Clumsy Jane - Part Two

So yesterday I wrote about Clumsy Jane and how she seemed determined to wreak havoc in my life as she stumbled around breakin’ stuff. Fortunately, she seems to be satisfied with breaking one glass bowl and one wineglass and causing a few messy spills.

Now, however, she seems to be wreaking havoc on my clothes.

It started yesterday when I was sitting in the park minding my own business and eating my salad. Since Clumsy Jane had spilled half of it on the kitchen floor the night before, I didn’t have a whole lot of salad left in the bowl, so every bite counted.

What happened? Naturally, the first forkful landed on my shirt in a nice poppyseed dressing and lettuce-shaped configuration. Sigh. Not only that, but the first sip of water? On my shirt. Now COME ON. I figured I might as well just dump the entire contents of the salad bowl down the front of me and pour the bottle of water over my head…it would make quicker work of the destruction of my work clothes.

I didn’t – but mostly because I didn’t want to be known as the “Crazy Lady in Schiller Park.”

I briefly considered tucking a paper town into the collar of my shirt like a bib, but instead I did the thing where I held the bowl nearly to my lips so any errant piece of lettuce or garbanzo bean that escaped my fork would land back in the bowl and not on me. Had anyone been watching this display of salad-eating prowess they may still have thought of me as the “Crazy Lady in Schiller Park.”

Can’t win, can I?

Sadly, I think Clumsy Jane is infectious and I’ve shared with my husband because Clumsy Vince made a brief appearance yesterday as well. Either that, or Vince is such a loving husband that he’s willing to share everything with me? Nah. I think he was just dealing with his own Clumsy Vince moment.

First, he nearly cut off the tip of his finger as he was using a knife to separate two frozen hamburger patties. Fortunately, he wasn’t using the super deluxe lethal Ginsu knives that will shred metal merely by thinking about coming in contact with it. Had he been using one of those knives, well, I don’t even want to contemplate how our evening would have gone, but I’m quite sure we would have been spending most of it in the Emergency Room. Since he was using one of the old, crappy dull-as-butter knives, he merely created a small divot in his finger. Not that it didn’t hurt, I’m sure, but at least no body parts required reattachment. Small mercies, eh?

Next, he spilled some of his dinner down his shirt. Guess he must have wanted to match me since I hadn’t yet changed out of my lettuce- and poppyseed dressing-coated shirt. Hey, I figured I may as well wait until after dinner to change clothes. No sense in getting two outfits food-covered. Plus, I wanted to make sure when I put the shirt in the laundry that I remembered to spritz a little Shout on it, or else I’d have a permanent reminder of my salad eating experience in Schiller Park.

Anyway, it apparently is a well-known fact that the men in the Cordova clan spill food down their shirts. It’s just what they do. So perhaps Clumsy Vince was just a temporary apparition and we were just in status quo mode?

And hopefully I’m not going to take after the Cordova men in the family and food-spillage will become a daily event. My clothing budget is not that vast and I don’t like walkin’ around with permanent food stains on my outfits.

The good news is that so far today neither of us have injured ourselves, our belongings or our clothing…so I’m going to assume that we’ve seen the last of our Clumsy alter egos.

But it probably wouldn’t hurt to follow my friend Carrie’s advice to “keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times.” You never know when one of those lethal Ginsu knives will decide to spring out of the storage block and have a go at us…and I’m really not interested in spending time at the hospital having body parts re-attached!

Have a happy – and SAFE! – Tuesday!