Pick a Plague, Any Plague

My Fix-it-Up Feller is putting new flooring in my sunroom today. This linoleum represents much more than just an easy-care, scratch-resistant, simulated stone tile finish with a 15-year warranty. It is the final stage of recovery from my leaky skylights problem, which I started dealing with two days less than two years ago. I know this because I blogged about it (See? Blogs are good for something!), and also because my insurance agent has reminded me multiple times that Thursday is the last day that he can pay out on my claim. With a little luck, I’ll just make it.

Here’s a play-by-play of what has happened in the months since that storm back in October 2005:

A “Preferred Service Provider” contractor guy, recommended by my insurance company, came to my house and pulled down the ruined drywall, only to find that the leaky skylights had caused quite a bit of damage. The wall and part of the ceiling and part of the subfloor would all have to be replaced, and maybe the roof, too, which the insurance company might or might not pay for. An adjustor would have to get up there to inspect the roof to be sure, but by that time, there was snow up there, and the adjustor wouldn’t be poking around on any roofs until spring. So I stapled plastic sheeting over the rotten studs and exposed insulation and waited.

In the spring, an adjustor climbed up on the roof and said that the insurance company would pay for most (but not all) of a new roof. A few weeks later I hired a roofer guy, and soon had a fresh layer of shingles, a skylight-free sunroom, and noticeably less anxiety every time it rained.

Because the sunroom is adjacent to the kitchen, I decided that when the new sunroom flooring went in, I might as well replace the flooring in the kitchen as well, so it would all match. But the kitchen was in serious need of some love, which I figured should probably happen before the new flooring. Thus, last spring’s kitchen-painting project.

Another insurance adjustor paid me a visit, inside the house this time, and said that the insurance company would not be paying for the necessary repairs to the walls and ceiling and floor, since that damage had been caused by the ongoing skylight leak and not the October storm. They would, however, pay for new drywall and new vinyl flooring. Which could not go in until the damaged walls and subfloor were replaced, at my expense. By then it was fall again.

More plastic and a long winter of angst later, in the spring I found my Fix-it-Up Feller. He repaired the walls and ceiling, replaced the drywall and installed two new sliding-glass deck doors. He also removed the giant wasp nest that had been hiding under the rotten portion of the subfloor, and magically eliminated my ant problem (Huzzah!). All this, he did for considerably less than the “Preferred Service Providers” quoted me two years ago. (“Preferred” my arse.)

Over this past summer, I painted the new walls and ceiling (because I just can’t get enough painting), installed new ceiling fan lights in the sunroom and in the kitchen (again with the matching), and then spent the last couple of weekends ripping up what was left of the vinyl flooring and the damaged underlayment from the old sunroom floor. It turns out the Goddess is a real badass with a pry bar and a hammer. Consider yourself warned.

Which, finally, brings us to today’s flooring installation. Everything that used to be in the sunroom is now in the garage or the dining room or the living room. It’s all a major mess at the moment, the worst part being that I had to dis-assemble the computer, cable modem and router, so the Goddesses are 100% offline at home today. (I hope it’s just for today.)

When this process began, my insurance company informed me that I am only allowed to file a claim once every two years. At the time that seemed very scary. But now, suddenly, I’m in the home stretch, two days away from that two-year mark.

Bring on the hail, fire, frogs and locusts.

Maybe With a Squeeze of Fresh Lime

It’s been a few days since I posted, so I thought that today I’d share the e-mail I wrote this morning in response to my lovely sister’s inquiry as to how I’m doing:

Well, yesterday I took the morning off of work to try and fix a pipe that was leaking water all over my basement. I thought I had fixed it, and it IS better, but it's still dripping. I think I put a part on wrong, which means I have to take it all apart again. Just about every six months, it seems, some random bit of my house starts dripping/leaking/spurting water. It's awesome.

Last night I busted a DemiGoddess (who shall remain nameless) in the middle of chatting online in Facebook. I've told the Demis that they're not allowed to do online chat rooms, and My Space is forbidden. I never mentioned Facebook specifically, but given that it wasn't until my third inquiry that she finally admitted what she was doing, I'm pretty sure she knew I would not be okay with it. The cable modem is in my purse until further notice.

Yesterday after a visit to her friend's house, the other DemiGoddess (who shall also remain nameless) walked in the door and said to me, "This is going in my memoir, and you are NOT going to look good." My offense? Making her walk home from her friend’s house, which is half a mile away (the same distance as the coffee shop that she walks to at least once a week). With gas at $3.40 a gallon, I will not be driving her a half mile to anywhere.

I didn’t bother to mention that the only reason she got to go to her friend's house after school at all was because I was so distracted by the dripping pipe yesterday morning that I forgot to tell her I had changed my mind about letting her go based on the latest grade update on the school website. Specifically, her grade in Chorus, which was a letter that a person would basically have to be sleeping through Chorus class to receive.

After fighting unsuccessfully with our CD-R drive and ending up listening to the playlists on the Demis' iPods in the car on the way to the lake for Mother’s Day weekend, last week I finally broke down and ordered a refurbished 4 GB Nano for myself. I'm simultaneously wracked with guilt over spending money on such a frivolity and obsessively checking the "Order Status" link on the Apple website to see when it’s coming and where it is today (Sacramento).

Other than that I've pretty much been driving the Demis around (to places that are more than half a mile away) and watching crappy-ass baseball on TV.

Except for last night's game, which was magnificent.

I bought a bottle of cherry lambic at Trader Joe's last week and I'm thinking seriously about drinking the entire thing tonight while I watch the "Lost" season finale.

Aren't you glad you asked?

A Little Bit Like the Fireplace at the Cabin

My washing machine crapped out again a couple of weeks ago, which, while annoying, didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because (as I’ve written previously) I was wise enough to purchase the extended warranty when I bought the washer four years ago. So I will not have to pay for this latest $800 repair, just like I didn’t have to pay for the four previous $300 repairs on what has proved to be a highly unreliable home appliance. (I am not strong with the math, but it seems to me they would have been better off buying me a new washer by now, no?)

In fact, however, this latest crapping out has turned out to be a big, giant, smelly pile of a deal, because the repairman can’t fix my washing machine until all the parts arrive from the manufacturer, and to date only two of the four parts he ordered at the time of his first visit—three weeks ago—have arrived.

When the DemiGoddesses were little and we lived in an apartment, schlepping the laundry was a weekly ritual. Our building had only one coin-operated washer and dryer for eight apartments, and those machines were in constant use by other tenants. Not that it really mattered to us, of course, since we were always too broke to pay to use them anyway. For years, every Sunday morning, I hauled both kids and a carload of dirty clothes over to my parents’ house, and then stayed there all day long while I washed and dried load after load after endless bloody load. When we finally bought a house that had a washer and dryer, I swore that I would never complain about doing the laundry again, because my days of hauling baskets of dirty socks and underpants to and from the car were finally OVER.

But about a week and a half ago, strange aromas began to emanate from the DemiGoddesses. I could see that they had stopped wearing socks altogether. I did not ask about underwear. As much as I hated to admit it, I could no longer deny the inevitable. Laundry would have to be schlepped.

So two Thursdays ago I left work early, picked up $30 in quarters at the bank, and took a mountain of clothes to the nearest self-serve laundromat. I had never visited it before and, in fact, had only found the place by looking it up on the internet, even though it turned out to be less than two miles from my house and I have probably driven right past it a thousand times.


I fully expected the laundromat experience to suck rocks. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the place clean (relatively), quiet, and completely empty when I arrived. It smelled reassuringly of fabric softener, and, best of all, there were four triple-sized washers. I washed, dried and folded every article of clothing in the Goddess household in less than two hours.

By yesterday the Demis were running low on clean jeans again, and I was astonished to find myself actually looking forward to another visit to my good friend #40 Mega Washer. I even invited DemiGoddess the Younger to come with me. And, once there, she had to agree with me that it was strangely soothing, watching the suds and the water and her favorite jeans swish, swish, swishing in circles behind the round glass door.

Snow Day

So, we got a little snow.

It started yesterday morning, with predictions of up to 20 inches, and by lunchtime enough had accumulated on the roads that pretty much everyone at my workplace headed for home. I left at 1:30, and because I was still a little achy in spots from shoveling the dump we got over the weekend, I decided to stop at Target on the way to pick up an extra shovel. We already have two, but there are three of us in the Goddess household, and I wouldn’t want anyone to have to miss out on the fun.

I searched all over the store without seeing a single snow shovel anywhere. It’s March in Minnesota, three feet of snow is in the forecast, and all they’re selling at Target is frilly Easter dresses, flip flops and swim goggles. I could have picked up a very nice new set of patio furniture, but I still kind of like my old set:

Anyone up for a barbecue?

Not one freaking snow shovel. God Bless America.

The first time I cleared the driveway was around 5:00 p.m., and at that time there were about ten inches on the ground.

All evening, the Demis kept their eyes fixed on the bottom of the TV screen as the list of announced school closings scrolled past. Around 9:00 p.m. we received word that our city had called the first snow day in fifteen years. There was much rejoicing. Shortly after that came confirmation that my workplace would also be closed, and there was further rejoicing. Although, since I was tired and my back hurt, it was mostly on the inside. A tiny fist pump and a "whoo" was about all I could manage.

I went out again at 10:30 p.m. and shoveled another four or five inches, and by then I was throwing snow up onto piles that were a good four feet high on either side of the driveway.



Super fun.

So today we're all home. The snow stopped falling some time during the night, and the DemiGoddess have both gone sledding with friends. I’ll need to get out there and clear off the driveway once more before I’ll be able to get my car out of the garage. But I think I’ll wait until this ibuprofen kicks in first.

My New Refrigerator has Every Convenience, it’s Gonna Make Life Easy for Me

So sang DemiGoddess the Elder and I last night as we danced together around the kitchen. She is very into the Talking Heads these days (have I mentioned how exceptionally cool my children are?).

Our new refrigerator doesn’t exactly have every convenience. There is no built-in water filtration system or even an automatic ice maker. In fact, from the outside, the new refrigerator looks a lot like the old refrigerator:


Inside is where the real magic happens. Slide-out, divided, spill-proof, tempered-glass shelves! A light in the freezer! In-door adjustable compartments that can hold a gallon jug of milk! And, best of all, I now have a drawer for nothing but cheese!


That’s not the only new acquisition in the Goddess household, either. I am also the proud owner of a brand new timing belt and muffler, which were installed on my aged but trusty Honda Civic yesterday morning. (Tax refund in… tax refund out…)

And, because I am so very clever, I dropped my car off at the shop on Monday night, so that my fix-it-up chappie could get started installing the new timing belt and muffler bright and early on Tuesday morning. Which he did. Right after he called me at 6:30 a.m. to tell me that my car had been broken into overnight and my stereo was gone.

I felt so violated. Why would someone do that to my car? And, come to think of it, why would someone bother to steal a six-year-old stereo that wasn’t worth all that much when it was new??

The very apologetic fix-it-up chappie agreed that it was a major drag, but assured me that the shop has insurance for that sort of thing. So yesterday's final major purchase was a brand new stereo for my car.

It can play MP3 files and has an auxiliary jack for hooking up the Demis’ iPods, and I did not have to pay a thing for it, unless one counts the emotional cost of picking my car up from the shop and succumbing to an overwhelming urge to check under all the seats for any nasty remnants that the stereo thieves may have left behind.

They were exceptionally tidy thieves, it seems. They left no trace, save for a few screws lying neatly in my cup holder, and the gaping hole in my dashboard.

But, getting back to the refrigerator. As I transferred all of our old magnets, business cards, photos and whatnot from the old refrigerator door to the new one, I took the opportunity to thin things out a little. However, this little gem, compliments of DemiGoddess the Younger, will be staying:


I'm so glad she's putting that Teen Vogue subscription to good use.

Three Gray Hairs

New ones. Right there on my right temple this morning. The tweezer is never far from my bathroom mirror these days.

I’ve promised the woman who cuts my hair that soon, very soon, I will visit her and ask her to do The Coloring. I have never done The Coloring before, ever. There are precious few aspects of my physical appearance that I genuinely kind of like, but the color of my hair is near the top of the list. I’d like it to stay the way it is.

My neighbor Leah has a lot of friends who live in lakeside homes in the more affluent Minneapolis suburbs, friends who sail competitively on the weekends, wear designer fashions, and have dazzlingly white teeth and perfect manicures. They’re all married and have small children, and are not (SO not) my usual crowd.

So last weekend at Leah's birthday party, I spent most of the night outside on the deck with the smokers and Tammy, who is also from our neighborhood. Tammy sails on the weekends, too, and she drives a BMW, but she, like me, is a single mom with older children, and after hearing about her Home Depot adventures, I knew she was one person at that party I could hang with.

Well into the evening, out on the deck, the topic of conversation turned to botox. One party guest confessed to getting regular injections around her eyes (“I get them every three months. They only cost about $300 each!). Another said she gets them in her chest (!). My favorite, though, was the woman who said she was going to have collagen put in her heels because her feet are ugly. Tammy and I exchanged a look before she said out loud what I had been thinking. “You pay someone $300 every three months to inject poison into your face? I really don’t get that.”

At first, didn’t get it, either. But then I remembered an evening a couple of weeks before, when Tammy had mentioned some kind of magic lotion that she’d picked up on a recent trip to New York. “It’s like botox in a lotion!” She had exclaimed, applying it to the skin around the corners of her eyes. “See? My face doesn’t even MOVE!” And then I remembered my own tweezers. I’m pretty sure that botox isn’t for me, not even in lotion form, but really, isn’t paying a colorist to hide my gray more or less the same thing? Aren’t we all, in our own way, dreading something, whether it’s the wrinkles or the ugly feet or the gray hairs? In the end, the unfortunate truth is that I’m no less superficial than any of those botox babes.

I haven’t decided yet how many gray hairs I will tolerate before I make the appointment for The Coloring. I guess it will be when I can no longer keep them at bay with the tweezers. Until this morning there were only four gray strands I was keeping a regular eye on. Every time one of them grew long enough to be visible, I’d yank it out again. But today there were three more, all at once. They, like the others, have been temporarily banished. And I know exactly where these new three came from:

#1—Parent orientation night. And probably the post-orientation heavy drinking.

#2—Two days’ worth of family drama involving my sisters, my sister-cousins, a couple of second cousins (one of whom is a convicted felon, and the other of whom is an overbearing ass) and the cabin that we all jointly own.

#3—Yesterday’s visit from the contractor and the insurance adjustor, who decided that the outside wall of my sunroom, the one with the water damage, will need to be completely knocked out and rebuilt. Look! Carpenter ants! Oh, and, by the way? Insurance isn’t going to pay for most of this. Sorry!

So at work this morning, fully tweezed but still teetering on the brink of completely losing my sh*t, I couldn’t help but be impressed by my own super-human powers of self control when the Marketing Deity plopped his generously-kissed seat down into the chair in my cubicle and tried to entice me into a wager on this weekend’s Twins/Yankees series.

I said to him, “Did you come here just to torment me? Because the Yankees are already in first place, Silva is pitching tonight, and I am in NO MOOD.”

He took me at my word.

I’d Invite You Over, But You’d Have to Park in Duluth

The street in front of my house has been torn up for a couple of weeks now. What used to be blacktop is now a wide muddy trough full of bulldozers and blinky hazard markers and large men in orange vests. The trough is a good three feet below where the street used to be, and the curbs and driveway aprons are completely gone, so a steep gravel ramp temporarily allows me to get in and out of my driveway. Assuming that an earth mover hasn’t parked in front of my house, that is.

The work is scheduled to continue through the summer, and the thought of that is exhausting, because I never know from one day to the next what I’ll find when I arrive at my street. Some days one end is open, some days that same end has a huge hole full of workers in the middle of it, and I have to circle the block and try the other end. Sometimes that end turns out to have a giant pile of gravel blocking the way, and I have to circle back around and try the other end again. A more evolved individual might find this recurring challenge exciting, but I am not a person who likes having my routine f*cked with. At the end of the day, I just want to get my sorry self home, I don’t want to have to strategize new ways to get into my own blessed driveway on a daily basis.

To make matters worse, the parking lot of the building where I work is also being re-surfaced. Half of the lot looks eerily like the street in front of my house, which means that the number of available parking spaces has been cut in half. Yeah. You do the math. I’ve been arriving early enough in the mornings to find a spot without too much trouble, but on the one day when I made the mistake of leaving for lunch, the only available parking space when I returned was next to a dumpster. In Winnipeg.

Last Friday, after dodging a steamroller and weaving my way through the orange cones, I arrived home from work to find a bright pink notice attached to my front door informing me that, due to some utility work, the water would be turned off for most of the day on Monday. The notice included instructions for filling the bathtub with water, which could then be used to keep the toilet tank flushing until the water was turned back on.

The DemiGoddesses are astonishingly capable young women, but I really didn’t want them to have to deal with that all day. Knowing that one of The Ex’s sisters was in town with her new baby and would be staying at The Ex’s parents’ house, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, and called The Ex’s mother to see if the Demis could spend Sunday night and Monday at her house as well. That way they could visit with their aunt and the baby, and be away from our house until the water was back on.

It seemed like a reasonable plan, except that making the arrangements turned out to involve much more hemming and hawing, taking of votes and general drama than I had anticipated, for reasons that rest entirely on shoulders of The Ex and the Universally Hated Step Psycho. Though the details are highly entertaining and I would very much love to share them, it seems that The Ex has been reading this blog for some time now and has taken issue with a few of the things I have written here. In spite of that, relations of late have been cordial (sort of), and for the sake of the children and my own serenity, I am trying to play nice. So I’m not going to post the specifics of what transpired. If you want the dirt, you’ll have to e-mail me.

In the end, the Demis did spend the night at their grandparents’ house. They had some quality time with their aunt and the baby, and enjoyed a lovely day with their grandmother on Monday, including going out for lunch. So I was feeling pretty good about having handled that mini-crisis until I arrived home from work on Monday to find another notice on my door, informing me that the water was going to be turned off again on Tuesday.

Scattered

A lot is going on lately. I haven’t written about it because between all the details and the heavy-duty allergy meds I am taking so that I don’t go after my own flesh with a power sander, my brain is all over the place and I can barely string together a coherent thought, much less a passable blog post.

The good news is that my kitchen is finally done. The cabinets are back in place, and everything is so clean and pretty that I’ve almost forgotten the tears and sweat and swearing and handfuls of ibuprofen that got it that way. I want to move my bed into the kitchen so the lovely lavender walls and fresh white cabinets, illuminated by summer sunshine, will be the first thing I see when I wake up every morning. I’d totally do it, too, if not for the ants.

My house is no longer leaky, thanks to the new roof that my insurance company was kind enough to pay for, even though I didn’t ask them to since I didn’t know I needed it. The dripping skylights are gone, but the rest of the sunroom remains unfinished, and I seem to be having a lot of trouble reaching the contractor who came to look at it two weeks ago—the contractor who is supposed to be replacing the original contractor, who started the work last March but quit some time during the weeks while I was waiting for the snow to melt so the insurance adjustor could climb up and inspect the roof that I didn’t know needed replacing.

My mom had a birthday (happy birthday mom!), so the Goddess sisters had a birthday dinner and gift to plan and organize. And, of course, the Demis have only a few days of school remaining, so all sorts of wrap-up activities are going on as well.

A day after they finish school we’re heading to Upper Michigan to the lake, meaning that a case of cabin fever is severly compounding my scattered-ness. I’ve been compulsively writing and revising packing lists and menus, shopping for groceries and acquiring my requisite stash of trashy magazines.

Cabin trips are the only time all year when I’m willing to pay actual money for Us Weekly and People, and it’s all I can do to leave them unread until we get to the lake. Which makes it that much sweeter once I survive the drive, get the car unpacked, and can finally kick back on the porch, gaze out at the lake, sigh contentedly, and then dive headfirst into those pristine pages of glossy celebrity gossip. With a cold beer to wash it all down.

I’ve been to London and I’ve been to France, but there’s still no place in the world more beautiful than that.

Bargains Galore! One Day Only!

Next weekend my neighborhood is holding its annual garage sale. Much like childbirth and international travel, I’ve found it takes about two years to forget what a pain in the arse holding a garage sale is before I start thinking that it might be a good idea to give it a whirl again.

And yes, it was two summers ago that I hauled a carload of delightful bargain-priced treasures to my friend CombatGirl’s driveway for a garage sale at her house. In spite of a newspaper ad and strategically placed signs, the only thing that made that effort worthwhile was selling three children’s books to the Viva half of our local cable-access celebrity couple, Viva and Jerry (“Two bucks, two bucks!”).

My brush with fame made the day exciting, if not particularly lucrative. The few items I sold were mostly things that CombatGirl herself purchased, and the carload of crap came back to the basement, where it sat until last Saturday.

Amazing how easy it is to ignore the steady accumulation of junk in the backs of the closets and the darker corners of the basement. And amazing how, even after I’ve unearthed an overwhelming mountain of stuff, there doesn’t seem to be any less in those closets and basement corners. My storage spaces are like Strega Nona’s pasta pot.

This time around, our sale will include a large number of toys that the DemiGoddesses have outgrown. For most of the weekend, the three of us sorted through and priced a boatload of books, assembled puzzles and games, and tried to make the Barbies presentable. Yesterday afternoon I replaced the batteries in two Furbys, a Techno robot puppy, a WuvLuv, and two mechanical hamsters that twirl tiny plastic nunchucks and sing “Kung Fu Fighting.” I bought the batteries at the dollar store, so I figure if I can break even on those, I’ll still be ahead of the game.

We are not materialistic people. The Demis hardly ever received new toys outside of birthdays and Christmas. But the bounty of playthings those two have amassed over the years is nothing short of obscene. Three giant Rubbermaid tubs full of stuffed animals? IS TOO MANY. There are children starving in Africa, and my kids have enough freaking Beanie Babies to populate a small Asian country. How did this happen?

The point, of course, is to get rid of stuff. This time, when the garage sale is done, none of it is coming back into the house. Our local Goodwill has a drive-through for donations, and whatever is left at the end of the day is going, going, gone. I’m not expecting to be able to retire on Saturday’s garage sale income, but it would be nice if we could take in enough cash to catch a movie.

Or, maybe, take a trip to Italy…

All Hope For The Future is Riding On Hashbrowns

The DemiGoddesses are taking standardized tests at school today and tomorrow. They love these test days because they get to point out to me that all the teachers reminded them to bring several sharpened #2 pencils and to eat a good, BIG breakfast on both test days.


“We must have eggs! And bacon! And hashbrowns!” they cheerfully reported, not actually saying but clearly implying that I will get up early and I will cook, or they will both do badly and their tragically (and entirely preventable) low test scores will keep them way, way out of the honors program and will not only dash any hope of scholarship money but also certainly make acceptance to decent colleges out of the question. Their resulting lifetimes of poverty and dismal dead-end jobs will be all. My. Fault.

Oh, the humanity.

In spite of their very clear instructions, I decided to nix the hashbrowns (they take too long and the carb overload would have only made them too sleepy to think). And since every egg in the house had been hard-boiled and dyed for Easter, their test day power meal turned out to consist of leftover Easter eggs and turkey bacon, along with a quick fruit salad that I threw together with bananas, peach yogurt and mixed berries. Because blueberries are brain food, of course.

It wasn’t exactly a breakfast bonanza, but it was a step up from their usual Eggo waffles, and I think I did pretty well considering that my electric skillet is still buried somewhere in the sunroom. (How much more efficient cooking becomes when there are no doors on any of the cabinets!)

The truth is that it was all for show, anyway. The Demis always do well on these tests, and I am really not one bit worried about their scores.

Besides which, getting up early this morning turned out to be easy due to the anxious dreams I had all night about being late for the agonizing three-day-meetings and forgetting to wake the children in time for their pre-standardized-test hashbrowns.

Still. Painting.

Friday I spent the day scrubbing years of accumulated grease and grime off my kitchen cabinets, and removing the cupboard doors and all the hardware.

Saturday I taped and primed the cabinets and woodwork. Applying “Super Gripper” primer was a little bit like painting with glue, but even so, one coat didn’t completely cover the dark stain. So I taped and primed again. After that I had to stop because it was 2:00 a.m., and I was out of tape. Again.

Yesterday I couldn't buy any more because all the stores were closed for Easter, which is probably just as well. After brunch with the family at my mom and dad’s house, My Ho took the DemiGoddesses and me to the Twins game, and I spent much of the day nibbling chocolate, picking primer off my person (I look like I have some kind of horrible blotchy white peeling skin disease), and not taping or painting anything at all. Not even a drawer front.

Which brings us to today, otherwise known as day eleven of my kitchen improvement adventure. My microwave and toaster oven remain on the dining room table. The silverware is still buried under a growing pile of mail on the buffet. The stove and refrigerator are covered with plastic dropcloths and miscellaneous hardware items. One side of the kitchen sink contains dirty dishes, the other side contains a bucket of TSP substitute. Little bits of wallpaper have been tracked all over the house. The DemiGoddesses have lived on takeout food for over a week, and today I spent my lunch hour at Home Depot buying drawer pulls and (surprise!) more tape.

The chaos that has consumed my house is making me crazy. But I will persevere. I will endure.

I WILL BE VICTORIOUS.

Hello Again My Darling Beloveds. It’s been too, too long.

Tonight is the Twins home opener—and just now I accidentally typed “hope opener,” which, in a way, it is as well. Because the Twins’ first two series in Toronto and Cleveland were, let’s say, disappointing. But tonight they return to our own glorious Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, to face Oakland on the home Astroturf, before legions of fans who adore them unconditionally. The fans who love them even when they are plagued by both a weak offense and, remarkably, a less-than-stellar defense. The fans who continue to choose to ignore the 2005 season, and also the eerie similarities between it and the last six games.

The Twins will bask in all of that unconditional love and will be inspired to turn it around and begin fulfilling the potential that we insist they have. Tony Batista will become a third-base powerhouse. Designated hitter Rondell White will actually, you know, get some hits. And Brad Radke will strike out every batter in the first inning. And the second. And the third.

I need this blind optimism. I need a “hope opener” to counteract the growing sense of inadequacy I feel when I look at my poor, chaotic kitchen. Because, in spite of having completed painting the ceiling yesterday, late last night as I looked around at the mess, as I thought of the days of work that still lie ahead, a horrible thought came to me. A tiny voice inside my head asked, “What if, when all this work is done, this kitchen is just as ratty looking as it was before? What if it ends up just as ratty looking, only in a different color?”

Born Blue

The painting of the cupboards was the part I was dreading. Removing the hardware, cleaning, sanding--all of the prep work was going to take a lot of work, not to mention the actual painting. The walls? That was supposed to be the easy part. I was just gonna rip off that peeling wallpaper, clean off the glue and be good to go.

Except that underneath that peeling wallpaper was another layer of peeling wallpaper. And underneath that second layer of peeling wallpaper was a third layer of wallpaper that was not peeling at all. In fact, that third layer, with its vertical stripes of fat yellow and orange flowers (which, actually, complemented the exposed insulation in the sunroom rather nicely), appeared determined to stay exactly where it was. And given that it had probably been exactly where it was since 1964, I knew I was in for a battle that would make the wallpaper nightmare I once defeated in the bathroom look like a pedicure at Spalon Montage.

One day and two bottles of Dif Stripping Gel Spray later, I was miserable and aching and still had two and a half walls to go. That’s when I happened to notice the fine print on the back of the Dif spray bottle, under the words “Safe! Fresh Scent!” where it said, “This product contains chemicals that the State of California has determined to cause cancer.”

Clearly I needed a new tactic, but the thought of making a trip to the hardware store to try and rent a steamer only enhanced my misery.

My Ho happened to call just then. He asked, “Can I bring you anything?” Because he is good like that. I knew he was talking about lunch or maybe even an Icee, but in a self-pity drenched moment of snark I answered, “Yeah, you can bring me a steamer. Do you happen to have one of those handy?” There was a brief pause, and then My Ho, who is now my hero, spoke these fateful words:

“I have one of those little Scunci steamers. Would that work?”

I nearly wept with joy.

I (Heart) You
Through the course of the day yesterday, I discovered traces of two more wallpaper layers. For those of you who are not so good with the numbers, that’s a total of FIVE.

Relieved of their unsightly burden, the walls in my kitchen have now been stripped all the way down to the paint they were born in. Way back in 1940, it came into the world a shade of pale, pre-war baby blue.

It's very sweet, really.

Spring is Here, and You Know What That Means

Every year about this time, for just a few weeks, small window of opportunity opens. The weather becomes warm enough to finally crack the windows and let some fresh air in, but summer’s heat and humidity have yet to descend. The dark months of winter give way to spring sunshine that illuminates the dingy, neglected corners of the house. The robins have returned to the yard, baseball is back on TV, and it’s time for me to paint something.

This year, I’m overdue. What had become a ritual rite of spring for me was thrown off last year by my second, part-time job. The window of opportunity came and went while I was busily straightening stacks of Perfect Fit V-Neck Tees and pitching Old Navy credit cards for grocery money. But now, with a new floor scheduled to be installed later this spring, the time has come to undertake my most ambitious project to date. I’m going to paint my kitchen. Cabinets, too.

When we moved into our house back in the summer of 1997, I looked at the pale blue and mauve wallpaper border in the kitchen, the one with the precious little gingerbread-style houses and the kitties and puppies printed on it. I looked at that wallpaper border and I thought, “That hideousness has got to GO. IMMEDIATELY.”

Nine years later, it’s still there. And daily, it mocks me. One by one, the knobs on the cabinets have broken and detached themselves. The dark stained wood of the cupboards has grown progressively darker and more grimy.

I would love to rip out the whole mess and replace it with brand new cabinets and countertops. Or, even better, get rid of the entire leaky, dingy, crawling-with-ants (Already! In April!) house and buy me a fancy new one with a giant, sparkling kitchen featuring ample storage space and task lighting. But given the budget constraints involved, the only thing I will be replacing is the hardware. And maybe a that miserable kitchen faucet. Maybe.

Doors and hardware will be removed. Surfaces will be cleaned and sanded and cleaned again. Professional paint store people will be consulted. There will be priming, and there WILL be painting. Emboldened by past victories in first one bedroom, and then another, by the transformation I imparted in the sunroom, and by my triumph over unimaginable adversity in the bathroom (and the nightmare wallpaper that had been ionically bonded to the walls since 1947), I am braced to give it a go. Tomorrow, I will embark on a reconnaissance mission to Home Depot.

Pray for me.

Friday Haiku: Paranoia

A guy came to my house to measure my floor this morning. The flooring place had told me he’d arrive between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m., and when he knocked on the door at 9:45, I did exactly what Oprah and Dr. Phil say you’re never supposed to do. I opened the door and let him in. Without asking for ID, and without first calling the flooring place to confirm that he was their employee. As soon as he was in the door, I remembered all the precautions that women are supposed to take before they let a strange man into the house, and I remembered every daytime talk show horror story I’ve seen dramatically re-enacted. But by then, it was too late.

As he kicked the snow off his boots, he commented on the cold outside. It was about eight below zero out there, with something like a -20 wind chill (gotta love winter in Minnesota). Trying to make lighthearted conversation, I replied, “Yeah, it was freezing in here a little while ago. I have the thermostat programmed lower during the day when I’m at work, and I forgot to override it this morning.” He chuckled politely, and I realized I’d just told him that my house is usually empty at this time of day.

I showed him to the sunroom. He took out his measuring tape and a note pad, and as he went to work, I wondered if the flooring company does criminal background checks on these guys before sending them out to people’s houses. He didn’t really look like a serial killer. But they never do.

Ten minutes later, he had the measurements he needed. He said that if I want sheet vinyl in that room, it’ll probably have to wait until spring, because the adhesive doesn’t work unless the temperature of the floor is above 70 degrees.

Then he packed up his tape measure and his notepad, and he left…

...without making me
into a lampshade, which was
nice of him, I think.

The Joys of Homeownership, Part II

The work on my water-damaged sunroom began on Monday morning, although I wasn’t there to see it happen. The crew arrived after I left for work and were gone by the time I brought the ailing elder Demi home from school over my lunch hour.

I know they had been there because the drywall, some of the linoleum flooring, and part of the ceiling in that room are gone. A portion of the subfloor was replaced, and there’s new insulation in the wall, but there’s no new drywall and the ceiling remains open because it’s wet, wet, wet up there. The second time he called me Monday morning, the contractor said he’d send out a roof guy to look around up there and try to figure out the source of the moisture problem. They won’t be able to replace the ceiling or finish the walls until everything is dry, which will likely not be soon with all the rain and snow we keep getting. And I haven’t seen this roofing guy yet, and haven’t heard from the contractor since Monday.

So now mostly I’m trying not to be wholly overcome with anxiety about how much this is all going to cost me and whether or not this contractor, whose name I got from my insurance company, is some kind of predatory scam artist who is going to destroy my house and disappear with all my money.

Which is totally rational since I haven’t actually paid him a cent yet. (And yeah, I checked him out with the Better Business Bureau already.)

I consider myself a reasonably capable individual. Just last week, when the light switch in the living room went wacky and started sparking and making smoke, I replaced it all by myself. So why is it that whenever some big thing needs fixing, whether it’s the car or the washing machine or the roof of my house, all I want to do is crawl into the back of my closet and hide?

A Glimpse of My Monday

One phone call from Demigoddess the Younger, who forgot to bring her swimsuit for gym class to school this morning. When I said I wouldn't be able to take an hour out of my day to bring it to her at the junior high, she was most eloquently incensed.

Two phone calls from the contractor who started work on my house this morning. The second was to tell me that the needed repairs may be more extensive than he first anticipated, and that insurance may or may not cover all of them. He’ll let me know.

Three e-mails from my lawyer regarding ongoing wrangling with my ex, including a stipulation for me to read and comment on.

Four of the seven PowerPoint presentations for various executives that I have been assigned to make presentable by Thursday morning.

Five phone calls and two desk visits from our CEO’s tech-clueless assistant who would like for me to teach her how to use PowerPoint on this, the head of our company’s first venture into PowerPoint presentations.

One phone call from the school nurse’s office asking me to come fetch Demigoddess the Elder, who was apparently in the throes of an immobilizing stomach ache, followed by a trip to the junior high, to my house, and back to work again.

And all of that?

Was before noon.

Favorite Quote of the Day:

"I can't help you today. I'll tell you that one time nicely. The second time, there will be bludgeoning."

I Am So Damn Smart

Normally, I am verrrrrrrry suspicious of extended warranties. As a rule, I am outwardly contemptuous in the faces of comission-grubbing salespeople who mention extended warranties to me.

With one notable exception.

Three years ago I purchased a washer and dryer. Extended warranty for the dryer? No thanks. If it breaks and I'm broke, I'll hang the wash to drip-dry.

Extended warranty for the washer? A vision of mountains of unwashed laundry appeared to me, as the commission-grubbing salesperson noted that, on average, washers break down much more often than dryers do. Okay, I think. Maybe, this once, it's not such a bad idea.

Guess which appliance has never once broken down?

And guess which appliance needed its second-in-three-years $300 repair this morning?

Hint: I DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY A SINGLE CENT.

I!

Win!

Okay, So Maybe, Every Once in a While, a Fish Does Need a Bicycle

We had our first sizeable snow of the year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was lovely, since I didn’t have to work that day. Instead of getting up early and spending 40 minutes digging out my driveway at 6:00 a.m., swearing the whole time at those fucking shitheel Boy Toys next door for leaving their fucking shitheel BMW and Lexus parked in front of my house AGAIN… Instead of that, I was able to sit in a comfy chair under a down throw, knitting mittens, serenely sipping tea and watching the snow fall.

Well, okay, there was a tiny bit of swearing about the Boy Toys. But this time I had a plan for exacting my revenge, because I NOW HAVE A SNOW BLOWER—my very first snow blower ever—thanks to my elderly former next-door neighbor who kindly sold me his for a very reasonable price before he moved into a retirement community last summer. Not only would I be able to clear the driveway and sidewalks like magic, but how sweet would it be to aim the blower directly at their fucking shitheel BMW and Lexus? Very sweet, my friends. Very, very sweet.

I am woman. Hear my snow blower roar.

So late in the afternoon on Friday I went outside and got the snow blower started, no problem. That part I had practiced long before there was actual snow. For a minute it worked just like it was supposed to, but then it sort of clogged up, and instead of flying in a brilliant white arc out the top, the snow sort of gagged and dribbled out. I turned the blower off, cleaned it out, started it again and played with the gears, trying to get it to work right, but without much success. While I was doing this, the neighbor man from two doors down came walking over.

“I think you’ve got your choke on,” he said. “It should really be humming.” He adjusted a knob. Problem solved.

Now, given that this was my first experience with running a snow blower, there is no reason I should automatically know how to work it. Especially since I bought the thing used, and it didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual, so it’s perfectly reasonable that my kind neighbor would have to come over and show me how to adjust the choke.

But damn I hate having to have a guy come over and save my sorry female ass.

And what in the hell is a “choke” for, anyway?

Negative Vibes

Ever have one of those days where one small mishap leads to another slightly larger mishap, and before you know it your whole life is one fat problem avalanche?

It all started with the onion. When I arrived home after work yesterday, I realized I’d forgotten to stop at the store on the way to buy an onion. The plan was to make chili for dinner. The meat was thawed, I had the tomatoes and the beans, but everyone knows you can’t make chili without an onion. No problem, I thought, I’ll just turn the baking of the corn muffins over to the Demigoddesses while I run to the store and pick one up quick.

But really, there is no such thing as “quick” at Cub Foods. When I got back home again, the “muffins” were done… except that, instead of putting the paper cupcake cups into a cupcake tin, which they apparently couldn’t find, the Demis had placed the paper cups onto a flat baking sheet and then poured in the batter. The result was an oddly-shaped cornbread pull-apart thing with pleated paper sticking up throughout. Interesting. And the gooey mixing bowl, half-full of water, was still in the sink.

Then I noticed that the package of muffin mix, which was supposed have contained enough mix for two batches of corn muffins, was empty. I asked the Demis, “Did you measure out this mix like it says in the instructions?”

Blank stare.

“Because it says right here, you’re supposed to measure two and a half cups. This package had five cups in it.”

“Oh,” Said Demi the Elder thoughtfully. “Well, it’s okay, I put way too much water in them anyway.”

Right.

I made the chili, and the corn muffin pull-apart thing was actually not bad, once you picked out the paper. It was 8:00 by the time we finished dinner. I put Demi the Elder on the dishes while I settled into yet another hour-long comb-through on Demi the Younger’s hair.

Thankfully, the combing produced almost no sign of fauna. I sent Demigoddess the Younger to the shower, and had my weary heart set on few precious minutes on the couch, at last, to unwind before bed… until I went into the kitchen and discovered the dishwasher running, a number of dirty dishes still in the sink, and the floor… flooded.

Okay, maybe not flooded, exactly. But water was running out of the under-the-sink cabinet. I thought at first that Demi the Elder had neglected to run the disposal, and somehow the drain had backed up. But no. The problem is the pipe that runs from the drain on the right side of the sink to the disposal on the left side of the sink. The the underside of this pipe has apparently rusted through, and dirty water from the dishwasher was spouting out of it. I tried to cover the hole with my hand (without much success) and yelled for Demi the Elder to turn off the dish washer. She blinked at me for a minute before comprehending what I was yelling about, and eventually managed to hit the “Cancel” button. By that time I was good and soggy. And, yeah. Ornery.

We cleaned up the water. I did not sigh, I did not stomp, I did not swear. I put a garbage bag over the sink to remind the children not to use it. I finally, finally, fell into a chair to regroup and… the phone.

My well-meaning Ho was at Whole Foods and wanted to know if I needed anything. Somehow, that was the last straw. I was not very nice to him.

I have always wondered if there isn’t some merit behind the whole karma idea, if releasing negative energy into the universe somehow creates more negativity that will, eventually turn back on you in the end. I can’t help but wonder if yesterday’s post had anything to do with this.

So I’m taking it all back. My ex, he is a swell guy. Just a super individual.

Now, I have a plumber to call and amends to make.