{sponsored} my "do over" moment

I’m a big fan of second chances. And there are many moments that I wish I could do over – some with hopefully funnier outcomes than others. There’s one that I can think of that’s a little more humorous than, say, a failed engagement. (If I could do over that moment, I wouldn’t have said yes!)

Really, though, this do-over moment has to do with my former landlord, a cobbler and not getting most of our rental deposit back.

Years ago, we lived in a townhouse nearby. I was a faithful tenant. The couple I rented from liked me enough to not even question it when I had my boyfriend move in (I ended up marrying that guy, and we’re celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary this year.) I’m not a fan of moving, and I stayed in that place for over 3 years. I always paid my rent on time, and never caused problems. A year after we got married, we made an offer on a house. I let the landlords know that we’d be moving in 60 days.

Yes, I gave a 60-day notice. Mistake number 1. I should have waited and given a 30-day notice. They were annoying, upon learning we were moving.

We moved the first week of a month, but paid through the middle of that month. I spent a lot of time cleaning that place, which happened to have carpet. I guess the landlords weren’t fans of my cleaning job and they complained about the cream colored carpet not being clean enough (after three years of foot traffic through the place) – and the oven. The woman lectured me over the state of the oven, claiming that the day she cleaned the oven, she would clean and then cry and clean and then cry. And we had a conversation that went like this:

Her: Jaime, I don’t know what you burned, but it took me hours to clean it. 
Me: I don’t recall burning anything, and I did clean it. (Sidenote: honestly, I didn’t remember burning anything.)
Her: Well, it looked like you burned a cobbler. 
Me: I’ve never made a cobbler.
Her: It definitely looked like a cobbler exploded. 
Me: I don’t even know what goes into a cobbler, much less how to make one. I definitely didn’t burn a cobbler. 

And the conversation continued a little while longer like that.

When I was recalling the conversation to my husband, it hit me. The dinosaur cake I made for my birthday a few months earlier. It was one of those pull apart cakes, and I had filled the cups too much, so some spilled over.

I loved that cake. I thought it was cute!

So I did burn something, but it was definitely not a cobbler.

What would I have done differently? I would have been called the woman back to let her know that I burned a dinosaur cake. Just to see what her reaction would have been. My next do-over moment? Not hiring a friend’s husband to replace the carpet in that place. I ended up paying more money to move out, and we still didn’t get our deposit back. It was the first place I’ve ever lost my deposit on.

And yet another do-over moment? It would have been learning to make a blueberry cobbler earlier than 2010. I’ve made several now (with blueberries from my mom’s garden) and I’ve never burned one – and they haven’t lasted more than two days in our house. They’re that good.

The cobbler – that had too many blueberries, and not enough self-rising flour – before it went into the oven.

I was compensated for this post as a member of Clever Girls Collective. All the opinions expressed here are my own.