Fixing the Love Bowl

Way back in the day, a few years after this

(Hubs and I, circa 1987)

but several years before this

(Hubs and I, circa 2000)

Hubs bought me what I like to call the Love Bowl. He bought it for me from the Pike Place Market in Seattle, one of our favorite places to go waste an afternoon together. It was an incredibly large, hand-crafted ceramic bowl with sponge painted hearts in a cobalt blue around the outside. It was totally 90s and I loved the colors and I loved that Hubs wanted me to have something pretty in my kitchen.

Hubs had ulterior motives, though. See Hubs LOVES my cookies. I don’t like to get all braggy, but I make a ridiculously delicious Chocolate Chip cookie. They’re really good. And not to malign my dearly-departed mother-in-law, but let’s just say that Hubs did not appreciate his Mom’s cookie efforts.

When Hubs bought this bowl, it was with the intention that it become my cookie-making bowl. It cracked me up, because this bowl is HUGE. Monstrously big. It’s bigger than my Tupperware Thatsa bowl which can hold 32-cups of stuff. See how the Love Bowl dwarfs a regular bowl? The Love Bowl is ginormous. It must be a metaphor for Hub’s love for me. Or for my cookies. One of the two.

I tried making cookies in there. Once. Just to see. Let’s just say that hand-crafted ceramic bowls and beaters were not meant for each other.

This bowl became my potato and onion bowl. And my bowl for chips. And whatever else I felt like throwing in there. It has always sat on our kitchen counter in nearly every one of the 21 homes we have lived in together. And, surprisingly, it survived every move. We have always packed it carefully, but despite our best efforts, it developed a couple of cracks along the way.

Have you ever seen the movie, “How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days?” where she buys the Love Fern?

And then it was all,

well….

Nothing major happened until this last move. It was simply one move too many for the Love Bowl. It sat on my counter, broken, sad and neglected for several months until one day when I just needed to do a simple project. Something quick and easy that I could just say, “Done!” in a few simple steps.

This required my good friend, the Gorilla, to help me out.

Now, I absolutely adore the Gorilla. He is strong and mighty and gets the job done. However, I’m less enamored of my inability to use Gorilla glue without gluing myself as well as my project. It’s totally a user-error kind of thing. I’m a klutz and I know it.

I have discovered the fact that fingertips covered in Gorilla glue can not be read by a fingerprint scanner, so, you know, that might be helpful information for any future crime-spree I may want to embark upon. Glad I figured that out. #youneverknow

This photo is deceptively innocent. See how far away all my appendages are from the glue nozzle? By the end of the project, nearly my entire left palm was covered as were nearly all my fingertips. *Sigh*

Maybe it’s not really fair to blame my klutz gene on this one. Maybe I’m just a sloppy gluer, which would make since I frequently glue myself, even when I’m using a hot glue gun. That’s less fun than being covered in Gorilla Glue, btw.

In spite of myself, I was able to get the Love Bowl repaired.

It’s back to doing its job of holding potatoes, onions, and chips, like a good Love Bowl was meant to do.

The glue eventually came off. I tried sanding it off and got a good portion off that way. It took a few days, though, of manually typing in my computer password before I could use my handy-dandy fingerprint reader to sign in again. #firstworldproblem

We are working on our kitchen renovation, so I don’t have a beauty shot of the Love Bowl on the counter. It’s hiding back behind the microwave until I figure out a new location for the microwave. We bought the microwave a few weeks before we knew we’d be moving into this house and like a lot of our stuff, it doesn’t fit without some sort of modification going on.

I really will show you my kitchen plan in a day or two. My depression has been in high-gear this winter and it has stopped me in my tracks quite a bit. I’m slowly climbing my way free and will be back to fighting form soon.

Have you ever needed to do a quick project you can call “Done?” Do you have a Love Bowl or its equivalent? Anyone else a klutz or is that just me?