Usually when I do something “dumb” it’s actually just a minor inconvenience. For example, I have inadvertently thrown a fork in the garbage or covered the cat food scoop with cat food when filling containers. Just minor inconveniences, nothing that really amounts to much. I can’t even recall the last time I did something so dumb that it caused a real problem.

Last night, however, will be remembered and called upon every time I laugh about someone else’s “dumb” episode. Let me explain…

Yesterday, I was making lunch. That’s usually a struggle but I had made homemade spaghetti sauce the week before, and cooking the Italian sausage and pasta was simple enough. I made myself a fiber drink (generic Metamucil, yuck) mixed with orange Tang. I make this drink in a blender bottle that has a stainless steel mixer ball in it. It mixes really well with that ball! The water wasn’t very cold so I sat it in the refrigerator to chill while I was waiting for the pasta. When everything was done and ready to eat, I sat down and forgot about my fiber drink. When I did remember I was too full to drink it.

Last night, I was getting a yogurt snack from the refrigerator and saw that fiber drink. I took a drink and it was way too thick to even think about drinking. So, I thought I’d just dump it. Well, knowing that it doesn’t take much for the kitchen sink to get clogged, I figured I’d just flush it down the toilet.

Flushing the drink turned from a good idea to dumbass mistake because as I poured the drink in the toilet I heard a clank, but it didn’t register in my brain until after I hit the knob that the little stainless steel ball was still in the bottle! “Oh crap!” I gasped in utter disbelief. I quickly stuck my hand down as far as I could to see if I could grab that ball, but it was gone!

After a good hand, wrist, and forearm scrubbing, I told Dad, “You’re going to kick my ass!” He asked me what the hell I did because he heard me bitching in the bathroom about how stupid I am. I explained my intentions and what had happened. In my defense, the toilet was still flushing correctly so I thought I had escaped being really, really stupid. No such luck! After a few flushes, the toilet started to back up. Oh no!

So, this morning Dad got out the snake to see if he could knock that little ball loose. He couldn’t. He soon realized that he was going to have to remove the toilet and unclog it that way because the ball was most likely hung up in the little turn in the toilet bowl itself before it gets to the pipes. He can’t do that by himself and I’m about as much help as tits on a doorknob these days, so I called my son.

My dear son came over, tried the snake again just in case and lo and behold he knocked that ball loose!! Thank goodness! We all chuckled a bit over this “dumb stunt that mom pulled” and I threw a pizza in the oven to feed my boys.

Dad did tell me that it was a good idea to flush the drink and that my intentions were good. It just didn’t turn out as expected! He said, “You know what they say… SHIT HAPPENS!”

Boy, it sure does!