and it shattered. Mess #2 clean-up was all on me as Vince stayed safely in the kitchen. Well, he did hand me the dust pan and brush.

The thing is, he’d cleaned the tablecloth and napkins and re-set the dining room table and, in my distracted state, I hadn’t even noticed. Good husband…bad wife!

Anyway, while I picked up the pieces of glass, I mentally kicked myself some more. Owww. Mental bruises hurt. Who knew? But at least I managed to get all of the glass shards picked up without cutting myself. I’ll take mental bruises over actual wounds that require trips to the ER any day!

By this point, I was realizing that I should have poured my wine into a plastic sippy cup.

As it was, it finally got through my thick head that I was in Clumsy Jane Mode. Clumsy Jane appears in my life every so often just to keep me humble. Most of the time I think I’m fairly non-clumsy. But the last time she appeared, I think there were a half dozen wine glass fatalities.

So this time I vowed to be extra careful, especially now that we have some nice new wineglasses that replaced our hodgepodge assortment.

This careful attitude lasted approximately 7 minutes…until Clumsy Jane went to bed. I pulled one of the pillows off the bed – and knocked over a glass decorative lamp sitting on my bedside table. No, believe it or not, I did not break the decorative lamp (which made me extra happy as I really like that lamp). No, instead, the decorative lamp fell onto a decorative glass bowl on my end table…and broke it in two!

Sigh. But oh well, I could’ve broken both glass pieces and I didn’t. Plus, the decorative glass bowl broke in a couple of relatively clean pieces, so it wasn’t as much work to clean up as the wineglass was. And I wasn’t really crazy about that decorative glass bowl anyway.

By now I figured Clumsy Jane Mode had to be over. After all, that was three things – right?!

Guess not. Last night I was putting together our salads for lunch today…and knocked over my salad bowl. Pieces of lettuce, carrots, celery, garbanzo beans and olives went flying into the air and then landed on the kitchen floor in sort of a pretty heap. But a pretty messy heap, too. Sheesh!

Vince just wryly looked at me, shook his head, and handed me – yet again – the dustpan and brush. He didn’t even have to go out to the pantry to get it – I think he’s keeping it close at hand for me.

Really big sigh. But at least this time glass was not involved.

So now it’s a new week and I managed to get myself out the door without knocking over anything. Knock on wood that it stays that way, okay? We’re going to think positive and trust that Clumsy Jane has left the building.

But just the same, I think I’ll stay away from the glass-filled cabinet. And this evening? I’m fully prepared to drink my wine from a plastic sippy cup!