my urkel moment: did i do thaaaaaaaat?
A while back, Pumpkin at From my Swiss window wrote about how she washed a cell phone because she forgot to double check her husband’s jeans before throwing them in the washing machine. I agree with her, by the way, that the boys are taking their fate into their own hands by not cleaning out their pockets first.
Anyway, it reminded me of how just two days after P *finally* went down to the comune to get his new carta d’identita (Italian ID card) we had a little accident here ourselves:
Our ID cards are only paper, you see, so when washed, the ink from the writing on the left side *will* bleed onto the photo on the right. Just in case you wondered.
OOPS!
What’s your biggest or latest OOPS?
Please share in the comments and make me feel less like Steve Urkel!
Buon weekend!
35 Beans of Wisdom to “my urkel moment: did i do thaaaaaaaat?”
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, I’ve spent most of my time here just lurking and reading, but today for some reason I just felt compelled to say this.
You know this originally went to the spam folder, and it just might be spam, but I’m feeling inclusive today 🙂
Doesn’t it suck when that happens?
Just last week I placed my very fancy and expensive bedspread on the dryer, and it literally fried it 🙁 Now I’ll air dry them.
Roam2Rome’s last blog post..BlogHer Blues
I’ve had a dryer fry/melt part of a Laura Ashley bedspread. I hear you.
I think I’m feeling more and more stupid with all these other confessions though b/c I’ve done them all too!
Hey! What happened to your fancy preview plugin? Yea. It was a little distracting, but a lot of fun, anyway. I came to check it out again!
Roam2Rome’s last blog post..BlogHer Blues
Oh is it gone? I upgraded to the new WP yesterday; maybe that wiped it clean? I’ll have to check.
oh no! Is the card ruined? Does he have to get another one?
My last urkel moment:
When I was in Toronto working on the movie, the production office found my apartment. The second morning I had to take a shower in the gym’s locker room because the tub was clogged. I used the last bit of Drano I found in the apartment, nothing happened. I was very annoyed.
I tell our production coordinator when I get to the office. She apologizes and calls the building’s management right away. It turns out it wasn’t clogged, I hit something that shut the drain. Oops.
I felt molto stupida.
nyc/caribbean ragazza’s last blog post..Flashback Friday – Mary J. Blige and David Gregory are “Just Fine”
The card is, well, defaced (literally) but P seems to think that unless at some point someone asks for it and won’t accept it, he’s not going to worry about it. I don’t think he’s even needed his ID for anything in the past 10 years, so he’s probably got a point.
That story is hilarious. And *so* something I would do too since one time, I was convinced my refrigerator was broken (it just shut off and stopped working!) but really I had just hit a switch on the wall that turns it on and off. Oh. Well in America we don’t *do* switches like that. Sheesh.
I’m forever finding my keys in the fridge or the freezer. I should probably just start looking for them there first
judy haley (coffeejitters)’s last blog post..The Best Use for Worn Out Panties
Hah! Love it! Thanks for sharing Judy 🙂
You are not alone!
I spilt some liquid (OK, it was wine) on our land-line telephone.
It still works, but displays all the wrong numbers on the LED. You just need to get to know the new code: 4 is now 1, 6 is 5, etc.
casalba’s last blog post..The Fig Tree
The code! That’s hilarious! Thanks for sharing 🙂
My husband doesn’t leave anything in his pockets because the rule is: anything I find in there I keep!
Not too long ago I got up earlier than usual to have breakfast, took a cup out of the cupboard, pour in some coffee, added milk and sugar, put it back in the cupboard and then spent 20 minutes looking for my coffee 😳
Joanne at frutto della passione’s last blog post..Inspired by … oops, I might not be able to say that
Well that will teach you to get up earlier….
First of all : I enjoy reading your blog and your writing style is great!
I have to admit I have many ‘Urkel’ moments.
My latest washing machine screw up, was just a couple of weeks ago. I washed my bathrobe in the washing machine of the parents of my bf and forgot that I left a razor in the pocket of the bathrobe.
Luckily I stopped the machine on time – before the razor could make holes in the rubber on the machine…
Thank you for the compliments and phew! Glad you got that razor out in time! It’s one thing to ruin our own washing machines but the parents of significant others? Gah!
Mine was losing my passport last week in the Malpensa Airport! I just watched The Terminal on Italian TV a week earlier and started thinking that since I passed through all the passport checkpoints, I probably could still fly and then just be stuck in Newark like Tom Hanks. I was amazed though that I was as calm as a cucumber while my passport was lost. I think secretly that I was hoping it would be an excuse to stay in Italy a little bit longer. As I was standing in line in the little shop where they sell newspapers, etc. to pay for something, I realized that I was only holding my ticket and not my ticket and my passport. It took me a few minutes of staring at my hand to fully comprehend that my passport was no longer in my hand. I retraced my steps in my head (bathroom with the guy barging in to clean the stalls – he even opened mine while I was in the stall! – figured if I dropped it there, it was gone / duty free shop where I looked at and picked up things all over the store – that would mean lots of looking and my plane was boarding soon / little shop where they sell newspapers, etc. looking at these cute little notebooks on the bottom shelf). Thank goodness I was in line in the little newspaper shop and looked there first!! There it was right under the 2 little notebooks. Pretty dumb and very lucky!!
Oh thank goodness you found it! It’s so easy to put something down that was in your hand while looking at something else…where *does* our mind go sometimes, eh? I’ve done this in the past with sunglasses and keys, I’m pretty sure, but a passport is *way* more stressful!
Um…my biggest screw up would have to be washing my OWN cell phone that I left in my jeans. And yes, I have a strict rule about everyone emptying their own pockets out. I guess I need to pay attention to my own rules….
BTW, I love, love, LOVE those wonderful pictures of you and your mom below. You both look so beautiful and happy to just be together.
Susan’s last blog post..Saving KT
Thanks Susan, and thanks for sharing your moment of Urkel-dom 😉
I’m having Urkel moments all week this week. I overscheduled everything and keep thinking I’ve told D and C things and poor C has been reprimanded for not doing things I never asked him to do.
I’m not happy with myself. ;-(
jen of a2eatwrite’s last blog post..Summer Reading and a PSA
Aw Jen we all have those times. Hopefully the weekend will go much more smoothly 🙂
My biggest ooops lately was braking too hard on my bike and going over the handlebars, forgetting to lean back.
running42k’s last blog post..Weekend almost here
OUCH! The worst kind of OOPS are accompanied by OUCH 🙁
Not my biggest oops, I should say my sposo’s biggest oops is he left his pen in his shirt, needless to say it got washed, no problem but I threw the (luckily) darks in the dryer! Guess what? Explosion of blue ink, all over the dryer drum and some clothes not all. Nothing ruined. Tried every thing possible to get the blue ink off the dryer drum. I spent an hour a day. It so baked on there now…it doesn’t do anything to our clothes. I actually put some old white towels in there before putting any of my good clothes in to see if it would rub off on them…nada…a good thing. Of course, my husband said I should have been checking his pockets. I commented “if you throw it in the laundry bin, it’s YOUR responsibility to check your pockets!!! What are you 5 years old? Huh! Do your own laundry!” I was so mad that day! Now I’m thinking if we ever sell the house, I’m gonna have to take my washer and dryer blue, with us.
Ciao Bella, have a beautiful Italian weekend!
lucy’s last blog post..Sarnia – My Beautiful Visit
That is so odd Lucy! Glad it hasn’t affected the machine’s functioning, but you know what? Every now and again I get a random blue stain on things and I don’t even use blue pens…you think your ink was somehow transferred to my washer? Kind of like how socks are *definitely* flying from washer/dryer to washer/dryer and constantly getting lost? Hmmm….
Cal washed his jeans in super hot water and his bank card came out looking like, well, you know those screen savers for PCs that have that kind of wavy pattern going across your screen? Yeah, like that.
And, we had transferred all of our money into that account.
The good thing though is that for days, we’d hold the card up whenever wanted money and it worked like a Jedi mind trick.
Miss Expatria’s last blog post..Roma Life
Oh bank cards are not to be joked about 🙁
Perhaps P should swap to the plastic id card instead! Just in case…
I have too many urkle moments that I cannot possibly comment or else I would be writing all day 🙂
Leanne’s last blog post..Homeless? Maybe not.
You know if anyone had even mentioned the option of plastic we would’ve gone for it. Does your BF have one from his small town in Calabria? Doesn’t seem too popular around here.
Hello Cara!!
Urkel moments… they are so funny AFTER the fact… hee hee… where to begin…
I washed my cordless phone, had set it in the full laundry basket (?!) and then absentmindedly dumped it all in the washer.
Locked keys in car on lunch hour at gas station… Left my keys in someone elses vehicle… Put miscellaneous items in the refrigerator that should never go there… put items that should go into the fridge in the cupboard… Forgot to turn off the coffee pot, the stove, the curling iron… Forgot about candles that were burning… Gone to the store for one thing and left with everything but what I went for… Mouthed off to one of my professors when he asked me a perfectly legitimate question and I was anticipating a smarty pants comment from him and then had to apologize immediately (in front of the whole class)… Taken a whole roll of my best photos ever and then realized there was no film in the camera… Taken the digital camera and forgotten the batteries… Taken the wrong USB cable out of town so that I could download photos onto my laptop… Made smarty pants comments at EXACTLY the wrong moment to absolutely the wrong people… Backed my *brand new* car into my new bosses sportscar three days after she was hired…
I will quit there. This list has no end, methinks…
Molto Stupida indeed.
But… you are in good company Cara.
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
Wanderlust Scarlett’s last blog post..Passport Stamps
Oh the camera-related ones are especially sad to me, dear Scarlett 🙁 Thanks for joining my misery though. I knew I could count on you (and I mean that in a good way)!
I once double-parked my car outside my apartment building to carry in a desk and chair I bought – so I didn’t have to walk 3 blocks. I brought the desk inside, proceeded to put the desk parts together(you know how they come in a million pieces…Part AH goes into Part YN). Anyhow, I was too busy admiring how well I put this desk together (especially without help from my boyrfriend at the time) that I completely forgot to go back outside and move my car. It literally sat there, double-parked with the hazards on, for hours…well, until some annoyed neighbor who was trying to move his or her car couldn’t get out and called the tow company. I woke up in the morning and was like, “Um, where the heck did I park the car?” Then it dawned on me…molto stupida!!! My roommate had to drive me to the tow yard and loan me the $90 to retrieve my car. Unreal.
OK that was hilarious until it got to the towing. What a neighbor though! Sheesh.
Um, I spilled wine on my laptop and killed it the day before I moved to Italy. 🙂
On the way to the airport, my stepmother, who has a heart of gold and couldn’t bear the thought of me all the way in Italy without a computer to communicate with, pulled over on the way at a Best Buy, we picked one in about 5 minutes and there we were in the parking lot unwrapping it and putting it in my laptop case as fast as we could so I could catch my plane. Bless her heart.
But shame on me for thinking that my laptop was safe ON THE FLOOR (playing music) with a glass of wine beside it while I frantically packed. 🙂 ha.
Tina’s last blog post..Discreet Changes (to blog)
OK this is one of those that, in the retelling, it could be hard to grasp the severity of the tension going on when it happened…you were getting on an international flight in hours! To *move* to another country! Gaaaaaaaah!
P.S. I think of you a lot because every day on my walk I pass by the Associazione Calabrese here in Buenos Aires. 🙂 I will take a picture of it soon. 🙂
Tina’s last blog post..Discreet Changes (to blog)
Ooh how fun! Looking forward to it 🙂
I washed my husband’s iPod. It died. He was gracious and said it was his fault for not emptying his pockets, but I felt terrible. Even worse when the replacement was given to me!
Charlotte’s last blog post..Not At All Like a Husky
Oh that is truly tragic. Your husband deserves much more than a new iPod methinks! P really wasn’t even upset about this either; he took it far better than I did.
Never. Stupid things never happen to me. I have never wept over melted crayons on favorite dresses, nor shrunken cashmere Barbie sweaters nor even watched someone’s Irish crystal goblet drop from my dead hand… I believe it would look incredibly slow as it fell to a far-too-hard floor were it ever to have happened to me.
Judith in Umbria’s last blog post..Got more zucchine? Sure you do!
Oh thank goodness you’ve escaped these accidents! Especially that last one. I can feel the goblet slipping from my hands now with that “Noooooooooooo!” running through my head in slow motion. My heart is sinking, I tell you. Ugh.
This is going to be long but worth it. It isn’t my stupidity, but my husband’s.
John routinely leaves things on the roof of the car. I guess I should start to check, but I often don’t.
I drove up a main artery that runs from the airport to downtown in Ottawa last year and heard something clink. I thought nothing of it. Later at home, we couldn’t find the other set of car keys and John realized he left them on the roof of the car. I realized that it was the keys that went “clink”.
The main artery isn’t far from our house, but it is a semi-highway with an 80km speed limit. He drove up there, parked at the side of the road and started searching on the shoulder. It was about 6:00 pm so traffic had dwindled (Ottawa is a big-city with small-town traffic past 6:00 pm. All these gov’t workers like to get home in good time. Me being one of them.)
Unfortunately for John, the Mexican President was arriving for a state visit that very night and the RCMP shut down the artery for his motorcade while John was searching for the keys. Not realizing what was happening, John happily discovered the mashed keys and mashed remote entry electronic device.
He tried to explain all of this to the RCMP officer who was yelling at him to “hit the ground.” Apparently holding an electronic device in the midst of a secure area makes the RCMP a little nervous.
He hasn’t left anything on the top of the car since then.
Virtually There’s last blog post..Why I love the library
Oh my goodness Karen…wow. That is just…oh my. Yeah I would imagine that experience might leave, ahem, and impression upon your husband. Thanks so much for sharing!
Recently, I tried to transfer a portion of alder-smoked salmon from the serving plate to a dinner plate by carrying it on the side of an ordinary table knife. You know, when salmon hits the floor, it makes a definitive SPLAT noise. In years to come, my cat will remember it as the best day of her life.
flurrious’s last blog post..Gossip Girl: The Early Years
Well I guess it’s nice when our oopses can be windfalls for others. Especially if the other is furry.
Well, my most recent well-documented oops had to be the time I set off on a journey cross-country, intending to blog it the whole way and work while on the road – and I hosed my laptop on day one.
paul of crazy like whoa’s last blog post..The passionate journey
Yeah, that’d definitely qualify….
From the Italian/American not living where her heart is….
I guided 7 of my best friends through Italy for a second time. Thinking we could possibly score a few free tickets from American Airlines as we did last time, we waited before checking in….we waited too long:( The plane left without us because the Italian security had left for the day! BONEHEAD!!!
After 18 days, what’s a few more hours in Italy:)
Yeah, this definitely is an oops Giovanna–and a lesson on Italian customer service 😉
I just clicked over here from Coffee Jitters because I couldn’t help but click when I saw the name of your blog, which I adore. Look forward to peeking around.
Tricia’s last blog post..Conversations with an Infertile in a Fertile World
So happy to see you here Tricia! Hope you enjoy 🙂
I did a doozy several years ago. We had just moved to Nebraska and my son was about to enter Kindergarten. I spent weeks searching through boxes for his birth certificate and couldn’t find it. The deadline for registration was quickly approaching so I get through the red tape, pay 30.00 for another copy and i have it expressed mailed to me. So the next day i head to my mailbox on my way out, I receive the copy, am in a hurry, fold it up, shove it in my jeans pocket and off i go armed and ready for the appointment the next day. Well that night, i totally forgot, did some laundry and yes u guessed it. I washed his birth certificate!!!! Luckily, i unfolded it gently, air dryed it and the school accepted it!! Now who’s the bigger erkel??!! 🙂
Oh geez. The school was definitely cool 😉
i have tons of urkel moments but i think this one is worth sharing:
so i was on my way to watch the centerpiece movie for a film festival when at the last minute i decided to grab a bottled water from my kitchen, hoping to save money since the ticket was expensive and food in the theater is ridiculously overpriced as well.
i was walking towards the train station when all of a sudden i felt something wet trickling down from my tote bag. it turned out that i had not closed the bottled water properly and it spilled all over my bag! everything was soaked wet: wallet, journal, planner, cellphone. i wanted to cry, but i still went to the movie anyways. and because i was already running late, i was forced to take a taxi to the theater. i also had to buy another cellphone. so much for saving money.
Odessa’s last blog post..ride, ride, ride
The idea was a great one, Odessa…the execution…well…. Thanks for sharing 🙂
My four-year-old daughter somehow got ahold of a pack of gum and left it in her pants pockets. All. Over. The. Dryer. Dear God, it was awful.
Nice to meet you!!
Michelle Willingham’s last blog post..Berry Picking in the Summertime
Gah! And I thought gum in hair was bad! A pleasure to meet you as well Michelle 🙂
Not too long ago, I was putting the groceries in my car after shopping. I had buckled my kids in, closed the door and didn’t realize that I had locked the door. The kids and my purse and my groceries were locked in the car! Police had to come help me get it open… eeks!
Feel better now? 🙂
Kristen’s last blog post..Congrats to Stephanie!
Oh no Kristen! Doesn’t make me feel better at all, but thanks for sharing…and thank goodness everything turned out OK 🙂
In answer to the above my BF and I have paper id cards like yours. They do not yet have the technology…sorry I mean the necessary machines to produce the plastic ones. (I imagine your village is the same.) Here in Rome and the other bigger places they are doing the plastic ones, however to tell you the truth when I got mine I was *hoping* it would be an old school paper one. So much more authentic!
Leanne’s last blog post..Homeless? Maybe not.
Yeah I kinda like the paper ones too. So old school…so Italian 🙂
Oh, boy! Where do I begin? There have been so many! When I was in my first year of law school, I lived in the school dorm. It was a beautiful former luxury hotel from the 1920’s that had been converted, so everything in it was, shall we say, “antique”, including the fixtures and door hardware.
The lock on my bathroom door had been broken for some time and I was waiting for maintenance to come and fix it. You could lock the door, but it would jam and then you couldn’t reopen it. I knew this and my roomate and I were very careful never to lock that door.
One night, my roomate took off for a marathon study group session and I cranked up the stereo, ran a bubble bath, stripped and went into the bathroom to take a bath. Just as I thoughtlessly locked and kicked the door closed behind me, I realized that I’d forgotten my robe and towel. When I went to get it, guess what? I was locked in the bathroom (on the 3rd floor)!!! I had no roomate, no phone and no way out! The stereo was blasting, so no one could hear me call for help. I started screaming out the tiny bathroom window and pounding on the wall to try to get someone’s attention. Boy, did I ever!
One of my neighbors heard the screaming and pounding, and called to me, but I couldn’t hear because of the loud music. She panicked and called 911. Then, she grabbed some guys from the library and took them to my room. By that time the police and fire department had arrived and they broke down my dorm room door. They had to completely remove the door knob to get me out. Meanwhile, I had no robe and no bath towel. I had to wrap the shower curtain around me!
When I was finally “sprung” from the bathroom, I walked out into the bedroom and there were cops, firemen and half the dorm population standing there gawking! I swear, there were at least 50 people in there. The next day EVERYBODY at school knew about it. I was never so mortified in my life, before or since!!! :O
I moved into my own nice, new apartment a few weeks later.
Susan at Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy’s last blog post..Roasted Peach Ice Cream
OK you readers just keep topping one another. I’m thinking I should’ve made this a contest…
Susan, how *mortifying*! Law school is already so gossip-driven…can’t even imagine how long you were the talk of the tort table 😉
Sorry, I meant roommate!
Susan at Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy’s last blog post..Potato Fritters for Sher
Noted! I never remember how to spell that either.
Seems like I’m a member if a very large card…..2 phones, expensive shoes, books, money – I have washed it all, including important documents….I have also stored things in the freezer that should never have been there….and these things have always taken place when I have been rushing around ‘doing’ and not thinking!!!!
Well “doing” is usually a good thing 😉
I’m sure I’ve done quite a few but a recent one I remember is pouring the wet, rinsed rice into the rice cooker without the inner bowl inside. Oops . . . right on to the heating element and into the insides. Thank goodness the bottom unscrews and all could be shaken out but it was a mess.
My husband has lost two mobiles to water. One bending over and dropping into a bucket at work; the other inside his pocket and into the machine. Fortunately, I didn’t do that load. Whew!
collette~all over the map’s last blog post..Free Samples of Lovely Images from Dover Publishing
You know I’m realizing that they really should make waterproof mobile phones….
Thanks for sharing your moments Collette 🙂