Every once in a while, we all do something really stupid that makes us laugh at ourselves – which is exactly what I did on Sunday.

In the Spring cleaning mood, I decided to break out the vacuum and get rid of the enormous “dust bunnies” that were growing behind my furniture. Having wood floors and a constantly shedding son, I always find clumps of dust and cat hair in the corners of my room. So while watching NASCAR, I went room by room and moved all of my furniture to the center of each room and sucked up each of the “dust bunny” communities that were living with me.

When I made it to the bedroom and moved my dresser and bed into the center of the room, I saw the old Cablevision wires that Woody had told me I needed when I first moved in. It turns out that Woody had analog cable – while I had IO Digital Cable, and when Cablevision came to the house to install my cable, they told me that they needed to run new wires because my IO Digital Cable could not run through those old wires that Woody had told me I needed.

Here comes the stupid part.

Thinking that those wires were dead, I took a scissor and proceeded to cut the wire on each end of my bedroom – because being the neat freak that I am – I did not want any unnecessary wires lingering in my house. After I cut them, the television was still on, so I assumed that I was right and the wires were not connected to anything…

…until I went into my office and tried to make a phone call.

Apparently, the wire I clipped did not power my television, but did power my Internet and telephone connection. So, in an attempt to improve my home and clean it up – I “shot myself in the foot” by having to wait twenty-four hours for Cablevision to come to my house and fix my stupid mistake – at my expense.

This is not the first time I have made a “genius” move like that. In the last apartment I lived in, I spent almost the entire winter with no heat – cursing my superintendent and landlord for not supplying me with heat, which is required by law. Day after day, I sat in my apartment wearing layers of clothes and hugging a portable heater – until I finally had enough and went down to my super’s apartment to complain that I was freezing and demand that he give me the heat I was entitled to…

…after hearing me complain, he asked me if I had opened the vents on each of the four heaters in the apartment – which, of course – I didn’t.

For almost the entire winter, I nearly froze to death, all because I didn’t do the simple task of turning the heat vents to the “on” position. Once I did, I had all the heat that I needed.

We all do things that are so stupid, that we have no choice but to laugh at our own idiocy and wonder how we could be so stupid. I just hope that now that I have recovered from what I call the “wire incident” – a long time passes until the next time I make a complete idiot of myself.