Armchair Anonymous: DIY Disaster

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. Today, our DIY project's gone wrong.

Speaker 2 Let's do it yourself.

Speaker 1 I always said this wrong. This is always a hard time.
It's hard to say. I always wanted to say DYI.
Sure. I famously said that in front of somebody and they corrected me and I got humiliated.

Speaker 1 humiliated. Oh, no, who?

Speaker 2 Martha Stewart.

Speaker 1 I wish. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to be humiliated by her.

Speaker 1 I'd be a sub.

Speaker 2 Baby girl.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd be her baby girl.

Speaker 1 I think everyone would.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Let's see.
There's maggots in. I think I gotta warn.
I gotta warn.

Speaker 1 No, I think I gotta tell people what other things are here. Blood.
Blood. Yeah, blood and maggots.

Speaker 1 Please enjoy do-it-yourself. Projects gone wrong.

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Speaker 1 Hard times, come and go.

Speaker 1 Good times, take them slow.

Speaker 1 My life,

Speaker 1 I had them both.

Speaker 1 Remember, one thing,

Speaker 1 you gotta know, I'ma keep on shining.

Speaker 2 Hello.

Speaker 3 Hi. How are you too?

Speaker 1 Wonderful. What a bright smile.
Did you just get your teeth zoomed?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 You'll never believe this, but I used Armin Hammer. I use the baking soda toothpaste.

Speaker 2 Of course you do.

Speaker 3 It's the only one that works.

Speaker 2 It really is. And your teeth are sparkling white.

Speaker 1 Thank you. That's so nice.

Speaker 2 I feel so validated.

Speaker 1 This has turned into a real commercial for the product.

Speaker 2 I mean, you asked.

Speaker 1 Okay, so, Christina, where are you at?

Speaker 3 Right now I'm in Phoenix, but I I live in Salt Lake City normally.

Speaker 1 Okay, are you there on business?

Speaker 3 My boyfriend runs a local grocery store in Salt Lake. There are a bunch of food shows all over the country, which if we have time, I have an Aaron Weekly story to tell about a food show.

Speaker 1 Oh, did you meet him?

Speaker 3 Yes, I met him at the Chicago food show for Ted Seeger's, and I really embarrassed myself.

Speaker 1 Please tell me.

Speaker 2 I know about that. Let's hear.

Speaker 1 Was he so cute in person?

Speaker 3 He was so cute.

Speaker 3 We walked up, and my boyfriend obviously knows how much i love the podcast i was so excited to meet him we have the same birthday j2c yeah so we walk up and my sister is an actress and so i don't want to ever be starstruck it's a very strong belief that i have so i was trying to play cool and i forgot how to speak english i turned bright red

Speaker 3 And my boyfriend was trying to be really sweet and was like, oh my gosh, Christina is a huge fan of Armchair Expert.

Speaker 3 And then I got embarrassed and mad at him. Like, I'm an armchairy.

Speaker 1 I am not a fan.

Speaker 2 There is a distinguishable difference.

Speaker 3 I walked away and was like, well, I hope I never get the opportunity to meet Daxi Monica. Based on that, I hope that I can actually speak.
So this is already going better.

Speaker 1 I couldn't be happier that Aaron got that kind of reaction. I love it.
This is a perfect story. I guarantee he'll remember because J2C is so rare and coveted.

Speaker 3 I didn't even get to tell him.

Speaker 1 You didn't? That would have fast-tracked you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I couldn't get it out sadly.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you have a VIY story that went poorly.

Speaker 3 I do. This story takes place in the fall of 2013, kind of around Halloween when I was in college.
I went to a small liberal arts college in Salt Lake.

Speaker 3 My roommates and I lived in this super charming 1900s house off campus. It had these beautiful original hardwood floors.
It was just full of vintage charm.

Speaker 3 and we had no business living there but i was a sophomore in college and at my school i think because there's this big religious influence in salt lake i found that there's a really strong counterculture to that and my college really leaned into that counterculture we embraced every opportunity to run wild

Speaker 3 oh god i wish i went there it was very fun but at my school halloween wasn't just a fun holiday it was the event of the year There was an annual campus Halloween party, and it was obviously one of the most important nights of the year.

Speaker 1 It had political ramifications.

Speaker 3 Yes, it was the night that you would probably hook up with someone that you wouldn't normally run into.

Speaker 3 You have some kind of life-altering conversation that you wouldn't remember, make some kind of decision that would haunt you.

Speaker 3 It ended up being such a mess at the school that they eventually had to shut it down. So it doesn't exist anymore.
But when I was there, it was like the pinnacle of college life.

Speaker 2 You were there at the right time.

Speaker 3 Since we were broke college students, my roommate and I decided that we couldn't justify spending money on Halloween costumes.

Speaker 3 We had to DIY it, but we still obviously wanted to look perfect for this night. At this time, we were also deep in a hippie phase.

Speaker 3 We were vegans and we loved patchouli and environmentalism and not showering to save water, all of that.

Speaker 1 Were you into jam bands?

Speaker 3 Oh, so into jam bands. Naturally, we decided to kind of go along with that, that we were going to go as Mother Nature to this costume party for our DIY costumes.

Speaker 3 We thought it was sexy and organic and effortless. So our plan was to just buy a huge piece of brown fabric and hot glue real leaves straight from our front yard onto the fabric.

Speaker 3 and then kind of wrap ourselves in it like a toga. And we thought it was cute and cheap and sustainable.
The day of the party, we went into our lawn.

Speaker 3 We just scooped up huge armfuls of these kind of damp leaves that had been outside for a while. We sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor of our living room, just surrounded by piles of leaves.

Speaker 3 And with the hot glue gun, we ended up gluing onto the fabric one by one these leaves. And it took basically the whole day.
The hot glue gun strings are like floating all around us.

Speaker 3 We're burning our fingers, but it was Halloween and it was important. Finally, we finished right before the party was about to start.

Speaker 3 So we reached down to pick up the fabric to kind of wrap ourselves in it.

Speaker 3 And we realized that the hot glue had bonded the fabric and all of the leaves directly to this original, beautiful, pristine 1900s hardwood floor.

Speaker 1 It just leaked right through that, a sustainable fabric.

Speaker 3 It wasn't even just stuff. It was like completely fused.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. And glue loves wood, all those nooks and crannies.

Speaker 3 Whenever we would lift at the corners, it felt like we were pulling the hardwood floor up with the fabric. We couldn't do it.

Speaker 3 And obviously, this party was about to start and our costumes glued to the floor. So in true 19 year old fashion, fuck it, we'll deal with this tomorrow.

Speaker 3 So we wore like flannels and suspenders and were lumberjacks.

Speaker 1 There was something stupid.

Speaker 3 No one knew what we were, but we didn't really care.

Speaker 2 I don't think they would have really understood mother nature also, to be fair.

Speaker 1 But they would have noticed it was great. Because a lot of times you're like, I don't know what the fuck that is, but boy, did it take them a while.
And I applaud that.

Speaker 3 I would love that reaction. And that was not what we got, but it ended up being a fun night, I think.
The next day was Sunday, and we were very, very hungover.

Speaker 3 And when we walked into the living room, we were like, we do not have the capacity to deal with these piles of leaves and this fused fabric.

Speaker 3 The day passed, and all of a sudden, we were like back in the weekly routine.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Okay.
So you just really keep kicking it down the road.

Speaker 2 I can see this.

Speaker 3 So we just leave it for some reason. And it turns out that the leaves that we collected that were sitting in our living room, they weren't just leaves.

Speaker 3 They were damp and decomposing and they were filled with lots of tiny, rapidly reproducing maggots. Stop! No!

Speaker 1 I was thinking snails, but maggots. That's a bit worse.
Oh,

Speaker 1 boy.

Speaker 2 God, ew.

Speaker 1 You basically made like a habitat in your living room for maggots.

Speaker 3 We kind of started to notice little wriggling things near the edges of the piles.

Speaker 3 And then ours were like, huh, that's kind of strange, and just kind of left it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, wow.

Speaker 3 It got worse.

Speaker 2 Rapidly reproducing is the worst phrase to hear before maggots.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so we had a full-blown infestation. They were in the kitchen, in the couch, but we had been so in our groove

Speaker 3 and we were never really at home in college. Finally, driven by sheer horror, we had to scrape up the glued fabric and the leaves leaves and all of the insects.

Speaker 3 And by the time we were done, this beautiful hardwood floor was just completely scratched beyond recognition.

Speaker 1 Yeah, imagine all that dampness also could have warped everything. I mean, you really did everything bad you could do to a hardwood floor.
Moisture, glue, dirt, maggots.

Speaker 1 It was a real fuck you to that floor, really.

Speaker 3 It was never the same. Through the rest of the time I lived there, we would like put a keg on top of that section.
Like, well, it's already fucked. It can't get any any worse.

Speaker 1 Was there a penalty at the end of all this? Did anyone get a bill?

Speaker 3 Oh, I'm sure we did. We lived in this house for four years.
So, the number of things that happened in this house, you're not getting your deposit back.

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 1 Kiss that right goodbye.

Speaker 2 Oh, I just hate a maggot.

Speaker 1 Could you list Monica? Where is that in on your top 10? Snakes out of your bottom, number one.

Speaker 1 Snakes up the bottom. Well, slithering out, no? They go up there.
That's the worst. I guess you're right.
When they slither out, you're kind of relieved, probably.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you didn't know they were. Might even tickle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Who knows?

Speaker 2 Maggots might even be worse.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Yes. There's something about them, and you can't get control of them, and they're slimy.
And ugh.

Speaker 1 I think the grossest part, everyone plug your ears, that's sensitive. But the grossest part is when you step on them, then there's mayonnaise on the ground.
Ew, why?

Speaker 1 Why? I warned everyone to plug their ears. What more do you want me to do? You made me listen.
Oh, that was helpful.

Speaker 1 Help.

Speaker 1 Help me.

Speaker 1 Well, Christina, you sound very easygoing. Pretty laid back.
That liberal arts college was the right choice for you.

Speaker 3 The liberal arts education.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Hellenic studies, baby.

Speaker 1 Hellenic studies. Western Civ.

Speaker 3 This is before anxiety and adulthood kicked in, so I'm much less laid back now. But at the time, it was like anything goes.

Speaker 1 You would stress out about it at the time, but really to reduce your life to just four term papers every three months, like that's pretty manageable.

Speaker 1 And then the rest of your time, you don't give a flying fuck about anything.

Speaker 2 Kegs enough, yeah.

Speaker 1 Mayonnaise.

Speaker 1 All right, Christina, nice meeting you.

Speaker 3 Thank you. And I just have to say, I am so grateful that you do exist in this world.
And I appreciate everything that you do. And so grateful that I got the opportunity to talk to you both.

Speaker 1 Thank you, us too. I hope I bump into you at a food show.
It's possible. I'm going to one with Aaron in March or something.

Speaker 1 We'll probably be there okay come over and lose your shit and join the j2c club i got it out of my system

Speaker 1 trial run yeah all right take care

Speaker 6 hello hi there can you hear me oh wonderful cute cure sure i agree welcome to my closet thank you big fan of the cure so i had to represent me too robert smith indeed what do we know about him he's such an enigma and that's kind of his draw there was an interesting thing when they were inducted to the rock and roll hall of fame trent resner said robert smith has curated curated this Robert Smith world that we can go and become whenever we want, whenever we feel a little left out or alone.

Speaker 6 And that's exactly what it represents. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like that. Also, falling in love.
Oh my God, what good love sick music.

Speaker 2 What's your favorite?

Speaker 2 Name that too.

Speaker 1 Hold on. Chris.
Pictures of you. Yeah, pictures of you.
Good job. Everyone did a great job.
Yeah. What's your favorite?

Speaker 6 I'm a really big fan of their new album, Songs of a Lost World. Highly recommend it.
It's their first album in, I think, eight years. He's getting older and some of his loved ones are past.

Speaker 6 And, you know, he's looking at mortality like we all are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was able to articulate heartbreak. So in your early part of your life, that was all romantic love.
And now people are dying. It's just continued on the heartbreak.

Speaker 2 Life is hard. It is.

Speaker 6 You can tell a cure fan miles away, if not the get up, at least just they have this. Bonami about them.

Speaker 1 Bona me. Bona mee.
That is a great word. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's an SAT word for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Where are you at?

Speaker 6 I am in Northern Virginia, just outside of D.C., but I have to say, originally from Michigan,

Speaker 6 Ann Arbor. The wife is from the Thumb, proper farm country.
So we met in Michigan, and that was 20-some-odd years ago.

Speaker 1 This is why he's so interesting and knowledgeable.

Speaker 6 Monica, and I'm not going to leave you out. I've been to the Atlanta airport.

Speaker 2 Oh, I think it's that. I think it might be how cultured the airport is.

Speaker 1 Like those holiday and express commercials.

Speaker 2 Very bona me.

Speaker 1 He's like, did you go to a high-vi league? No, but I flew into Atlanta one time. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Okay, you have a DIY story that went awry.

Speaker 6 I do. So August 2019, I wanted to put up a camera on our front porch to see the comings and goings of Amazon deliver drivers and all that good stuff.

Speaker 6 And our house has a really beautiful wraparound front porch with 10-foot ceilings and like a ceiling fan. And we have a porch swing and a good place to hang out when it's not stiflingly hot.

Speaker 6 But I needed to get power over to where I was putting in the camera. And I figured I would just tap right into where the junction box is for the fan.
So I took the fan down.

Speaker 6 One thing to note at this point, I'm home alone. My wife and younger daughter are out running errands.
My older daughter is in North Carolina with her friend and their family.

Speaker 6 At home, it's just me and the dog. So I get my ladder out.
take the fan down, put it on the ground.

Speaker 1 I'm going to ask a dumb, dumb question, but you obviously already threw the circuit breaker. Of course.

Speaker 6 You're preempting something stupid that I would do, but that's for another time.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay.

Speaker 6 Right at the Romex over, put the new plug in, put a GFI plug in because it's outdoors, tested it. So now I just needed to put the fan actually back up.

Speaker 6 So I grabbed the fan and they climb up the ladder. He might say 10 foot ladder.

Speaker 6 So for some reason, I didn't think or want to take the four minutes to remove the fan blades or the undermountain light or anything like that.

Speaker 6 I have the top of the neck of the fan motor in my right hand. And, you know, the fan blades are all banging around my body and hitting the ladder.

Speaker 6 And I just need to get the fan motor clipped into the little holder and then I can let go of it. Then it's kind of in place.

Speaker 6 But the junction box is a bit more full because it's got a separate piece of Romex. It's got some wire nuts.
So I can't quite get it into place.

Speaker 6 So I figure, oh, I'm just going to use my left hand to help push it in a little. However, at the bottom of the fan, there's light bulbs and a nice glass dome, again, which I didn't take off.

Speaker 6 So I push my left hand on that glass dome, give it a heave, and my left hand smashes through the glass dome with a few light bulbs, slicing open my wrists.

Speaker 1 Oh!

Speaker 6 I scream out in pain.

Speaker 1 I'm lucky I didn't fall off the ladder at this point.

Speaker 6 I can only kind of remember climbing down the ladder. Thankfully, my wife and younger daughter had gotten home not three minutes beforehand.
They were still putting away groceries in the kitchen.

Speaker 6 So I flung open the door and just yelled, Tall 911.

Speaker 1 You knew immediately you had cut the artery. Was that obvious?

Speaker 6 There's blood everywhere.

Speaker 1 Gonna save five minutes. Exactly.

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Speaker 6 So I sit down on the front porch steps and with my right hand put pressure on the wrist. My wife comes out with 911 on the phone.

Speaker 6 They're telling her to get clean rag or clean shirt or something and just apply pressure. And an ambulance is on its way.
I'm bleeding through these rags like no one's business.

Speaker 6 I'm lightheaded, pale, dizzy. I actually got the 911 call from the county.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 6 My wife hasn't had the heart to listen to it yet. I wasn't really there.
I was kind of in another space. So it was kind of fun for me to listen to.

Speaker 6 And at one point, the dispatcher asks her how bad I'm bleeding. And she said, it's dripping all over the porch.
It's in bad shape.

Speaker 1 Do they suggest a tourniquet at any point?

Speaker 6 They didn't. They were just saying direct pressure.
Somehow, I didn't pass out, but the paramedics arrive and they quickly see that things aren't great. They're able to stem the bleeding a bit more.

Speaker 6 They wrap it up with gauze, get me loaded into the ambulance, and off we go to the hospital. It's probably about a 20-minute drive to the hospital.

Speaker 6 The paramedic calls ahead to the ER just to kind of let them know what to expect. I'm still conscious.

Speaker 6 And then about five minutes before we get to the hospital, both the EMT and I happen to look down and the gauze is now completely red and it's dripping onto the floor of the ambulance.

Speaker 6 Without missing a beat, she puts kind of one thumb on my pressure point on the bend of my elbow, with the other hand, opens up a cabinet, grabs a tourniquet, rips it open with her teeth, puts it around my arm, cinches it tight, and that somewhat stopped at least the dripping.

Speaker 6 We get to the ER, we get into the triage room, and within seconds, 20 medical professionals are there. I'm crying.

Speaker 6 I'm thinking, yeah, I'm in a lot better shape now because I'm at least at the hospital, but this is scary stuff. They strap my arm down to a board, wrist side up, start spraying it with saline.

Speaker 6 And then the next thing you know, I'm out. That was the last thing that I remember.
I woke up hours later in a recovery room, still super groggy. I woke enough basically to say hi to my wife.

Speaker 6 and then crashed again. And then the next thing I knew, I woke up at three in the morning in my hospital room and my hand is just bandaged from fingertip fingertip to elbow.

Speaker 6 But I could see that I had all my extremities, which is

Speaker 1 pretty, pretty cool. I'm thinking out loud that you were lucky that you probably landed in a hospital with a vascular surgeon.

Speaker 6 So, one of the benefits of living in Northern Virginia is we have an amazing medical system. So, it's a level one trauma, which I just learned about on the nurses.

Speaker 1 You too. We're all learning at the same time.

Speaker 2 We learned so much.

Speaker 6 So, they did have all the necessary surgeons there to perform immediate surgery. I was discharged later that afternoon.
I was in crazy heavy medicine for several weeks.

Speaker 6 I had hand physical therapy for months, then some really nasty scars and a little loss of motion in my thumb.

Speaker 6 So basically what I did is when I pushed up on the globe, obviously it shattered, but I was pushing pretty hard and I cut my artery long way.

Speaker 2 Vertical, that's the worst.

Speaker 6 Exactly. So I cut my artery, several tendons and nerves.

Speaker 6 Monica, I actually sent you guys a couple of pictures.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, Rob has them up. That's on the table.
Okay, I'm ready for this. Oh, my.
Also, you were doing this project in flip-flops? Yeah. On the ladder.

Speaker 1 God, are we the same person? You can handle this, Monica, but my God, for the listening audience, it's a good six inches of gash. It serpentines

Speaker 1 around into the hand, down the ladder.

Speaker 2 Oh, it goes in ooh.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 It's wrong. Ooh, the MAGA.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no one can listen to this episode.

Speaker 6 A slight bit of humor to the whole situation.

Speaker 6 I found out later that after I left in the ambulance and before my wife and daughter drove to the hospital, my wife took the garden hose and hosed on the front porch because there was just blood.

Speaker 6 everywhere. And it's probably best because when she got home from the hospital late that night after seeing me recovery, there was an Amazon package on the front porch.

Speaker 1 And I could only imagine what the poor Amazon delivery driver would have thought if they saw it.

Speaker 6 Would they have taken a picture of it or they would have been like customer not available and just went on their way?

Speaker 1 If I were the Amazon person and I just arrived at a big pool of blood, I would open the box to see if someone had ordered bleach.

Speaker 1 Like if this was a murder scene and I was not complicit in the cleanup effort.

Speaker 2 It's actually interesting. Do you think delivery people have an obligation to like report

Speaker 6 first reporters, like school teachers?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we have to call 911 if we see something really bad.

Speaker 1 Chris, you're so smart. What line of work are you in? No.

Speaker 6 I am a full-time stay-at-home dad.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, you got to be smart to do that.

Speaker 6 I left the workforce about a year and a half ago, and I love it. Girl dad, 13 and 15, it's what works for our family.
So I couldn't be happier. And I have an endless list of projects and things to do.

Speaker 2 Oh, God, stay away from the projects.

Speaker 6 We have some new rules in our house about the projects I'm allowed to do when no one is home.

Speaker 6 And if I get up on a ladder, I need to let someone else be there. If my wife hadn't arrived home just before it happened, happened, I'm confident in saying that I wouldn't be here today.

Speaker 6 There's no way that I could have grabbed my phone and called 911. I just wasn't in this state.
And obviously, since there was such significant bleeding, I would have probably passed away.

Speaker 1 Okay, I want to tell you a quick story. It's not to equate your injury with any kind of property damage, but I think you'll just get a kick out of it because I bought a car in 2019.

Speaker 1 The previous version of it had gone up three times, and I was able to get one. I got it just for an investment.

Speaker 1 I got the entire car covered in this thin see-through wrap so that it would never get any scratches or anything. And it's just going to sit in my garage.

Speaker 1 So I need to get my snowboard bag out of this loft above the car. And it's raining outside.
So I don't want to pull the car out into the rain because then that's its own thing.

Speaker 1 And then I determined, you know, I can just get on the ladder next to the car and I can grab that bag. This is not a huge deal.

Speaker 1 What I didn't really think about was I had tracked some water in from coming from outside. I set the ladder up.
So the ladder's now on some water, which I didn't really notice.

Speaker 1 And I'm pulling the snowboard bag out from on top of the car. And all of a sudden, the ladder starts slipping.
And now I have this decision to make. If I fall, it's coming down on top of this car.

Speaker 1 So I have to, with all my weight, chuck the board from the air so it'll clear the car. And when I do that, I then fall off of the ladder and I shoot the ladder into

Speaker 1 the car

Speaker 1 that I'm trying my artist to protect. And it hits the mirror perfectly where the vinyl wrap has come together at a seam and there's a gap.

Speaker 1 My first thought when I land on the ground is like, oh fuck, I think I broke my rib on my bench. Okay, oh, my arm hurts.
And then I'm like, oh my God, did the ladder hit the side of the car?

Speaker 1 And I'm looking at the side of the car. No, it's fine.
It's fine. It's fine.
And then all of a sudden I see it. And I took a fucking two-inch chunk of paint out of the mirror.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, there we go. I saved myself wiping the car down.
And now I've got to go find a painter qualified to not take the value of it.

Speaker 6 And you're thinking, damn it, I can get my rib replaced, but aftermarket parts are so hard to find for this car. What am I doing?

Speaker 1 I destroyed the pristine value of this car. So yeah, I really deeply relate to just trying to save a few minutes and really fucking regretting it.
Absolutely.

Speaker 6 It was a learning opportunity for sure because I've cut corners in the past and skated through and this time I cut a corner and it didn't end nicely at all, but at least I'm still here.

Speaker 1 There's the dude that I've been going to AA with for 22 years and his saying, and I appreciate it every single time, is cutting the corner is the quickest way to the back of the line, something like that.

Speaker 1 I've heard it a million times.

Speaker 6 Well, it's like cut off your nose to spite your face type of thing. Just don't do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you just always end up in the very back of the line. Well, Chris, delightful meeting you.
I'm not shocked you're above average because you're from Michigan.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much, Paul.

Speaker 6 This is an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1 All right, take care, Chris.

Speaker 2 I think it's something like taking a shortcut is the fastest way to the back of the line.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 Shortcut's the fastest way to the back of the line. I think that's what it is.
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 4 Can you hear me?

Speaker 1 Beautifully.

Speaker 1 I don't want to give out your full name, Tanya, but it's criminal you're not a country Western singer. That's the best country star name I've ever heard.

Speaker 4 I know, right? The 70s is when my name peaked. If you look at the bell curve for the popularity of your name, there's not very many of us.

Speaker 1 Who is it, Moni? Monya Tucker. But she wasn't famous in the 70s, was she?

Speaker 4 Sure, she was. I'm a 75 baby like you.

Speaker 1 You're about to turn 50 when?

Speaker 4 This summer. I'm getting scared.

Speaker 2 It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 I just got a rebrand for us. I'm stealing it from Bad Sisters.
I'll acknowledge where I got it. But from now on, I'm not 50.
You and I are both mid-century.

Speaker 4 Boom. Sounds cooler.

Speaker 1 Right? Sounds architectural. I'm mid-century.
Fuck, I love it. Yeah.
Don't you dare, Monica. I'm going to make shirts that say mid-century.
Yes.

Speaker 4 I'll buy one if you do.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. Hey, everybody.
Raw mate. Free customers.
Free customers. Hey, we have a five.
Okay, this is great.

Speaker 2 I'll wear it.

Speaker 1 She's really relishing in her age privilege, isn't she?

Speaker 1 What a bitch with her fresh eggs. They're not fresh.
They're old and stinky

Speaker 1 and huge. It happens to all of us.

Speaker 1 Where are you, Tanya?

Speaker 4 I am in Utah in an oral surgery office of the man that this story is about. I'm working for my dad today.

Speaker 1 Is he a periodontist?

Speaker 4 He is an oral surgeon. He pulls teeth.
Perio, I think, is about gums. He still works.
He's 84 years old. Wow.
He works on a semi-retired schedule. He's just finishing up his afternoon nap.

Speaker 1 Oh, what a stud.

Speaker 1 Great. Okay, hit us with your DIY story that went awry.

Speaker 4 Okay, so this is a landscaping DIY disaster. A few things about my dad that you need to know is that he is a genius, but this is usually what gets him in trouble.
He knows how to do things.

Speaker 4 He knows how to figure them out if he doesn't. He is big on self-sufficiency.
His parents were World War II age vets.

Speaker 4 Another thing about his brilliance is he skipped out on the last year of college when he took his entrance exam into dental school because his scores were so high that they admitted him immediately.

Speaker 4 My dad has only ever paid for landscaping once in his life and that was in the last 10 years. At 85, he still maintains five acres of land and my mom, who's 80, mows the lawn.

Speaker 4 He will spend a dollar to save a penny. He's that kind of a person.

Speaker 4 And the same goes for his time. He will work an idea a hundred times over.
He's very persistent. He does not give up.

Speaker 4 Also, the last thing you need to know about our family is Saturday chore day was an all-day thing. If you stayed the night at somebody's house, you had to be back in time for chores.

Speaker 4 If somebody stayed the night at your house, they either needed to leave or help out. There are eight kids in our family.

Speaker 1 This is all screaming Mormon, the industriousness, the eight kids. Yes, okay.
We are Mormon. We're in Utah right now.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 But this story does not take place in Utah. I was raised in the central valley of California, San Joaquin Valley, outside of Fresno.
This is 96, maybe. I'm home from college.

Speaker 4 My dad had a job for us to do for the summer. It included my older brother who was in college, myself, and my younger sister who is in college.
So this is probably May. And we had a newish house.

Speaker 4 We had built a pool the summer before, and now my dad is trying to landscape the backyard. In digging our pool, we found out that there is about 12 to 18 inches of what's called hard pan.

Speaker 4 It's thick concrete-like soil. You can't penetrate it.
You can use a pickaxe all you want. You're never going to get to the bottom of it.
But there is an orange grove in the back of our property.

Speaker 4 So, how the heck did they get their trees planted? He finds out that you can get an ag permit for dynamite.

Speaker 1 Perfect.

Speaker 1 Now we're talking.

Speaker 4 In the two acres that we have, he would need to plant 60 trees. So he figures out the recipe.
He researches how to do it. He knows where to get all the stuff.
It's getting close to blasting day.

Speaker 4 We had to make an auger.

Speaker 1 Sure, you got to drill a hole and dump the dynamite in there.

Speaker 4 We had to put like 30 inches down into the ground. That took three days to do all 60 holes.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 And it's blasting day.

Speaker 1 My dad took off work. He never takes off work.

Speaker 4 The only reason I know he took off work is that my two younger siblings were at school and my youngest youngest sister was home with the chickenpox.

Speaker 4 We start in the far, far back part of our property, two acres, so pretty far. We put one scoop in.
One scoop was about the size of a paint can, a small cork. My brother lights it.

Speaker 4 We all run and there is a kaboom. like a howitzer cannon kaboom.
So it was a little bit anticlimactic and no earth moved at all.

Speaker 4 It just shot straight out of it like a cannon. So dad being a Mr.
Scientist, he treated it like a science experiment. We change one thing, we adjust.

Speaker 4 So, some of the things we tried was stuffing it with a blanket to make it push out like a firecracker. We tried chicken wire in a blanket.
We tried a big, huge boulder. Things weren't working.

Speaker 4 So, now we're increasing the number of scoops. Oh, we go to two.

Speaker 4 We finally get up to three.

Speaker 1 Oh, great.

Speaker 2 This is like when you take too many drugs because the drugs haven't hit you.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, and you're impatient.

Speaker 4 We're up to three scoops in the hole. My mom calls my brother and my sister and I that were home from college.
We had to leave for an eye doctor appointment. We take off.
Uh-oh.

Speaker 4 At the last second, she makes my little sister with the chicken pox come with us. She didn't want to leave dad experimenting with dynamite with a sick little girl inside.

Speaker 4 So he's doing it all by himself. We come home, country roads, everybody has a couple acres, and we're at our neighbor's house and there are dirt clods everywhere.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 4 And the closer we get to our house, there's more.

Speaker 4 And my heart starts beating. We're getting scared.
The closer we get to the driveway and to the house, it's so much that my brother just undoes the Van Door, huge Mormon Van Door, by the way.

Speaker 4 And we bolt out of there and we just head towards the back of the property. And we're looking for body parts, honestly.
Like, where is dad? Oh, no.

Speaker 1 A diamond is forever. Here on the show, we talk to guests about their past, where they are today, and what they want for the future.
And it kind of makes you realize you're never really done, are you?

Speaker 1 You're constantly changing, shedding old versions of yourself to reveal someone stronger, smarter, funnier even. Although my kids might argue that.

Speaker 1 The point is, you're evolving, becoming better every day. That's why desert-toned diamonds are the perfect way of celebrating all that you are and all that you're still becoming.

Speaker 1 They come in a range of unique, unexpected colors, colors that reflect your your unique, unexpected journey, like warm whites, pale champagnes, deep ambers, smoky whiskeys, natural colors that are truly unlike anything else, just like you.

Speaker 1 So this holiday season, gift yourself a desert diamond to reflect all the shades of you. That's why A Diamond is Forever.
Visit adiamondisforever.com to learn more.

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Speaker 1 We are supported by Audible. You know, I spend a lot of time listening.
It's literally my job. But when I'm not recording the show, I'm constantly consuming audio content.

Speaker 1 And honestly, I can get pretty overwhelmed by all the choices out there. That's why I love when Audible drops their best of the year collection.

Speaker 1 Audible's most anticipated collection, the best of 2025, is here. And let me tell you, these editors know what they're doing.

Speaker 1 They've spent countless hours listening, having heated debates, probably way more heated than Monica and I get, although that's hard to imagine. And they have handpicked this year's must listens.

Speaker 1 What I really appreciate is that they don't just go for the obvious picks. They've found hidden gems alongside the buzziest new releases.

Speaker 1 Whether you're into true crime like Monica, historical biographies like me, or something completely different, this collection has your back.

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Go to audible.com slash best of the year.

Speaker 4 So. The hole back there is massive.

Speaker 1 New swimming pool. Exactly.
New spa.

Speaker 4 Dax, you could lay in the bottom of it with your arms outstretched and just be fine. Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow. A fox.
Oh my God.

Speaker 4 Then we hear some laughter coming from the inside of the house. And my other sisters were in there with my mom.
And we go inside. My brother and I run over there.

Speaker 4 My dad is laying on the bed of his bedroom. There's a tarp on the floor.
There's a ladder set up. There's a bucket of tools and a 12-inch hole in the ceiling.
What? With a rock.

Speaker 1 Oh, that shot up and came down. Yep.

Speaker 1 Now he's repairing the roof.

Speaker 1 And then came down again.

Speaker 1 Lucky it didn't come down on him.

Speaker 4 It took about two weeks for him to finally tell the story. He was telling some tall tales all along the way.

Speaker 4 He was saying things like, oh, an alien must have come and tried to get me and the laser beam shot through the roof.

Speaker 4 Or I was kicking and screaming when the aliens were trying to get me and I kicked a hole in the roof. He's a little rascal.

Speaker 4 He has a a lot of different tall tales he tells and aliens is a favorite of his.

Speaker 2 A go-to.

Speaker 4 About two weeks later at family dinner, he finally fussed up to the whole story.

Speaker 4 With the three scoops in the hole, the boulder nearby, he had remembered there are these things called boosters or blasting caps that fit over the detonator and it gives you maximum explosion with minimal amount of dynamite.

Speaker 1 This is Nobel, the Nobel Peace Prize. He invented that blasting cap.
So much of the earth was destroyed by his invention. He felt like he should take the money and give back.

Speaker 1 And that's what the Nobel Peace Prize is for.

Speaker 4 He gets those from the safe. He kept them separate.
He lights it, runs back about 100 feet. And this time it was

Speaker 4 the sound waves knocked him flat on his back.

Speaker 4 And he is being pelted by all of these little dirt clods all around him. And he comes to and he sees the rock up in the sky.
The rock is pretty big, maybe 24 inches, splits in two.

Speaker 4 One lands in the orange grove behind our house, and the other just gets swallowed up into the house.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow,

Speaker 1 oh my talk about saving a little money on a professional, and then now you got to replace part of the roof.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he never had anybody fix it. He tried to fix it himself that afternoon before we got home, but it was time for a nap, just like he loves.
And he does his best thinking in nap time.

Speaker 4 Sure, how did the remaining 59 holes get blasted so we did finish up we ended up only needing a third of a scoop through trial and error i am shocked that we didn't blow all the windows out of our house from that first one because the rattle was so big my brother heard it about a mile away after school and he was just like what is going on our neighbors called the cops on us but he had a permit He showed that cop exactly what he had.

Speaker 4 Carry on, sir. Mind your own business.

Speaker 1 He looks like like you've got it.

Speaker 4 We've got things under control here. And I think it was kind of exciting, too.
She was mad because her horses were losing their mind.

Speaker 1 Probably pretty frightening.

Speaker 4 We did get a twofer in that whole thing because that big old pit turned into a fire pit.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 4 all of our friends started calling him Dr. Boom Boom.

Speaker 1 That's fun. That's great.
That's a great story. Yeah, I'm glad everyone was away from the house.

Speaker 4 Let me see if he's around. If you would like to meet this mad scientist, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's see if he's awake.

Speaker 4 Give me one second duck you got to come right now

Speaker 1 here he is yes hello hi you left out that he's very handsome too oh yeah he is

Speaker 1 i want to thank you for blowing up your entire yard and sending a rock into your roof because it made for a great story for us when i told him we were going to do this he said i'll ask him if he wants to go for round two do you have any holes that need to be dug

Speaker 1 once i get to nashville yeah i I might call on your services. Once a pacomaniac, always a pyromaniac.

Speaker 1 Great meeting both of you. Tanya, thank you for telling us that story.
That was great.

Speaker 4 No problem. Glad to share it.

Speaker 1 All right. Take care, you guys.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 fathers are funny. We're all kind of the same.

Speaker 2 You are all the same, and you're always trying to play with your trinkets and put trinkets up. You call them tools, but really they're trinkets.

Speaker 1 Sure. That whole story is appealing.

Speaker 1 i would love to get the permit and i'd love to have an excuse to use dynamite i've always wanted to rob have you wanted to be able to blast dynamite absolutely i mean i've shot firecrackers a lot yeah m80s and quarter sticks you're always looking for a quarter stick in michigan quarter stick of quarter stick of dynamite

Speaker 1 Hi. Are you Chris? Yes.

Speaker 2 Short for Christine or Christina? Yes.

Speaker 1 Because we had another Chris today and I said, wow, double Chris is.

Speaker 2 One of my best friend's name is Chris. short for Christina.
In Atlanta for

Speaker 2 the K, but you're with the C?

Speaker 1 C H, yeah. So where in Canada are you?

Speaker 5 BC outside of Vancouver.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you have a DIY story that went bad.

Speaker 5 Technically, my husband was supposed to be telling the story. He was the one who experienced it.
I will admit I was the catalyst.

Speaker 1 Okay, we've been down this road already. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 I am just the designer and he is the planner, which after you hear the story, that is now shifted. I am now both.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 5 We moved into our house in 2019 and we're in a townhouse row. So we're like the first six and then the entire complex is behind us.
I'm a cleaner. I hate baseboards.

Speaker 5 The old schooled ones with the grooves, I don't want to get in there. I wanted a more modern block.
Make it nice and simple for me. So we removed all the old crappy baseboards.

Speaker 5 It's a bit of an investment to obviously put back into your home. So we started off very small.
I'm like, let's just do the bathrooms and then we'll eventually get to the rest of it.

Speaker 5 So I tasked my husband with the downstairs bathroom as I'm away at work. And this bathroom shares a wall with our hot water tank.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 So my husband starts nailing the baseboard to the bottom. Prior to this, he does turn off the water that's by the toilet tanks.

Speaker 5 He's making his way around and now he gets to the wall that shared the closet hot water tank, pierces the wall.

Speaker 1 He's using a nail gun. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Water starts to come out of the wall, like pressurized water. He's immediately feet up.
It's quite a small space that he could at least put some pressure on it. He's like, I turned off the water.

Speaker 5 I don't get why this is happening. He calls me while I'm at work and he's like, you need to come home.
Something's gone wrong. And I'm like, you dropped me off at work this morning.

Speaker 5 We have one vehicle. I'm sorry.
You're on your own.

Speaker 1 Also, we don't have time with water gushing everywhere for anyone to come home from work. We've got to turn off the main water here.

Speaker 5 Exactly. So thankfully, our neighbor, he has the key to our six-row utility closet, goes to turn off the water.
And he's like, why isn't the water stopping?

Speaker 5 We get a plumber out and they come to turn off the main water to our six houses that we can't get to is water still gushing out it stopped at this point my guess is it ran for a while after because he punctured the pot water heater which holds like a hundred gallons of water so it was gonna leak long after the water supply was turned off it was in our water tank that he hit so the water's just off for the night it's 5 p.m at this point our six houses nobody has water oh i'd be so pissed I would too.

Speaker 1 My neighbor, I'm like, hey, you're not qualified to do this. Now none of us have water.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Husband comes to pick me up from work. I'm like, we need to give them a jug of water and a little like gift card.
We've literally just met these people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not a great look.

Speaker 5 We've got somebody coming in the next day. Plumber comes, fixes it.
They go to turn the main water back on and it's still. pressurized.
He goes, we have to turn off the main water again.

Speaker 1 And we're like, okay, great.

Speaker 5 He goes to turn it off and he breaks the valve.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 5 So now we have to call the city to get them to turn off the water to all 65 homes

Speaker 1 behind them.

Speaker 1 It just keeps growing in the whole town, doesn't it? Exactly.

Speaker 5 Usually 24, 72 hours in advance gives you notice that they're turning off water. It was immediate.

Speaker 5 Because Trav is trying to to figure this out with the plumber who just broke the valve, he didn't contact Strata for like three hours after this happened. So they're getting phone calls, emails.

Speaker 5 What the heck's happening? Why is our water turned off? What we thought was going to be, I think, maybe 12 hours without water was close to like 20 hours without water.

Speaker 5 So then the city comes out the next day, they fix it. So we're like, whew, great.
Everybody gets their water back on. Then we get another plumber to come back in.

Speaker 5 He actually tells us that the way our house was originally built, they did not put that main water line buried far enough down in the ground.

Speaker 5 So if he would have punctured our water line, we would have been able to turn it off, fix it. He would have been able to put it on, no problem.

Speaker 5 But because it wasn't buried enough in the cement, he hit the whole water main.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 5 And so we still do not have baseboard to this day. We've been in this house for five years because I'm just traumatized.

Speaker 1 I don't want to puncture anything. How fucked up was the ground underneath?

Speaker 5 Oh, we had to like jackhammer, pull it out, dry it out. It was like two days of that plumber coming in and out of our house.

Speaker 2 What a disaster, just for some baseboards.

Speaker 1 I mean, the theme of all these is like we're all trying to save a few bucks, and it ends up costing way more than having someone else come in and just do it.

Speaker 2 I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but I don't suffer from this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you really shine.

Speaker 2 I am very fast to just ask someone to please come take care of, in fact, everything.

Speaker 5 Well, that's my husband. I feel like he wants to be handy.
He's techie. That's his domain.
I'm like, you stay there.

Speaker 2 You've got to know your lane in this line.

Speaker 1 A man's got to know his limitations. A woman's

Speaker 1 everyone.

Speaker 1 Oh, he said that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, know your lane. More men need to really, like, they're taking bigger swings.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 1 Let me just listen to some of the previous callers.

Speaker 5 It's true. I am just so, so excited to hear some of these other ones.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Well, dynamite makes an appearance.

Speaker 1 You should know that. Someone decided they were qualified to use dynamite because they were able to get a permit for it.

Speaker 5 That is wild. But yeah, that is our first experience in our home.

Speaker 1 So sorry.

Speaker 5 I feel like we were laughing about it in the moment because how do you not? I just couldn't believe that it literally went from a tiny hole to like, now we have to call the city.

Speaker 1 Well, I think the silver lining is that this all took place in Canada because if you had 60 American neighbors without water, I think someone would have come to your house to fight.

Speaker 1 Well, Chris, lovely meeting you. We love our Canadian neighbors so much and our Canadian arm cherries.

Speaker 5 I have to give a shout out to my bestie, Cora, who also listens. And my sisters.
They all love you. Dax, I do have to give a special.
My one sister, she's just like, please tell him I love him.

Speaker 1 What's her name? Amanda. Amanda, I love you back.

Speaker 5 She will love me.

Speaker 5 You guys are such a great example of what a friendship is. You guys just hold space for each other, even when you don't agree.
Thank you for demonstrating that.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 Very kind.

Speaker 5 Monica, your eye rolls.

Speaker 2 Can't help.

Speaker 5 I've also been told that mine are pretty epic. So I'm always just like, yeah, girl, like, you get it.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. It was great meeting you.

Speaker 5 Thank you. It was great meeting you guys.

Speaker 1 All right. Take care.
I'm going to do these things. I didn't learn a lesson.
I just want you to know I will still be trying to do all my own home improvement.

Speaker 2 DIY, that was a good one.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Love you. Love you.

Speaker 1 Do you want to sing a tune or something?

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 We don't have a

Speaker 1 song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.

Speaker 1 We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of Arm Jerry's, we'll get some suggestions

Speaker 1 on the flyer rhyme dish.

Speaker 1 On the flyer rhyme dish, enjoy.

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Speaker 1 Mom and dad, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever, parents, are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season? driving to old Granny's house?

Speaker 1 I'm setting the scene, I'm picturing screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 1 Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle. Something for the whole family.
He's filled with laughs. He's filled with rage.

Speaker 1 The OG Green Gronk give it up for me, James Austin Johnson, as the Grinch.

Speaker 1 And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are.

Speaker 1 There's a little bit of something for everyone. Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.