You Know You're An Idiot A Split Second After It's Too Late

You volunteer once and do a good job, guess who gets asked to do something. That’s right, it’s you!

Last month I made some fantabulous “Good Student Awards”. After three Mike’s Hard Lemonades each, my friend Kitty and I hauled out the bucket of crayons and colored really pretty like. They looked kind of like this (but they all had different color combinations).


Cupie said they needed glitter. So I used the glitter glue I had at home and piped it on the edges and the words. Of course, I used up all my glitter glue.

Since they were so sparkly & pretty, I got a request to make more awards. I still didn’t have any glitter so I hiked my butt down to the craft store.

Glitter glue is expensive!

I figured the Elmer’s at home and the regular, sprinkly kind of glitter would do the job. I bought eight jars that had a shaker top.

Wouldn’t you know it, I spent just as much as I would have on the glitter glue. At least the sprinkly kind will last longer.

A shaker top is cool, but you have pop out the tab do-dad. I thought I’d just push on them.

Like opening parmesan cheese.

They were so small they didn’t stay open very well so I had to open the jars and actually pull the tab off. I was able to tear most of them out. The red and multi-colored tabs were an issue.

I needed to perforate the edges somehow. I didn’t want to use a knife because jabbing it at the laminate counter top in order to pierce the tab edge would result in open jars of glitter, but a nicked up counter. Not a good idea. I needed something a little duller.

There were fondue forks in the silverware drawer. The two prongs were pretty close together and they had a rounded end.

Perfect!

The multi-colored jar was pierced as planned and I pulled the tab out.

The red jar was the first one I tried to open by just pushing in the tab – the one where I discovered the tab doesn’t stay open so well. There was only the long edge to perforate.

Because one side had already been pushed in, it kept folding in every time I tried to jam the fondue fork into the edge.

I concluded I wasn’t able to achieve the right angle by pushing down toward the counter so I picked up the lid with my left hand.

I pushed the fork with my right hand.

Planned event: Perforating the tab edge. SUCCESS!

Unplanned event: Perforating the palm of my left hand. SUCCESS!


Silver Lining:

1. I did finish the awards. I just clenched a paper towel in my left hand while doing it.


2. Thank goodness I had nixed the knife idea.


3. My awards are better than the other mom’s awards – she only colors them all one color and uses only one color glitter

That Carpet

Cupie had colored some pictures and planned to give them to her grandparents from the Great White North.

I noticed Cupie sitting on a rug by the back door, punching holes with a pencil into red construction paper. I told her to move away from the door because Rob was going in and out quite frequently.

She says to me, “I need to do this here because I can’t get pencil on the carpet and this (pointing to the linoleum) is too hard. And I am not going to get pencil on that carpet.” I don’t know where she learned that tone; although, I have the feeling I should stay away from mirrors lest I find out.

What made getting pencil on the rug any better is beyond me.

In the end, she taped together a very lovely (but holey) “box” to put the coloring pages in.

Silver lining:
1. The rug is kind of oatmeal colored so pencil won’t show up on it anyway.
2. Bumpa & Nana loved the coloring pages when they were here this past weekend. Sorry Grandma Berg, the "box" was ruined, but the coloring page is waiting for your arrival this weekend.