Does every woman have a bit of Lucille Ball in her?

My cousin prompted the I Love Lucy question. 

Why? I just confessed to yet another oops incident much like the knife in the floor incident—flung there quite accidentally but sticking as well as a professional knife thrower, much to my amusement and much to my husband’s dismay—or I’m the Queen of Cooking by Smoke Detector. 

Alex, kindly, does not call me destructive, but he does say I’m rather hard on things. This includes myself—I am what I am–a Klutz of the first magnitude.

Most of the time, I know it’s because I multi-task to the extreme. I’ve been known to walk around the house dusting while brushing my teeth. Why stand still at the sink when I can get some housework done? It’s not as if I’ve ever discovered toothpaste flung onto the antique radio in the living room.

Accidents Happen to Me and Lucy

But this last event? I was cautiously, calmly, doing one thing: closing the floor-to-ceiling, bi-fold, coat closet door. For no obvious reason (meaning I didn’t do it!), the door fell off the track. Oh, Lucy!

Big deal, you think. Track doors frequently come un-hinged, so to speak. Easy enough to fix. I’ve knocked my office door and the laundry room door both of their tracks and popped them back on in no time.

Not this door. How do I know it won’t be so easy? It happened a few months ago when Alex was away on business. 

Getting home, he saw it leaning against the couch. My husband never asked. He simply set about fixing it. It took quite some time to make the door stable. Bless his heart, Alex is the epitome of patience with inanimate objects—the opposite of me in that regard. Never a curse word, a throwing of tools, or a glaring black look tossed my direction. He shares this traits with my dad.  Fixing things without throwing Rose-like fits and the constant demand, Why isn’t this working the way it’s supposed to?

The first time the door came undone, I probably was going too fast when I opened/shut it. I was, no doubt, in a hurry to get onto the next thing—putting away coats being a time-consuming piddly thing to do.

But, I do learn from (most of) my mistakes and that one was such a doozy that I’ve been careful with the blasted door ever since.

Off the door comes this time as I gently push it shut and I finally understood the phrase: Frozen in place.

There I stood for the better of five minutes, saying to the world at large: I cannot believe this happened. Unreal. How did this possibly occur? If I tell Alex, he’s going to kill me. Yep, no way am I telling Alex. 

I so Love Lucy

This is where Lucille Ball comes into play. Have you ever seen the episode Lucy Tells the Truth? Er, it was something like that.

It’s a weighty door, but I tried my best to fix it. Even as I tilted it on it’s side and carried it to the living room to “hide” it behind the couch, I muttered: What am I going to do? There’s no way I’m telling Alex. One of these days when he leaves on a trip, his paranoia of me burning the house down is finally going to kick in. I can’t believe this happened. Unreal.

I think I was in shock.

Now, if you think I’m overreacting, you’re not quite understanding everything I put this man through on a frequent basis. There’s a lot of, Eh, honey, the _________ stopped working….

What’s a girl do when she’s panicking? She calls her girlfriends, easily plying them with red wine and chocolate, arranged a time to come over and help fix the door—or me help them was more like it. Together we turned out to be pretty handy with tools. One in charge of engineering the reinstallation, one handling weight distribution while I stood on a chair and held the top in place.

This worked and in short order, we had successfully completed our task and were off to enjoy our wine and Belgium chocolates (Neuhaus and Leonidas—best chocolate I’ve ever had).

Then, it was morning.

Then, the new problem became readily apparent.

Somehow while standing on the chair to hold the door in place, my butt hit the thermostat and kicked on some ancient program residing in its memory and I awakened to a February house at a brisk 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

OMG and Seriously? Are you kidding?

It took me two days—one more chilly wake up call—to figure out how to fix it. I tried to track down the instructions, but were they in my neurotically kept Household file? No, Alex has them tucked away somewhere. I had to admit to him that I needed the booklet.

The call:

A: How’s everything?
R: Oh fine. Any chance you know where the booklet is for the thermostat?
A: Why?
R: Oh, well I was dusting and somehow reset the program and it’s been a bit cold in the mornings. (Would Lucy be proud of me or what?)

Booklet found, program set, mornings back to a nice 69 degrees. Alex home, closet door fine. Confession withheld. Why trouble the poor guy with a Lucy-problem that’s been solved?

I cannot tell a lie (mostly)

It came out on its own volition a few nights later. We were enjoying a glass of red wine with our precious chocolate and one conversation led to another and there you go: I blurted it out.

What a guy. Much the way Ricky so frequently did with Lucy, Alex shook his head, eyes twinkling with the laughter. I guess in the same way Ricky liked having Lucy around for the humor of her, my mishaps are half of Alex’s plan in marrying me: There’s really never a dull moment.

PS. As life would have it, a month or so later, Alex was shutting the door and … you guessed it, the whole thing nearly collapsed on his head. We had a good chuckle and set about making it right. For good this time.

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Read: Avoiding left turns