If you were to look around your house, how many items would you find that you wish you could return to get your money back? In my house, I could probably send my first born to college. Dick Cavett once said "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it." This blog is dedicated to “buyer’s remorse”…top 5 most worthless items I have purchased or inherited.
1. Snow Cone Maker
This neat little product that now sits in my cupboard of useless crap seemed like such a good idea to keep the kids happy in the summer. All it does is crush ice, but you have to turn this handle around and around and it’s not exactly easy. Umm…doesn’t a blender crush ice with the touch of a button?
2. Treadmill
I inherited this product and used it quite religiously for about 6 months. That was 3 years ago.
3. Water Flosser
This is a machine that shoots water out of a hand held utensil and cleans in between your teeth. How is it that I thought this device would be handy? I can’t even muster up the time needed to pull a piece of string out of a box much less haul out an appliance, fill it with water, use it, dry it and put it away.
4. Chevrolet Venture Van
I bought this van thinking of the great many trips we’d take around the country. Trip number one went pretty smoothly, but trip number two to Denver, Colorado…not so much. We broke down on the way to a wedding in some godforsaken Wyoming town. We limped this piece of crap to a mechanic and to expedite the process of getting us in, I told them we were on the way to a funeral and needed to be back on the road on the double. This will also appear on a future list “top 10 things I am going to hell for”.
On the way to a dealership to trade in this vile creation, I decided to clean ‘er up a little and wouldn’t you know as a last moment of spite the window cracked in 3 places…I mean, the irony was palpable. You could SEE the dealership from the carwash.
5. Wii Fit
I had the best intentions when purchasing Wii Fit. It’s a video game…has to be fun…right? The first time you “log on” you take this fitness test and it gives you your Wii Fit age. Mine was 47. I’m 31. Then the next time you log on, it makes you explain a. why you were too lazy to work out for 3 days and b. why you’re fatter now than you were the first time you logged on. And if you make the mistake of letting your child stand on the Fit Board under your profile it alerts the authorities that there has been a “massive weight change”. Thanks, Nintendo, but I already feel bad about myself.
There really should be an application and approval process for me to make a purchase. And it would also be helpful if companies stopped making home fragrance devices. Those damn scents in charming warmers!!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Rant….On Fear
I didn't get much sleep last night becuase I woke up roasting and had to sleep on top of the bedding. With no covers to protect me, I pictured ghosts staring me down all night and monsters creeping out of my closet. It reminded me of this story below I wrote as a request a few months ago. Shouldn't my biorhythms be in the upswing by now? I've never been so uncreative and tired in my life!
Fear:
noun
a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
Miniscule:
adj.
Very small; tiny.
I read that humans are born with three basic innate fears: sudden motion, loud or abrupt noises and sudden approach. It makes me wonder, if I came into the world with only those limited fears, how I still can’t sleep with the closet door open at night. Or how I can’t look in the bathroom mirror unless the light is on. Or how I’m convinced a threadbare sheet of Egyptian cotton will protect me from ghosts. At what point in our adolescence do we learn these new (and imagined) fears? My friends, I believe it to be the major motion picture. And my theory, though I can only speculate, before the major motion picture it was the viral ghost stories of yesteryear passed along and mutated like that game “telephone”. For example, had I not seen “Jaws” would I still be terrified of water even in a 3 foot kiddie pool? Or had I not seen “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, would I still be convinced I’ll be probed by aliens and lose 3 hours of time while traveling alone at night on a desolate stretch of road at some point in my life?
These are all thoughts to ponder, but really all this leads to a true and rather hilarious story about spiders. Now, the stats all say that your chances of dying of a spider bite are miniscule (see above). Yet, with the threat of bodily harm so low and even lower the chances of death, why are over 50% of humans scared of spiders? We all remember the movie “Arachnophobia”, which to this day when my husband sees a spider crawling around aimlessly in the tub it causes a brain bleed, but they have been making movies about these terrifying (regardless of size) creatures as far back as the 50’s including “Tarantula” which was released in 1955 and my hubby’s next Christmas present. Now, my husband is about as terrified of any species of spider as your typical 11 year old girl. Why he even told me this story, knowing I would tease him for years to come, is beyond me but I thank him nonetheless. Here is the email I received today and we’ll discuss more afterwards:
Subject: have to leave work now......
Just killed this damn thing on the wall NEXT TO MY DESK!!!It's called a Redback Jumping spider (the jumping part makes the ebee jeebies ten-fold)......creepy little b*st*rd!!
The maintenance guy just came in - they found a black widow in the window sill outside OUR OFFICE!!!!!AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (running, screaming from the building).
I'm itchy...............................
Well naturally I had to call his office to chastise him and found that he couldn’t have killed this spider in a girlier fashion. Apparently, he threw a shoe at it from across the room and no one is brave enough to even touch the shrapnel. A chastise worthy act, in my opinion. But, then it dawned on me, I have answered my own question! Twenty percent of men suffer from arachnophobia. I believe this is just God’s gift to their much braver wives. And the thirty percent of women with the fear…well….they’re just sissies. Ladies, let’s man up and confront a fear. Tonight I think I’ll dangle an arm off the side of the bed without fear of under-the-bed monsters biting it off. Go forth with courage and honor my sisters.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
More Story Time
I haven’t been writing much because I’ve been pretty sick. But today it’s story time again…and in honor of the digestive issues going on in this house…
Once upon a time a lovely lady birthed two children with the weakest stomachs and worst gag reflexes you’ve ever met. Yes, my little brother and I. We gag, we throw up, we can’t keep our stomach contents to ourselves. We have this extraordinary sense of smell and we randomly throw up in the oddest places.
When we were kids there was this ice cream parlor our parents used to take us to. We ordered the largest milkshakes allowed and sucked them down like we had been starved for 4 days. We weren’t feeling so hot so we put our heads down on the booth seat and could eyeball each other under the table. We could see we were each getting a green hue about us and without warning we yacked like the pie eating contest scene in Stand By Me. There was a sea of strawberry and chocolate merging and swirling under our table like those meteorological pictures of hurricanes you see on the weather channel. My parents took one look at each other and all I remember is my dad saying “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As you now know, I grew up on a farm and for some reason we had a grain truck full of rotten grain we had to empty. I imagine the smell of rotten grain must be similar to a decomposing corpse. It's awful. We shoveled one and puked two until it was empty. My little brother must have only owned one pair of boots because he had to wear them to school the next day and they had to open the classroom windows and everyone sat around trying to figure out who stunk the whole day.
People don’t understand why my brother and I can’t eat ham. My parents ordered half a pig once and decided to butcher it on the kitchen table. Being the diabolically weird children we were, we sat under the table while they did it and all I can remember is blood pouring off the table and pooling on the floor. I can’t even look at meat contained in that white paper without getting a little queasy.
My daughter requested I tell about the time my brother was hungover and he came down for breakfast and I asked if he wanted some half-cooked bacon, buttery buttermilk buckwheat pancakes and some slightly undercooked runny eggs and he bolted for the toilet without a word. Good times. Wonder why he moved away? Hmmm…
I could tell you a hundred stories just like these, but my ultimate favorite story is the time I took my brother shopping at the grocery store. We were in the meat department and I saw this cow tongue that was so huge it was sort of folded in half. I picked it up and made it talk to brother like a puppet saying things like “eat me” and “feel my taste buds” and other such nonsense. I’ve never seen anyone run so fast in a supermarket before. He’s too easy.
I called my brother last night and he was at the gym. He tells me he had to switch gyms to one even further from his house because the other one “smelled bad”. I don’t really know that a gym can smell good, but whatever dude.
We’re both blind as bats. Too bad we couldn’t transfer some of our sense of smell over to our visual sense. Actually, my brother probably just threw up reading this. Brother, may I offer you some Jose Cuervo?
Once upon a time a lovely lady birthed two children with the weakest stomachs and worst gag reflexes you’ve ever met. Yes, my little brother and I. We gag, we throw up, we can’t keep our stomach contents to ourselves. We have this extraordinary sense of smell and we randomly throw up in the oddest places.
When we were kids there was this ice cream parlor our parents used to take us to. We ordered the largest milkshakes allowed and sucked them down like we had been starved for 4 days. We weren’t feeling so hot so we put our heads down on the booth seat and could eyeball each other under the table. We could see we were each getting a green hue about us and without warning we yacked like the pie eating contest scene in Stand By Me. There was a sea of strawberry and chocolate merging and swirling under our table like those meteorological pictures of hurricanes you see on the weather channel. My parents took one look at each other and all I remember is my dad saying “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As you now know, I grew up on a farm and for some reason we had a grain truck full of rotten grain we had to empty. I imagine the smell of rotten grain must be similar to a decomposing corpse. It's awful. We shoveled one and puked two until it was empty. My little brother must have only owned one pair of boots because he had to wear them to school the next day and they had to open the classroom windows and everyone sat around trying to figure out who stunk the whole day.
People don’t understand why my brother and I can’t eat ham. My parents ordered half a pig once and decided to butcher it on the kitchen table. Being the diabolically weird children we were, we sat under the table while they did it and all I can remember is blood pouring off the table and pooling on the floor. I can’t even look at meat contained in that white paper without getting a little queasy.
My daughter requested I tell about the time my brother was hungover and he came down for breakfast and I asked if he wanted some half-cooked bacon, buttery buttermilk buckwheat pancakes and some slightly undercooked runny eggs and he bolted for the toilet without a word. Good times. Wonder why he moved away? Hmmm…
I could tell you a hundred stories just like these, but my ultimate favorite story is the time I took my brother shopping at the grocery store. We were in the meat department and I saw this cow tongue that was so huge it was sort of folded in half. I picked it up and made it talk to brother like a puppet saying things like “eat me” and “feel my taste buds” and other such nonsense. I’ve never seen anyone run so fast in a supermarket before. He’s too easy.
I called my brother last night and he was at the gym. He tells me he had to switch gyms to one even further from his house because the other one “smelled bad”. I don’t really know that a gym can smell good, but whatever dude.
We’re both blind as bats. Too bad we couldn’t transfer some of our sense of smell over to our visual sense. Actually, my brother probably just threw up reading this. Brother, may I offer you some Jose Cuervo?
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