So much for godliness...

Guess what? It turns out that I am not exactly domesticated. And by that, I mean I make a terrible domestic.

It's not like I haven’t tried to keep my place clean and tidy—ok, clean; anyone who's ever seen my desk knows that tidy and I have been on the outs for a while—the problem is I'm just not very good at it. Minor calamities always seem to happen when I get in one of my cleaning moods. Fortunately, my cleaning moods strike infrequently and at odd times, so I'm not usually worse off than when I started. (Key word: usually)

For instance, there was the time I decided to clean my linoleum kitchen floor a few years ago. But I wasn't just going to clean it. No, I was also going to enhance the smell by employing a nifty trick involving the use of coffee grounds. (Because it makes sense for a non-coffee drinker to find other things to do with them.)

I don't actually recall the genesis of the coffee trick, but I do remember when I first used it—freshman year of college. I had put some wet bath towels on the brown carpet in front of my closet in my dorm room. If I haven't mentioned it before, I went to school in New Orleans, where it is hot and where it is humid and where you probably shouldn't make a little wet bath towel mound to sit around for however long it takes you to decide to do the laundry.

Anyhoo, it wasn't long before I noticed a rank musty smell near my closet and deduced that it was heap wet bath towel. I scooped up said towels to launder them and spied a dirtier brown patch on the rug. It was one of the dreaded M's: Mold and/or Mildew. I think it was mildew. You can smell mildew, and I don't know about smelling mold, but I think mold is more toxic, and there is no way I had produced toxins in that room.

I think I may have had the following conversation with someone:

Me: Hey, there's mildew on the carpet!! From my wet bath towels. It stinks. Help!!
Person: You left wet bath towels on your carpet??!??

I don't recall if I said "!#@~" or "Shut up!" or "Shut up and help me!" but basically I got a hold of some fresh coffee grounds and dumped them on the wet spot in front of my closet. The idea was that they would soak up the mildew odor and then once I vacuumed, my dorm room would smell good enough to drink. If one wanted to drink my dorm room.

So I went downstairs to see if I could sign out the heavy-ass old-timey vacuum cleaner to finish said plan. I could, I did, it worked. And now we have the coffee grounds backstory, so let's get back to the kitchen floor cleaning.

I tore open a coffee singlet (Folgers instant) left over from when my mom visited and promptly dumped it onto the kitchen floor. Well, actually I scattered it here and there, much like a farmer scatters seeds. I let it sit for a few minutes and then went to vacuum it up with my little upright stick vacuum cleaner. Only when I turned the vacuum on, nothing happened.

My eyes followed the cord to where it was plugged into the outlet. The vacuum was indeed plugged in. I clicked the switch from the On position to the Off position and then back to On.

Nothing happened.

But I wasn't going to panic just yet. Perhaps the dust cup was full and just needed to be emptied. Invading the vacuum's privacy, I removed its cup, emptied it, and stuck it back in. Ha.

Don't ever "Ha" your appliances because they're always going to have the last whirr. In this case, my vacuum's last whirr was a feeble little cough before it died right in front of me. :(

While pondering what to do next, common sense told me to wet some paper towels and scoop the grounds up.

In theory, this seemed like a good idea.

In execution, this was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.*

Why?

Because pushing dry coffee grounds around the kitchen floor with sopping wet paper towels makes coffee!

Don't believe me? Simple math, people:

D+(f)W=C

wherein

D= Dry coffee grounds
W= Wet paper towels
(f)= Force
C= Coffee

Or:

Dry coffee grounds + wet paper towels x force = Coffee**

Have any domesticalamaties or poorly written fake mathematical equations to share? Stupidity hearts company. :)

^{* Apologies to Judith Viorst
**I suck at math, don't even bother to correct my mistakes.}