Blah Blah Blahrney

Back to the kitchen saga, where we left our heroes at the cabinet desk at their local Home Depot...

Little Guy turned out to be a retiree. But not the good kind of retiree that Home Depot used to hire. You know, the kind that had spent forty years actually practicing a trade, but had to stop because the physical intensity had worn his body out, so he’d taken a lower-paying but less-tasking job where he could put his decades of expertise to use? No. Not that kind of retiree. This fella used to work in the Statehouse.

Joy.

And not only was he a Statehouse-retiree, but he was a wanted-us-to-know-he-was-a-Statehouse-retiree-retiree. An I-am-not-really-a-sales-clerk, I-was-once-very-important-retiree. A let-me-tell-you-about-all-the-things-I-know-retiree.

Ugh.

It was the accent that set him off. The very first sentence Johnny spoke, Little Guy didn’t even hear. He was just waiting for him to stop talking so he could ask “What part of Ireland are you from?”

This is how it goes. If people say “That’s a lovely accent,” or “Where are you from?,” then they’re going to be charmed by the Dubliner and tell everyone at home they met a real live leprechaun today. But if they say “What part of Ireland are you from?” then they’re showing off. They want you to know they recognize the accent (never mind the fact that if you know Thing One about Irish accents, the Dub is easiest to spot), and they usually have “family” somewhere they want to talk about.

Sure enough. Little Guy in the Home Depot apron had an auntie in Belfast.

Frigging orangeman.

So then we had to listen to a discourse on Irish history, with lots of names named – DeValera, Wolfe Tone, Michael Collins – and a whole side-debate over which movie did a better job of dramatizing the Easter rebellion. Johnny says Little Guy got some names hooked up with the wrong rebellions, but he held his tongue. Just like I did, when Little Guy went off on a tangent about Albania and insisted on pronouncing “Hoxha” like it’s spelled.

But when he said Teddy Kennedy had never really been there for the Irish like most people think, Johnny had to disagree. He got his freaking visa through Teddy’s Irish Program in 1986, so he freaking knew. And said so. He wasn’t going to sit there and let Our Boy be slandered by someone who Claimed to Know.

Little Guy argued the point and, sensing we might not get out of there with cabinets intact if I allowed things to escalate, I harrumphed, shuffled paperwork around, and said “Well, anyway…”

Little Guy got the message. He didn’t quite drop the subject, but he got the message.

It took him another twenty minutes to place the order because he just… couldn’t… stop… pontificating… And then, when it was finally entered in and printed out for me to sign, I noticed that he’d only ordered doors. “Oh,” he said. “You want the cabinets, too?”

Um. Yeah?

So we had to sit there for another twenty minutes, hearing all about how somebody’s granny’s brother’s wife once fed tea to Patrick Pearse or something. When we were finally, honestly, genuinely, finished-finished, he stood up when we did and actually followed us a ways, still talking. This time about the movie Michael Collins and what “everyone in Ireland thought” about it. Blah-de-blah.

We asked him to point us towards the range hoods. Not because we planned on buying one that day, we just had to come up with some excuse to shake him off. But he did not know where they were. Surprise, surprise. He had to holler for the Big Guy who’d tried so valiantly to help us out when we’d first arrived, back in the early nineties.

Big Guy poked his head around the corner, gave us a look that distinctly said “I told you so,” and whisked us away to the range-hood aisle. Where he promptly left us to fend for ourselves.

We found the range hood that we wanted, but we didn’t buy it that day. Decided to pick it up when we came back for the cabinets. In the meantime, Johnny painted the new wall in the kitchen (oops, I guess I forgot to take a picture of the painted wall) and I set to work spinning this month-long Kitchen Yarn.

We brought those new cabinets home last weekend. I put them together over the course of the past few days.

See? They're on towels just like last time!

Oops.

Well, it's not my fault. Turns out, when you hit things with hammers, they sometimes move around. Then, when you drive the nail through them, they stay that way.

Oops again.

Yeah, that one's pretty much my fault.

Anyway, John B. helped Johnny hang them yesterday when he popped in with the crab. (God, but I do love living near the ocean and being rich in blue-collar friends!)

Ta da!

And ta da!

So today, my job is to hang the doors.

Which I will tell you all about on Monday.

Et voila!

Or Féach!, I should say.

Well, whatever language you want to put it in, the point is:

Da da-da daaaa...

We’re all caught up!

And if any of you, reading this endless kitchen saga, felt the way I did when trapped by the Little Orange Home Despot, then I deeply apologize and humbly bow from the waist. Rest assured, it's over now. Well, it isn't over-over, but it will only move forward from here as fast as the progress that we've made.

And you know how good Johnny and I are at that.