Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Cooking Disaster II

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Sheppard, and I'm joined by Randall Padman. Hello. Today, we have cooking disaster stories. What do we say? Warning alert? Trigger of warning.

Oh, trigger?

If you hate burning, this is not the episode for you.

Don't listen to this one.

No, skip it. Please enjoy cooking disasters. Hard times, come and go.

Good times, take them slow.

My life, I had them both. But for one thing, you got to know, I'm going to keep on shining. Hello.

Hi.

Where are you? I think you may know the town that I'm from, Brevard, North Carolina, west of Asheville.

Oh, I bet I've ridden through there.

The land of Waterfalls.

Wait, is that where Looking Glass Falls is?

Yeah, sure is. About 10 minutes from where I'm at right now.

Oh, lovely. Amazing. We were just there.

Yeah, you've given some good shoutouts to the area. We appreciate it.

Okay, so you have a cooking disaster story.

I do, yeah. So this happened about three years ago in March. Our daughter at the time was turning three, and my wife was about eight months pregnant, and she was going through a big pancake phase. And so we thought we're going to throw her a pancake brunch. Nice. We'll invite some family and friends over, It just seemed like a great idea. It was a great idea.

She likes straight flapjacks or she likes chocolate chip? What was her jam?

The weird thing is she doesn't like syrup. Still, we can't get her to eat syrup, but she loves a pancake, chocolate chips or fruit.

Keep her off the syrup. If she don't want it, that's great.

It's her one excuse to be able to eat a sweet, and she's like, No.

Yeah.

Day off, everything is going to plan. Pretty much everything is done. The family arrives surprisingly going off without a hitch.

Can I ask quickly a mechanical question? If you put a big flat top grilling surface on something? What are we cooking on?

Yeah, we're cooking on a griddle, primarily, and then we're in our kitchen. We've got a stove. I decided I'm going to do some bacon, and I'll cook it in a sheet pan in bulk, which I wouldn't normally do. Being from the south, we make breakfast all the time. I grew up in a family where biscuits and gravy every weekend. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Jealous.

No problem with cooking a great breakfast. But on this day, obviously, there's more people showing up, probably about 20 people or so, kids, family. I thought, Okay, I'm going to put this bacon in a sheet pan and cook it in bulk, and that'll be the quickest way to get the job done.

How much bacon are we talking in pounds?

Probably two pounds, three pounds, maybe. Not a crazy amount, but enough to fill probably two sheet pans. We're almost to the point of everybody having their brunch, eating pancakes. The bacon is the last thing to come out of the oven. Around that time, the family shows up, kids are playing. It's a little bit of a compact kitchen. My mother and mother-in-law are in the kitchen. Of course, they're like, What can we do to help? Where does this go? Where does that go? It just gets a little chaotic around family as it tends to do. I go to reach for the bacon, open the oven, and I guess I'm just so focused, I pull it out probably a little quicker than I should, and just ever so slightly tilted it back towards me. Entire pan of bacon grease spills down my forearm.

Fuck, I can feel that.

Obviously, there's the initial shock reaction. Drop the pan immediately. Kind of freak out a little bit. There actually wasn't a ton of pain, which is also maybe a little scarier. You don't really know what you've done in the moment. I rush to the sink, start to rinse my arm off, and this is where my wife swoops in to save the day. She's a nurse, comes in handy on a lot of occasions. And so, yeah, she helps me get this thing washed off. I think at the moment, I'm trying to just keep as calm as possible. There's kids around. I don't want to freak my daughter out. And it becomes evident what I've done. Almost immediately, my arm starts to blister and bubble up. By this time, my daughter finds out, and of course, she runs over. And I mean, she's going to have to be in health care like her mom because she's immediately interested, not scared at all, not concerned. Just wants to know what's going on. She also shifts into take care of dad mode. Oh, so sweet.

It is. If you had a boy here, he would have been like, Where's my baseball bat?

He would have run his little truck over your arm.

Totally. I think Rob may have sent you a photo.

Oh, he did. Let's see. We always wait. He said, Turn it. Yeah, he wants me to do a fall like a fly.

Oh, that's...

That's horrible.

Oh, my God.

The first photo is where my arm bubbled up immediately. We got it patched and taken care of, essentially for the weekend until I could get to the doctor. Fortunately, the surgeon that works in our practice was there on that Monday or Tuesday and just had to scrape off the thing. It wasn't incredibly painful until that moment, and that's when it really got real.

Can I ask why they have to scrape it off?

That's a terrible question for me to answer.

Maybe they just clean it and put ointment on there or something.

I think That's essentially it.

I'm really sad that the listener can't see it because what's so freaky about it, and I've never seen a burn like this, the burn has the drip marks. It looks like a liquid, the burn. Do you see this, Moni, on the right? Yeah, I do. Wow.

It came up my wrist and wrapped around the wrist there, around the thumb. Did you have a scar? Shockingly, it healed up really well. I'll credit my wife for jumping into action quickly. We probably have more medical supplies around the house than the typical household, thankfully. She just got it patched up quick, and I was pretty religious about putting ointment on it for six weeks. Of course, my daughter wanted to help with that as well. Got a nice reminder every day to take care of your arm, Daddy.

Oh, Oh, my. That's rough. For the listener, if you saw this, you would know to never cook bacon ever again.

Yeah, it was a little while before I decided to give that a go. I still haven't cooked bacon in a sheep pan.

I mean, how is one supposed to remove that sheet pan with all that hot grease underneath?

Were you wearing oven mitts?

I had a towel in my hand, which is par for the course. I'm act first, think second guy, unfortunately.

Oh, I'm so lazy. I've used paper towel on the camera. I can get it out in time before that cooks through.

A dish towel is what the chefs do. They don't use oven mitts, but you have to really be a chef, and you have to be confident in your skills.

You do.

I use oven mitts.

You do. But you also like the decor of the oven mitts.

Yeah, they're cute.

The thing I live in the most fear of in these burn situations is when you hear people where the skin just rolls off.

Yeah, I was a little nervous. That was what I was in for. There's a few seconds that pass between when it happens and when you start to realize what you've actually done. I mean, it was rough, but it, thankfully, was not that situation.

This is a PSA because I would definitely try that. If I didn't hear the end of the story, I'd be like, Oh, that's a hack. Cook the bacon in the oven.

Exactly. No, yet, don't do it.

And you get it all done. I was even thinking while you're telling me, Oh, I even had a great. I would add a little great between the cookie sheet and the bacon so that it wouldn't be sitting in the oil.

I think I did have a great on the pan, which I thought, That's a great idea. But obviously the grease is still in the pan.

It sure is.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. Slowly carefully remove and make sure it's level.

How old's Baby now?

She's almost six, and Baby number two, almost three. Congratulations.

Another girl?

Two girls. Wouldn't have it any other Okay.

Now go get you a vasectomy because you don't want three.

Yeah, already take you care of.

Okay, good job. Or just pour a little hot grease down there. That could also...

Might do the trick as well.

Let's do it prompt accidental vasectomies.

Unauthorized voice ectomies.

Not contribute to that.

Well, thanks for sharing. Yeah, Seth. It's lovely meeting you.

This is great. Thank you guys so much. Would you mind if I let my wife come say, Hey, I'd love to meet your wife.

The nurse, we love nurses.

We're going to ask her some medical questions. Hello. Hi.

I'd be delighted if you were the nurse that walked in the room.

Look how cherry she looks. I have a question. Do you think I could maybe get my ears repierced even though it's gone rancid twice? It doesn't seem like a smart move. Oh, ma'am. I would love to say yes as a girl. Like, heck, yeah. But you know. Okay. I trust you. What's your name? My name is Casey.

Casey, you know the old adage, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame? We're already at the shame on me part. The third would be like, shame, I'm a fucking dumb dumb.

No, that's why. Third would be shame on Casey. That's why I asked. Well, I mean, Dax has already had to operate Wait, once. He did.

Once or twice.

Well, finger, ear.

Always jewelry-related. Yeah. How long have you been nursing?

It'll be almost 13 years.

You guys are the best. Thanks.

Well, I think one thing Seth forgot to mention was whenever the grease thing happened. He's being very stoic. He's fine, he's fine, he's fine. And I look over at him and he starts to turn that white yellow color. And I was like, No, you need to sit down. He's like, I'm fine. I was like, sit down and eat something. I probably handed him pancake at that point. Smart.

Don't feign on me. Good job. I don't need to deal with a head injury.

I already have 20 people at the house, and here we are with this pretty severe burn, and let's pass out on top of all of it. Yeah. What if you pass out onto the sheep pan? Oh, my God.

Face first.

Oh, my God. Jesus.

That was like a Mr. Bean movie or something. Oh, wow. Well, thank you, guys. It's lovely meeting you.

Thanks. I think we need to shout out Angie, too. Angie Setz College friend who got us as armcherries. Oh, shout out Angie. You're wearing a beautiful piece of merch. He got me this for Christmas. I love it.

Good job, Seth.

I went to get him a shirt and went on the website, and that's actually where we saw the prompts. I was like, This is perfect. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, two birds. We're out of shirts, unfortunately, at that point, but it's okay. I got one, so it's all that.

We were sold out of shirts?

Yeah, we sold out. Oh my God. But we might re-up, so we'll keep you guys updated.

What do you mean we might? We must.

Okay, we're going to sidebar about this.

All right. Lovely meeting you guys.

Bye. Bye, guys. Do you think it's sad? They hand over their headphones to their partner, and then they just have to sit and they don't know what is being said. It's like, I'm left out now.

I do think that. I don't want to get in another round of technical difficulties, but I almost want to say, just pull your headphones out so that you guys can now just chat. We can all be in this together.

Yeah, but we don't want to do that. We like when people are left out. Something to work through.

Too dangerous. Sarah, mile a while for me. Sarah. If you want to be free, all you got to do is say so. How annoying are you? Or how much do you love Sarah's smile?

Honestly, I've never heard that one before. A Hall & Oats?

I think you have.

Probably. It's probably just not a good rendition that Dax is doing.

That is definitely the case.

That might be why. I didn't you were singing. And I know Sarah smile.

Sarah, smile. Won't you smile a while for me? Sarah.

I think it's because there's so much other band stuff going on. A Kutramal. A Companyment. I was in that movie in that song. Acapella is tough.

Well, especially when you're not a good singer. Sarah, where are you?

I am in the McDonald's garbage can. I am in London, Ontario.

Oh, my God. I literally was like, You're in a garbage can right now at McDonald's? What is happening?

It's really funny I need to bring that up, Sarah, because I was just at my friend Kevin Zegar's house yesterday, and he grew up about 10 minutes, I think, east of London, and his folks were in town for the holidays, and I got to tell him how I used to expel my rubbish over there. And he was saying that London is a wild place. When you're young and you go downtown, you can have a real raucous time.

Oh, yeah. I went to university here and can confirm. Fun.

So you have a cooking disaster?

Yes. So this would have been in the summer of 2013. I was dating my now husband, then boyfriend, and we were about three hours apart. He was close to London, and I was living in Toronto. So I was going to visit him for the weekend. He was living with his parents. His dad was going to do a dinner. All his siblings were going to be there.

How long have you been dating?

About eight months.

So this is a high-stakes meeting. This is the time for you to put your best foot forward.

A hundred %. So the dad's making dinner, and I'm like, Well, we should do dessert. And so my husband says, Let's make lemon meringue pie. That's a real specific suggestion, but sure.

He just had a craving.

No, it's actually his favorite dessert, given the choice that's what he picks, which seems insane to me, but to each their own. So we're newly enough into this relationship that I just go along with it. Yeah. Okay, let's make lemon meringue pie. I hate lemon meringue pie, but let's do it.

Early dating is so misleading because you wake up two years later and you're like, Lemon meringue pie, and you're like, Fuck, is it? Fuck that.

I hate lemon meringue pie.

Yeah, we're married now.

How long do you carry it along? Yeah, that's insane.

I'm not participating in that.

So we go out, we get all the things to make this pie. I find my mother-in-law's pie plate. We're using the refrigerated crest that you just roll out. We're preheating the oven in this 100-year-old farm house that doesn't have central air conditioning. So I've got the oven going. It's really hot in the kitchen, and I'm like, No problem. Let's turn on the ceiling fan. Up to this point in my life, I've never operated a ceiling fan. So I reach up to pull the cord and the whole light fixture comes down.

Oh, Oh, my God.

Jesus. On your head?

That's so scary. It landed on the pie plate and just bounced off of it.

How big is this ceiling fan?

Just the light fixture in the center came down from the fan.

Okay, not the fan blades. No.

So just the light fixture part came down and hit the pie plate vicinity. Nothing broke. We put the light fixture back up, carry on making the pie. And there's nothing else memorable that happened during that dinner until we serve the pie. Uh-oh.

I have a terrible guess. Me too. I have a bad idea.

I'm serving the pie. This is it. This is the first time I've made anything for this family to consume.

Quick question. How did it look visually? Did you guys feel like you nailed it? The pie looked great. Yeah, you're like, Fuck, yeah, time to show off.

Yeah, I've made a lemon meringue pie when I really should have been making chocolate chip cookies.

Yeah.

So serving the pie, one piece, two piece. I get to the third piece, and the pie does the thing where it flops over onto its side. And my mother-in-law says, It's really weird that it burnt like that. And I'm like, What? So I look at it and I'm like, Oh, that is weird that it burnt because the bottom of the pie is speckled with burnt dots. And so I lift up the whole pie plate and I look and I'm like, Oh, the whole pie is speckled with these burnt dots. And then I look a little bit closer and it's dead bugs. No.

Hold on, that's better. I didn't know. I know you were ill-prepared. You were expecting glass, right? Yes. Me, too. But this is so preferred, but not for you.

No, I'd rather- Wait, you'd rather eat glass than cooked bugs? I want the glass. Dead bugs all in your- Protein, edible, not sharp.

No. This is a I think given the situation, that makes sense. So that thing had so many bugs in it, probably.

As my pictures do. And it just came down and we didn't check.

And it's so much that they could see them all scattered about.

And people had already eaten the other three pieces?

My youngest brother-in-law, as youngest brother-in-law's do, had inhaled his piece of pie.

But he still maintains to this day that it was a great pie. Yeah, sure. I can't imagine this would diminish the taste at all.

I would never be able to live knowing I ate all those bugs.

I'd be like, serve it up. They're cooked.

Now, did you think when you saw and you were like, Oh, my God, it's full of bugs that I should just pretend?

Oh, I think I spattered some Crisco at the bottom.

Exactly. Oh, you're so nice and honest. You're such a good arm cherry. I think I would have panicked in the moment and been like, Oh, no. You know what? The light fell. I'm nervous there's glass. Let's not eat it.

But I knew that there wasn't glass. Yes. Bugs were so far away in my mind.

Yeah, the glass is a red herring. That's how it works. You're so worried about an intestinal.

I would just be, for some reason, so much more embarrassed to serve a pie with bugs in it than a pie with glass in it. Really?

Even though one is potentially life-threatening. I have to imagine there's someone like me at this party that's like, Give me a piece. No.

I think they were just trying to follow my lead of like, Oh, my God, if we can't eat this pie, there's bugs in this pie, forget it. Never mind. We should all go home.

Bug pie. Oh, my God. That's so disgusting.

My mother-in-law asked me. I made pumpkin cookies about a year ago, and she asked me for the recipe. For the first time, she'd ever asked me for the recipe I ever made for anything. I was like, I've done it. It took me 12 years, but here we are.

Wow. That's great. Did you add some bugs?

I was going to say you should have put random insects, presumably mosquitoes and mobs. No, mosquitoes.

Don't listen, Monica, but the reason I knew it was bugs was because saw a wing.

I hate this story. It's so funny. I don't mind.

I know. I hate bugs and maggots. This is like maggots everywhere.

But you got married and everything worked out.

We have two kids. No bugs are eaten in our household. Actually, that's not true. My oldest eats ants, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Oh my God. Is that a thing? No need to stop. Again, we're omnivores. We're totally fine and equipped to eat ants.

There's no problem. I don't want to eat them.

You ever watch the chimps eat the ants or termites out of the line with a stick?

I attempt to stop her, but she's three years old, so I don't stand a chance.

You should do real ants on a log. Do you guys do ants on a log up in Canada? The celery and the peanut butter and could be raisins, but in this case? Yeah. Okay.

Can I just do a quick shout out to my two coworkers? My coworker, Caroline, got me into armchair expert, and my coworker, John, has been along on the ride as we both discovered this podcast.

Well, big thanks to her. She tripled our listenership in Ontario.

Exactly. Good job.

Oh, well, Sarah, it's so nice meeting you.

Nice to meet you.

Thank you.

It's so nice to meet you, too.

I promise, next time I drive through London, there will be no littering because I know better now. All right.

Take care.

Bye.

I sure love meeting these armcherries.

Here's Emma. I wish Allison Roman would have called in. I wish our Emma was submitting. She never has cooking disasters. She cooks perfectly. Hi.

Can you hear us?

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. Beautifully.

Now, did you have fun communicating with Emma as Emma?

Yes, I did, actually.

Where are you? You seem like a city girl just right away, I'm going to say that.

I'm in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Oh, that's a city. How many people live in Honolulu?

I believe on our island, it's like a million people. And then in the whole state, it's like 1. 3. Last I checked. Wow.

Okay. Like 90% of the Hawaiian are living on.

I know you guys have vacation here a couple of times.

Love it. One of the best Four Seasons around. Yeah.

It's so good. Have you been to that little restaurant with the Tiki torches that are burning? It's Italian. It's outside.

Yes, I have. I don't remember the name, but it's really good. And the Four Seasons on the Big Island in Kona is also really awesome.

I keep hearing that maybe now that we're talking about it, they'll invite us.

I think that might be the one that charged me.

I think you're talking about the Rosewood.

Oh, you're right. You're absolutely right. Good job. You're right. Thank you for saving the Four Seasons.

Don't smudge. You know how I feel. And are you from there or did you move there?

Born and raised in Honolulu, yes. I've lived other places, but my whole family's here, my husband's here, my husband's family's here, so it just makes sense to be here right now.

Okay, great. Okay, so you have a cooking disaster story.

So this story took place back in 2021 when my husband and I had just had our first baby girl. She was about six weeks old. Okay. She was one of those babies, though, that didn't like to sleep. So we were really sleep-deprived. And my husband was drinking coffee like a madman. So the cooking disaster takes place in the kitchen. I decided to make him coffee. And at the time, we were using a French press. Are you familiar with how a French press would work?

We are, but I think we should say for the listener how it works.

Okay, so a French press is like a glass beaker of sorts, and it has a little handle. You put ground coffee and you put boiling hot water into the French press, and then it has a cover that you put on top of that boiling water with a plunger on top. The beaker is probably about maybe eight inches, and then the plunder goes up maybe another 6-8 inches, and you leave it unplunged while the coffee steeps, and you plunge it when you're ready to drink that coffee.

Yeah, it's got a screen filter on the top. So as it goes down, it gets rid of all the grounds and leaves the yummy coffee.

Exactly. So I poured from the kettle the boiling hot water into the coffee, and then that coffee made its way over to we had at the time in the house we were living in this little breakfast nook, and it was sitting on top of the table. I'm scared. You're about to hear some questionable parenting decisions, but I just want to tell you we were so deprived.

Of course.

We've learned our lessons. So That's just a little disclaimer.

You had been a parent for all of 42 days if the baby was six weeks old.

Why do they let people just be parents with no training? Pretty great.

I don't know. It was too soon for us. My daughter used to sit on this little baby loungeer. I won't say the brand, but it was this little baby loungeer pillow. And I went to go hand the baby on the baby loungeer pillow, which you're not supposed to do. And then I handed her to my husband, who was going to put her down next to him on this nice, thick breakfast nook bench that we had. As I was doing that, the bottom of the pillow hit the top of the French press plunderer over a foot tall, and the entire thing knocked over toward my husband, glass shattered with water, coffee grounds everywhere. Because my husband's like 6 feet tall, it landed right onto his- Diff. Thigh. Oh, thigh. And his penis. Oh, yeah.

Wait, I missed the third thing. Was it balls?

Balls.

Yeah, okay. Oh, my God. Listen, we have photos, and if we have a picture of your husband's burnt balls, I'm going to be thrilled.

Okay, so I didn't know the legality of sending that. I did send a picture to Emma, who I think forwarded to Rob. It's hiding his penis and balls, but you can see the entire thing.

Can we look at- Before we look, so this big ruckus happens. What I'm immediately afraid of is we don't drop the baby because we've knocked something over.

Okay, he didn't drop the baby, which I think is the only thing we did write in the story.

Wow, good guarantee. He's a good dad.

But the baby, unfortunately, also got splashed with water.

Okay.

Oh, boiling water.

And the baby is screaming louder than I've ever heard a baby scream in my life. My husband put her down. He ran to the shower. Luckily, he knew that you're not really supposed to put ice water on a burn. You're supposed to put lukewarm water. So he went into the shower, put the shower on lukewarm, and he was just standing there. The baby is screaming, and I'm obviously freaking out.

And there's broken glass everywhere.

Broken glass everywhere, as Monica would say. It was scatty Wampus.

You have catch phrases, Monica.

No, you know It's so funny. I love that that's become mine because I got that from you.

Yeah, and I got it from a gal at the Groundlings.

Because really the word is catty Wampus. But Jack says scady, now I do, and now it's mine.

My life mission has been to replace catty Wampus with scady Wampus. It's working.

I'm slowly working.

You're not wearing shoes, right? It's in the morning.

Not wearing shoes. Luckily, I'm the only one who somehow came unscathed, but emotionally not because this baby was so sad. But luckily, she was fine. Ultimately, her burns were super minor, and she was back in action one day. But my husband was not, so I went into the shower to take a look at him, and it was like his skin was gone. No. The top layers of the skin had just shriveled up and disappeared, and it was just red.

Eew. Burger. Beefy burger.

You can look at the picture whenever you want.

Okay, let's do it. God, I'm bummed that there is one of the penis that I'm missing. Eew. Holy fuck. Okay, I know I bring this up way too often, but that great documentary, Hot Coffee. Yeah. When you think like, Oh, why did this woman sue over nothing? And this is what her thighs looked like. This is horrific. Gang, it's his entire thigh. It's like knee to, well, cock and balls.

Oh, my God. So his penis looked like that?

Luckily, well, I don't know if it's luckily, the majority of the burn, the worst part of the burn was on his thigh. But it was also the other areas, which I can imagine, felt terrible.

Oh, my God. It's also his whole thigh. It's not just a small part.

It's the whole thing. No, if I saw this without you telling me what had happened, my guess would be that you had made a bucket of hot coffee. You know, like a couple of gallons.

And you literally just threw it on him.

Yeah, it didn't miss him at all. It was so bad.

Okay, now this is inappropriate, but it's crossing my mind because it just happened to me. I had this catheter in, and I was so nervous. I would get an ere over the three days that I had the catheter. I didn't know what was going to happen if that happened. Was he so paranoid he would get an ere with all that burnt skin?

I didn't ask that, but I think he was so traumatized. I don't think that happened.

He wasn't whoring.

Well, not obviously that evening, but the next day.

No, maybe he's- But if you're in so much pain- You'd hope. Maybe he blamed her and so- Oh, resentful enough.

He was mad at her long enough for it to heal.

Oh, my gosh. So the story is not over. Well, since the baby was still crying, I called my mother-in-law, who lives really close. She zoomed over and she took him to the burn unit, the only burn unit on our island, which was smart of her to do. And he went into the emergency room. I very naively thought that he'd be back the same day. I thought that they would put some basal tracing on it, wrap it up in gauze, and that he would come home. But that quickly became clear that that was not going to happen. They admitted him to the hospital for two reasons. He had second-degree burns, which are the most painful because in the case of third-degree burns, it actually burns the nerve cells and kills the nerve cells, and you don't feel it as much. Second-degree burns is like the burn is so bad, but you can still feel it. They hooked him up to an IV drip of fentanyl and morphine.

No boners now.

I was like, This guy's not going to be trying to come home anytime soon.

No, he's got a six-week-old baby at home. He's like, Fucking take your time, you all.

Secondly, they were scared of infection because it was so large that if not cleaned properly every single day, that could be a really bad infection. Go visit him at the hospital after one day, two days, three days. We've been together for 15 years. There's no jealousy left in our relationship. But when you go and you're six weeks postpartum, your hormones are not balanced. You'd be being sponge bait by two nurses who look like they had just graduated from nursing An erection is in danger.

You thought it was going to be easy peasy.

You're right.

I didn't see one. It was day five, day six, and he was finally healing enough where we thought that he could come home. But unfortunately, he got addicted to the fentanyl and morphine drip. Stop.

What?

He needed to slowly wean him off in order for them to feel like he could come home and not have-Withdrawal.

Calls. Holy shit. This is a disaster.

It was such a disaster. They would wean him off slowly, and he was having full withdrawal syndromes. He was waking up in puddles of sweat. After about eight days, they finally discharged him, and then he was able to come home, got a $10,000 hospital bill, and that was the last time we ever used a French press.

Yeah. Peace out, French press.

Oh, no. This was a full-blown disaster.

You know what's great is I'm glad you told the end of the story because when you tell me he got hooked up to the fentanyl and morphine, I'm like, That sounds nice. But then I'm reminded like, Oh, right, that detox, it ain't worth it.

He still had quite a bit of recovery even when he moved home.

When he returned from vacation.

Oh, my God.

But he didn't have to have a skin graph or anything. That's a blessing.

And honestly, it looks perfect now. He made a full recovery. That was five years ago now, we're about to have our third baby.

Oh, my gosh. You won't stop.

That's great.

After this, we'll stop.

Okay. It's time for him to return to that hospital and get a little snip-snip.

Well, no, we're going to do a prompt about accidental vasectomies. So just see what happened. This could have been an accidental vasectomy if it had gone up a little higher.

Yeah, whatever they cut in my testicles, which is simple. They cut one thing and then you're good.

You're vast different.

No. That's your hole. Okay, Okay, whatever. In theory, you could burn through that.

Yeah, you could cauterize it.

Is he a handsome man?

He's so gorgeous. Yes, he is. Yeah, I had a hunch.

You guys are such a pretty couple.

You're a hot couple. Well, they're a hot couple.

And a pretty couple.

Yes, and a pretty couple.

And a hot couple. Yeah. Well, they're a hot coffee couple. Well, this was fun.

Thank you. For us and not him.

Oh, of course.

We survived, and don't ever make the mistakes we made.

Cautionary tale.

If only we could sue McDonald's.

I know. Get a couple mil.

Sure. That would help things out, especially that $10,000 bill. I'm still an advocate for the French press. I generally only get it when I'm at a hotel, but if they offer it, I like it.

Wait. When we were in India, remember, you ordered a French press eight times a day because the coffee... There's different types of coffee there, I guess. You just wanted a French press, so you would always call to the front and say, Can I get a French press? Literally every 14 minutes. I did.

Because I'm going to be honest, the regular drip brew coffee was not choice. I don't know what the methodology was different somehow. It didn't taste the same for me. You know what else happened? To defend myself, the first hotel we were at had a French press. I know. I was like, Oh, this is probably the Indian way. It makes sense. I think the French press is English. I don't know. You probably got stuck with that.

It sounds French.

Of course, it's not English. It'd be called an English press.

Exactly.

Anywho. Brit Prush. Boy, I really enjoy talking to you.

This was fun.

This was so fun. Thank you so much for talking to me today. My due date is in a few days, so I'm glad to be able to labor, and then I couldn't tell you the story.

Wait, is it inappropriate Can I ask you to stand up? Because you do not look prudent. Do you have a big belly? Let me see here. Okay, there it is.

Wishing you a very easy labor.

I just want to thank you for doing what you guys do. I think you're changing with your vulnerability and how much you share and how much you just keep it real.

Thank you, Emma.

Have a good rest of your day.

All right, take care. Bye. Bye.

Hi. Hello.

You have my favorite shirt on.

Really great. Stay, Sean.

Jen, where are you?

I'm in the Bay Area. I'm like 25 minutes outside of San Francisco, but I grew up in Burbank.

Oh, down the street.

How did you end up up there?

I moved up here for college and had every intention of going back to LA and then got a job and met my husband, and I was like, I guess I'm staying. So here we are, 22 years later.

Did you go to Don Cucos?

Girl, you know I did.

I love Don Cucos. I want it right now. What's Don Cucos? Mexican restaurant in Burbank.

Oh, in Burbank.

So good.

I think there's another location now, but they used to have this really good bean dip. Monica, did you ever have it? No.

I know exactly what you guys are talking about. It's right by Bob's.

Yes, near Bob's.

Yes.

I don't think they have it anymore. We were in LA last year and went there to get it because I highted it up to my kids. They didn't have it.

Oh, no. Sad. What line of work are you in up there? Is it tech-related?

I'm a dance teacher and a dancer. I run a program and have a small dance company.

Amazing.

Okay, so you have a cooking disaster story.

I have several, but this is the one I chose because it's the gnarliest, and I had photos to back it up. I am a little bit of a flex in the kitchen.

Counterintuitive because you're a dancer. I would think great balance and agility.

On stage, in the studio, no problem. In the real world in life, not so much.

Have you thought about hanging a dance bar in your kitchen? That might ground you.

Well, during the pandemic, when I was teaching online, my countertop was my dance and the side of my couch. So we've made it all work. So it happens May fifth, so Cinco de Mayo, 2020. So it happened in this house, downstairs. It was beginning of COVID, no masks, no vaccines. I think, California, the whole was maybe still on lockdown. Nobody knew what the fuck was going on. So I was like, Let me be the cool mom, which I'm not, and have a big Cinco de Mayo dinner. I was going to make tostadas and do all the things. Have fun. Don Cucco. I just should have been like, You know what? Forget it. We're ordering pizza. But I'm in the kitchen. Everything's fine. My husband and I are in there, and I don't even know how it happened. I pick up a bowl that had corn in it to move it to the other counter so I could do stuff. And in the blink of an eye, the bowl goes flying up in the air, comes down, smacks our counter, shatters. There's glass everywhere, there's corn everywhere. Two seconds later, I look and there's blood everywhere.

But I'm not registering that it's my blood, and I'm totally in shock.

You're like, Oh, this corn was full of blood.

I look and in my wrist is a beer, arrowhead-shaped piece of the bowl picking straight up.

Oh, my God. A shard.

I In shock, my husband's like, Oh, fuck. I don't even think. I just yank it out.

Oh. Not good.

You're not supposed to do that, I don't think.

You're not. It was already bleeding, and then it was bleeding.

No. Would we use the verb spurting?

Yeah, she's doing a spurting move.

It was down the counter, on my clothes, on the floor. I pull it out. The pain starts to set in, and my husband grabs my arm, puts it under the faucet, and there's other pieces of bowl in my wrist. So we're rinsing it out. I'm screaming at this point. I think I said every expletive there is. My almost six-year-old comes in. He starts hysterically crying because I'm crying. Then my 10-year-old comes. Every Everybody's crying and screaming, yelling, and the dog's trying to eat fucking corn in a bowl. And glass. A glassy corn. He's rinsing out my wrist, finally get it cleared, and you guys, you could see my tendon.

No. We have a picture of it.

I don't want to see it. I can't wait to see her tendon. I don't want to see it. I don't want to do.

I don't. I don't have a picture of that one, but the pictures I did send in are still gross. So Monica, buckle up. But I didn't think to take a picture then because I was just like, Oh, shit. So we see the And then, and I'm like, This is fine. Everything's fine. We're going to be fine. So my husband's getting every rag, bandage. I'm bleeding through everything. And he's like, We need to go to the hospital. I was like, No, I'm fine. It's COVID. You can't even just walk in to the doctors or the urgent care. I don't want to bring my kids. I can't drive myself. And we went back and forth for 20 minutes. I'm losing all this blood. We've gone through our whole emergency kit with all the gaws, everything. And so he's like, No, you need to go. So I call my friend thinking she's going to be on my side and be like, Girl, you're fine. Stay home. I was like, Here's what happened. She's like, You're an idiot. I'm coming to pick you up. I'm like, Okay. She pulled up. Now, you guys, we had no mask, nothing. I hadn't seen her.

We put on safety goggles from her wood shop. I have a pain care mask, bandanas. I think she has a gardening gloves on, and I had a cafeteria lunch lady plastic gloves on because it's all I could get over the bandages. I had to call urgent care first and be like, Can I come in? What's the protocol? Can I come in? And I'm bleeding everywhere. And they're like, Here, let me take your temperature. Here, change your mask. Here, stand outside. I'm like, Can I get some fucking stitches, please? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finally, I got in to see the doctor, and it was still wrapped. So she hadn't been it yet, but she asked me what happened. And she's like, Oh, this is the fifth kitchen accident I've seen this week.

Oh, COVID. People are cooking.

She comes over and takes it all off, and it starts gushing blood. Her face said everything. And she's like, Okay, it's really deep. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to close this. You might have to go to the hospital. I was like, No, we got to figure this out. She goes, Well, you were less than a quarter inch from nicking your artery. She tried to stitch me up, but it was so deep that the stitches just wouldn't work. She finally gets, I don't know, some heavy duty stitches, gets them in, finally stitches it up, and she's like, Okay, you have to keep your arm like this for basically the next three days. So I have to sleep with my arm like this. I can't lift my kids. I can't do anything. It's just I'm excruciating pain. I'm bleeding through bandages for days. She's like, Come back in two weeks. It'll be fine. Two weeks?

I know.

I know. Either you'll be alive or dead. You'll be dead.

I come back and I knew something was up. It was hurting. And she's like, Okay, it's not closed and it's maybe getting infected, but I can't take the stitches out. Cleans it up, wraps me back up. And then she's like, You need to go see an orthopedic wrist surgeon. I go to the orthopedist, and he's like, We need to operate today. Oh, my God. No. And so we go back and forth and I'm like, I'll call you tomorrow if I want to have surgery. I leave. I ultimately don't end up having surgery. I have friends who are a PT and an OT, and the OT specializes in hands. So he was helping me rehab it. But I had to wait another couple of weeks to come back to get the stitches out. At this point, they've been in longer than they should have. I think they were in for five weeks total or something. I go in, Somehow, I didn't even know this was medically possible. My skin had grown over the stitches.

Oh, sure.

My skin turned to like cement. It was the weirdest grossest thing. There's a picture of her. She's like, Okay, I have to cut them out. We got to take them out. It was excruciating because the stitches at that point, they were like sticks, so they just kept snapping every time she was cutting them. It's not even fully closed, but she's like, You can't keep these in. She finally gets them all out, and she said, I don't think you're going to get 100% mobility and strength back. I was like, Great. Okay. Fantastic. So go home. It's healing. I'm doing the rehab exercises, and it took probably another three months for the pain to go away and be able to close my hands. I've never gotten 100% strength or mobility back. Wow. No. The scar, which is pretty small. You can't even see it anymore. But the area around it is numb and tingly at the same time. I screwed up all the nerves in there. It was really bad. That was my kitchen disaster.

Oh, my God. Okay, so now we're going to look at the photo.

E Well, that one looks like a smiley face. But it's still really bad. Oh, yeah.

Here's you guys in your ridiculous outfits. You definitely look like you're on your way to paint a house.

The wrist, for some reason, really makes me feel really like...

Heebes?

Heebes. It was very dramatic for my children. I'm careful in the kitchen, but I've had five other accidents since.

I'm going to ask a crazy follow-up question. Were you on your period?

When I did it? Yeah.

I don't know. Because my wife claims when she's on her period, she has something called energy hands, and it's things just fly up into the sky, like you're describing. This bowl was in your hands and then just took flight. It's a possibility. Do you have any period clumsiness?

I think I do have some PMS. There's a franticness that starts, like a manic energy. Off-kilter. Yeah, you're a little just off-kilter.

I'd like to blame it on that and not my clumsiness.

But maybe you just had oil on the corn all oil, and some of the olive oil got on the bowl.

My husband was in there, so I think I'm just going to blame it on him and be like, This was your fault.

Yeah, he knocked you over.

He must have tripped you a little bit.

It was crazy. Enjoy those photos. Sorry that they're pretty gnarly.

Since we We started doing this, which I don't know how many years we've been doing Armchair Anonymous, but we have seen some photos. We have quadrupled the amount of insane photos I had seen prior in the 45 years before.

It's true. I've listened to every episode, so I can only imagine. I was re-dramatized by the rat in the water bottle thing last week.

I was like, Oh, my God, you guys. We were just talking about the rat. The rat got most people.

It's really gendered. My anecdotal feedback- How gross they get. Yeah, women are really fucking freak. A, I do think women carry water bottles more than men.

I think that's why.

Then maybe women are afraid of mice more than men. I don't know.

No, it's not about being afraid. It's about drinking a dead rat.

No problem.

I remember how you were behaving during the episode. You were creeped.

Rob, roll the tape.

Roll the tape.

I didn't even see photos, and just the visual in my head was sad about.

You've not had a stress-free sip of water since that episode.

I didn't even like water to begin with.

Well, Jen, thank for that tasty story.

Yeah, that was great.

My pleasure. My husband and I have been listening forever to every show, every offshoot, everything. I just really appreciate the conversations and the honesty and the vulnerability around addiction. Next month, my husband will be 10 years sober.

Fuck, yeah.

Congratulations to everyone.

We've been together for almost 20 years now, and the last 10, obviously, have been a lot of work, and he's done a lot of work. But I just feel like Him hearing some things from you, Dax, and things that you've shared. You guys have very similar journeys and experiences. I've listened to day seven a handful of times. Having the perspective of Monica when you love an addict, it's really lonely and it's really scary. You want to protect the person so you don't really share a lot, or at least I didn't with a lot of people. Having that episode in particular and just for years, you guys talking about it has been more impactful than you know on both me and my husband. I think it's Afripo that his 10-year anniversary is in a few weeks, and I get to talk to you guys.

That's so nice.

Well, please tell him congrats from me. That's so mega, man. Ten years is impossible.

He's really mad that he can't be here. He is in San Diego for a work trip, but he told me to say hi. What's his name? His name is Justin.

Oh, that's my favorite name. Have you ever heard me say that? Yes, I have. My cousin Justin, who lives in the East Bay as well, who's the coolest dude I ever knew growing up. Maybe that's her husband. Oh, my God. Are you married to my cousin Justin LeBoe? You do not look like Leanne today. No.

We constantly annoy our kids. One of us will say, Hey, all, from across the house.

Oh, my God, that's so cute.

My kids are going to lip out when they hear this because I didn't tell them I was doing this.

What's their names? Let me shout them out.

My daughter is Stella, and my son is Beckett.

Beckett. Great names. Beckett. Great names. Beckett. Those are solid. Guys, raise as much hell as you can. That's my advice.

And they Don't worry.

All right. Well, take care, Jen. Wonderful meeting you. Thank you.

Have a good day, you guys.

Bye-bye. Do you recall my brother's story? It's very similar to this one. We were out in the middle of fucking nowhere when my mom and dad were still married. So my brother couldn't have been more than eight because we left there when he was eight. All Coke and Pepsi was in these 16. 9oz glass bottles, and they came in an eight-pack. Okay. And my mom was unloading the car, going back and forth from the driveway to the house. And unbeknownst to her, David had decided help, and he had grabbed one of those eight packs of soda, and he dropped it on the floor. When she came in the house, he was lying on his back, and she said the blood had spurred and hit the ceiling. My brother cut his artery as a little boy. He did? Yeah. We're in the middle of fucking nowhere, and she said the blood shot all the way up to the ceiling. She or my dad tourniqueted it with a dish rag, and then my dad drove 6,000 miles an hour to get to the hospital, and obviously, he's alive. But he's always had-Oh, my God. Even if next time you see him, he has a crazy, gnarly scar right across his artery.

It looks for sure. His whole life people have thought.

That's a wonder. Yeah. It's hard. It's a rough scar to have. It's a rough scar to have. A wrist is tough. It's really... Yeah. Well, happy cooking. Everyone be careful out there.

Be careful in the kitchen.

I've had a lot of knife injuries.

Yes, you have.

That are really, really, really, really, really bad.

Very bad. Everyone needs to come over. All right. Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something?

We know a theme song.

Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rindish, on the fly, I rindish.

Enjoy.