Euphemistically Speaking

I think it's time to admit the bathroom's not going to be ready by the time company comes. I mean, it works - hot & cold running and all that - but it ain't pretty.

See, we're having the family over for St. Patrick's Day, as we have done every year since 2001 or so -- even last year, when the stove exploded and we had to cook the corned beef in a succession of crock pots. That was fun. Like playing musical chairs with a saucepan full of boiling water. Fun!

We got the kitchen fixed - well, mostly. Hot & cold running and stove and everything, but we never quite got around to putting plaster on the walls - or even tearing out the other half of the old cabinets. It works, but it ain't pretty either.

But then Johnny up and got a wild hair and decided to get the bathroom cleaned up once and for all. Washing the walls and sanding and priming and sanding and skimming and sanding and priming and sanding and painting and painting again (see? you live with a painter long enough you start to learn all the proper steps involved - you still don't do them, but you know them...)

Except for, first the conjunctivitis hit and then, this week, the euphemism. You know? The virus that's been going around? The one we won't discuss in pleasant company? Johnny got it from the lady whose house he was working in last week. She had it and insisted on following him around and telling him all about it. She euphemismed, as a matter of fact, all over the kitchen floor.

It just so happens Wednesday is Johnny's birthday. I'd bought him (by which I mean us) tickets to see Ardal O'Hanlon at the Burren on Friday night. He (by which I mean I) was really looking forward to the evening. We don't get out like that very much, and we were going to get there early and have dinner first and everything.

Needless to say, Johnny spent the evening euphemizing.

And Saturday. And Sunday. And the best part of last night. With me shoving crackers and ginger ale to him on the butt end of a ten-foot pole, because I have to go to work this week no matter what, and I don't want to end up getting all euphemistic on the subway...

So anyway, right, I started out saying about the bathroom. Poor Johnny got the job about half-done before he was stricken ill. He's feeling better now, he'll be back to work tomorrow, and he says he'll get it finished in the evenings after, but I doubt it. He's been on the couch for four days: he's not going to want to be home in the evenings, let alone back in the bathroom.

Of course, I could do it. I know the steps, and I don't work on Tuesdays. I could go up a ladder with the web tape and the joint compound, then later with a brush and a roller. I could do it. I did the porch all by myself and I stripped the woodwork in the living room and that was--

Uh oh. I think I feel a euphemism coming on...