Don't eat the meatballs! AKA: Stupid stuff you've done.

[Rohanna]

Or in my case, 'Nyquil, the coughing, sneezing, aching, keep me up all night' medicine.

I have the opposite reaction to the  drug that puts you to sleep.  Nyquil gives me horrendous insomnia.  So does Tylenol (acetominophen).  I'm up the creek if I ever need major painkillers because most of the heavy duty ones have acetominophen in the formulation.

I also can't take Nyquil. It gives me the jitters & keeps me up all night. Nice to see I'm not the only one.

Sleeping tablets or sedatives make me completely hysterical too. Which makes it hard if I have to have an unleasant medical procedure...

It's probably the diphenhydromine. It makes me crazy restless. Some nurses looked at like me like I was nuts, but now it seems to be an acceptable sensitivity. I always put it on my list of allergies but they still recommended it last time I left the hospital. (Doxolomine does work - it's in one of the Unisom varieties. Read the label!)

As a side note, if you ever need prescription painkillers: oxycoCET/percoCET etc means it contains tylenol. PercoDAN is the same active ingredient, mixed with asprin instead. So you can use narcotics you just need to ask to have the right formulation prescribed There are some new varieties that use ibuprofin as well

[Pinky830]

Or in my case, 'Nyquil, the coughing, sneezing, aching, keep me up all night' medicine.

I have the opposite reaction to the  drug that puts you to sleep.  Nyquil gives me horrendous insomnia.  So does Tylenol (acetominophen).  I'm up the creek if I ever need major painkillers because most of the heavy duty ones have acetominophen in the formulation.

I also can't take Nyquil. It gives me the jitters & keeps me up all night. Nice to see I'm not the only one.

Sleeping tablets or sedatives make me completely hysterical too. Which makes it hard if I have to have an unleasant medical procedure...

It's probably the diphenhydromine. It makes me crazy restless. Some nurses looked at like me like I was nuts, but now it seems to be an acceptable sensitivity. I always put it on my list of allergies but they still recommended it last time I left the hospital. (Doxolomine does work - it's in one of the Unisom varieties. Read the label!)

As a side note, if you ever need prescription painkillers: oxycoCET/percoCET etc means it contains tylenol. PercoDAN is the same active ingredient, mixed with asprin instead. So you can use narcotics you just need to ask to have the right formulation prescribed There are some new varieties that use ibuprofin as well

That's really good to know. I am sensitive to the salicylates in aspirin. If I take anything with aspirin in it, I feel faint for 30-45 minutes.

[artk2002]

Not something I did, but something dumb that happened about 60 years ago.

In the Special Snowflake thread I mentioned that I knew the story of an airplane wing that went missing for 40 years. Here's what I know:

In the 1980s I was working for a division of Lockheed in Burbank, CA. What is now Bob Hope Airport was originally the Lockheed airfield and there were still many old buildings left over from WW II. A number of military aircraft were built in those facilities, including the P-38 Lightning. Lockheed finally sold the land and buildings to the surrounding communities and they began to tear down the buildings so that they could expand the airport.

Behind a wall in one of the factory buildings they found the wing of a P-38! A colleague whose father had worked for Lockheed during WWII told me that at the height of wartime production a P-38 wing had gone missing. This, of course, triggered a massive security search up and down the west coast -- the fear was that spies had somehow managed to steal the wing. But there it was, behind the wall all the time.

The speculation is that a work crew was ordered to build a wall there, for some reason. The wing was sitting there and they just built the wall in front of it. Wartime turnover being what it was, the crew that built the wall could have been called up for duty the next day, so they wouldn't be around for the search. I can just imagine the crew going to the boss saying "there's a wing there, what should we do?" and the boss responding "just build the g** d**** wall!"

As an aside, my colleague was walking down the corridor of one of the old office buildings before they tore it down. He stopped and looked at one of those glass cases where they post notices and such. There was a memo signed by his father, 40 years earlier, still posted!

A second aside: While taking down another building they found the wing spar from a Lockheed Electra.  It was being used as part of a crane in one of the factory buildings.

[2littlemonkeys]

Oh lord, that reminded me...

Women! If you're in the woods at night and need to go to the loo, take a torch and watch out for nettles. Eeeek.

 

and poison ivy.   

ETA: and I just realized I'm not the only one who has had this experience.   

[Outdoor Girl]

My friend and I were going camping for the weekend.  We arrived pretty close to dark so I set her up to make dinner while I pitched the tent.

The next morning, while we were exploring the campground, we discovered that it had a lot of poison ivy around.  So we were taking all sorts of pictures of the different poison ivys they had there because my friend's boyfriend had gotten into some while climbing and had such a bad case of it that he had to get steroids to get rid of it.  We were trying to help him out  and then arriving back at our campsite, I discovered that I'd pitched the back of the tent in patch of it!

Fortunately, I'm (so far) immune but it meant that I had to pack the tent up pretty much on my own.

[jedikaiti]

Not something I did, but something dumb that happened about 60 years ago.

In the Special Snowflake thread I mentioned that I knew the story of an airplane wing that went missing for 40 years.

Thanks for posting that!

That is funny, and I can totally see that happening, too.

Any chance your colleague managed to get & keep that memo his Dad had signed? That would be really neat to have.

[crankycat]

Note to self: You know better than to leave the lid only partially closed on jars.  Of course, the time you slack on this basic knowledge is the day you drop the mayo jar on its way back into the fridge.  (Good thing it was a plastic jar.)

Currently trying to figure out how to get mayo off the ceiling, since I am not tall enough to reach it while standing on a chair.

[Luci45]

Note to self: You know better than to leave the lid only partially closed on jars.  Of course, the time you slack on this basic knowledge is the day you drop the mayo jar on its way back into the fridge.  (Good thing it was a plastic jar.)

Currently trying to figure out how to get mayo off the ceiling, since I am not tall enough to reach it while standing on a chair.

Not recommended: using a Swiffer duster soaked with cleanser, which results in the mayo being cleaned off but a clean spot on the ceiling, which will result in having to clean the entire ceiling and having horrid streaks which means paint the ceiling. I do know, however, that if I use latex paint and mask and drape the cabinets well and diligently scrub other drips, I do not have to paint the entire kitchen. (My scenario was tomato sauce, by the way.)

Recommended: Just leave it. It will dry and just be another spot.

[guihong]

Note to self: You know better than to leave the lid only partially closed on jars.  Of course, the time you slack on this basic knowledge is the day you drop the mayo jar on its way back into the fridge.  (Good thing it was a plastic jar.)

Currently trying to figure out how to get mayo off the ceiling, since I am not tall enough to reach it while standing on a chair.

Rubber band a big wet rag to the end of a broom handle, and try wiping that way?  You'll get drips, but those are reachable.  (says me, who dropped a two-liter of Orange Crush  )

[JennJenn68]

Not something stupid I've done at the moment (although there have been plenty of those!) but something stupid my husband did about thirteen years ago.  The "mayonnaise on the ceiling" just brought it all back. 

Just after our son was born, I was suffering from serious PPD, and my gem of a husband stepped up to the plate and offered to make his speciality, Spanish Rice-A-Roni.  (Hey, at the time, anyone besides me cooking was a wonderful thing!)  His version involved a can of tomatoes.  I was in the kitchen marching around trying to get the baby to calm down.  (Baby only was calm when whoever was holding him was on the move.  Exhausting.  He's an only child, needless to say...)  DH was working fast, trying to get everything assembled and into the microwave because he could sense that I was just about at my limit and he wanted to take over.  (Sweet guy!)  He opened the can of tomatoes at breakneck speed, grabbed the can and... dropped it.  It landed bottom down on the floor, and the contents rose straight upward and covered a two-foot area of our ceiling, which is as high as most ceilings are.  I have to admit, it was particularly impressive-looking, this geyser of canned tomatoes going SPLAT! above his head...

Keep in mind that I had PPD.  He was terrified that I was going to lose it completely.  I do remember thinking for one second, "Dear God, how should I react to this?"  And then... I burst out laughing.  There was a hysterical tinge to it, I must admit, but I laughed, and I hadn't done that at all since the baby was born. 

I never was able to get the tomato stains out of the ceiling until Mr. Clean came out with the Magic Eraser.  Thank you, Mr. Clean!

(I'll 'fess up about my own stupid stuff if I can ever think of a sufficiently entertaining way of phrasing it...)

[mechtilde]

Poison ivy- well we don't have it in England. At the age of 16 I went to a Girl Scout camp in the US and walked right through a big patch of it. I had absolutely no idea what it was!

Amazing luck- I wasn't allergic to it! The evil New Hampshire mosquitoes were another story though...

[Elfmama]

Poison ivy- well we don't have it in England. At the age of 16 I went to a Girl Scout camp in the US and walked right through a big patch of it. I had absolutely no idea what it was!

Amazing luck- I wasn't allergic to it! The evil New Hampshire mosquitoes were another story though...

  How to ID poison ivy should have been one of the very first things the US GS  leaders taught you.

I did just that at a quilter's retreat in Tennessee.  I noted a patch of it in a flower bed, asked if everybody knew how to ID it, and gave a lesson on it then and there.  LOTS of poison ivy in the area, but no one came down with it!

[crankycat]

Note to self: You know better than to leave the lid only partially closed on jars.  Of course, the time you slack on this basic knowledge is the day you drop the mayo jar on its way back into the fridge.  (Good thing it was a plastic jar.)

Currently trying to figure out how to get mayo off the ceiling, since I am not tall enough to reach it while standing on a chair.

Rubber band a big wet rag to the end of a broom handle, and try wiping that way?  You'll get drips, but those are reachable.  (says me, who dropped a two-liter of Orange Crush  )

This is actually pretty close to my solution.  I stood on a chair (and occasionally the counter) and used the dusting wand draped with a wet towel with dish soap to wipe it off.  Fortunately, my kitchen ceiling is covered in a textured, off-white wallpaper, so for now it seems to be clean.

[jedikaiti]

Poison ivy- well we don't have it in England. At the age of 16 I went to a Girl Scout camp in the US and walked right through a big patch of it. I had absolutely no idea what it was!

Amazing luck- I wasn't allergic to it! The evil New Hampshire mosquitoes were another story though...

  How to ID poison ivy should have been one of the very first things the US GS  leaders taught you.

I did just that at a quilter's retreat in Tennessee.  I noted a patch of it in a flower bed, asked if everybody knew how to ID it, and gave a lesson on it then and there.  LOTS of poison ivy in the area, but no one came down with it!

This reminds me of a Mythbuster's episode where they were testing Vodka as a cure for poison oak. Kari couldn't be a subject, as she was known to have had a Very Bad Reaction to it as a child, so they tried it on Grant and Tory. And Adam and Jamie. And on interns and any other crew member who was willing to be a guinea pig, before they finally found One Person who developed a rash. Nobody else had any reaction whatsoever.

[Thipu1]

Poison ivy- well we don't have it in England. At the age of 16 I went to a Girl Scout camp in the US and walked right through a big patch of it. I had absolutely no idea what it was!

Amazing luck- I wasn't allergic to it! The evil New Hampshire mosquitoes were another story though...

Poison ivy is something a bit strange.  Repeated exposure will heighten the reaction.  On your first encounter you were probably safe.

However, the counselors should have told campers about the hazard.