Signifying Nothing

This first part is not my fault:

Remember my knife? And how I said the other day that it was broken and I found it in my drawer? Well I fixed it. But it broke again. And the pieces of it were in my bag when I cleaned it out yesterday.

When I was going to bed last night – when the game was tied at 24 and I was bored and frustrated – I walked past the knife parts on the kitchen counter and thought “I better put those back in the bedside table drawer for safekeeping.”

Except, when I was walking through the bedroom door, I dropped the knife.

And the knife, thinking it would have a bit of fun, slid four feet across the knotty pine and – sft – down into the little hole where the radiator pipe comes through the floor.

I tried to get it out, but I could only get my four fingers through the hole – old Thumby had to stay outside, preventing Fingers from getting far enough to do anything but push Knife off the shelf of insulation it was resting on and down permanently out of Fingers' reach.

It could have been worse. This could have been a real house, with real floors, where there’s wood and stuff on both sides of the insulation. But we, the AssVac, Big Old Bertha? We have a crawl space. Not under the whole house, but under the addition that is the master bedroom. You go down cellar and walk up into the crawl space through the stairs that used to be the bulkhead before they built the bedroom over the only outside access to the basement.

Well, at that point last night I gave up and went to bed, and this morning I’d forgotten all about it. Until, as I was typing, I looked at the back of my hand and thought “How the hell did I get all those scratche— oh.”

So just now in my pyjamas I went down there. Johnny told me I'd have to cut through the insulation to get at it, and that would fuck everything up. He said that maybe it was a sign: the knife broke last week and had now taken its ownself down through the rabbit hole. Maybe it was just time for me to not have it anymore. My knife had found me on its own, maybe now it was doing its damndest to try and lose me.

Yeah, yeah. Do you think I could just put my hand up under the insulation from the edge?

Because, see, I might have made it sound a little simpler to get into the crawlspace than it really is. Those bulkhead stairs aren’t exactly accessible themselves, because whoever built the bedroom over them also decided there was no reason to properly dispose of an old oil tank when there was a perfectly good but useless bulkhead staircase waiting to be filled. So to get into the crawlspace you have to lean a ladder up against the rusty old oil tank and clamber over. And I really didn’t want to.

But I knew that if I didn’t do it now I would, over time, decide I really didn’t need the knife that badly. And I really did.

(I know that Johnny would have gone in for me, but by this time he’d gone fishing. And I don't mean that metaphorically. And I’m pretty sure he won't be home till ten o’clock tonight.)

There is one other option, though, which is actually how Johnny usually does it – or, I should say, used to do it, when we were still putting in the laundry room and stuff back there. It’s not like he sometimes likes to go into the filthy crawlspace and roll around there just for fun.

The cinder block wall has a hole in it that the other plumbers jackhammered out when they were running the pipes to the laundry room and stuff. It’s about four blocks wide (cinder blocks, not city blocks) with a big old PVC pipe running through it, but you can squish around the pipe and work your body through. Or Johnny can, at least. I’ve never tried.

But it just so happens that this plumber – the Kid – when he was taking down the old pipe yesterday, chose this particular cranny, out of the whole entire cellar, to store the bits and pieces in. Big bits, giant pieces, and this shit ain't PVC. It's too heavy for me to lift. Well, too heavy for me to lift from just the six-inch end that was protruding, when I was in my PJs and before I had my coffee, anyway.

But it was while I was on the ladder with my head in that hole, flicking the flashlight around and pretending to be deciding what to do, that I saw it. My knife! Lying in the dust right by the wall! I didn’t have to cut through insulation, or guess where it might be, or make any stinking decisions whatsoever! It was lying right there waiting for me, and it looked so sad to have been left there overnight…

Because I couldn’t lean the ladder up against the working pipe, or against the protruding pieces of superseded pipe, I had to put the ladder against the wall and reach my arm around behind. Which meant I had to grope blindly through cobwebs and black widow poo, and scrabble around in the dust and the grime on the bottom of the infernal crawlspace.

My arm wasn't long enough. I couldn’t reach the knife. And now I have cinder scratches on my armpit to match the knot-pine scratches on my hand.

I had to shift some stuff out of the way in order to move the ladder so I could try reaching from another angle, and as I grabbed hold of a broom I thought “Hey, I wonder if I could reach the knife with something other than my arm?!”

Idiot.

So I pulled it with the broom, and along with it a big pile of dirt and dust and spider poo which I had to scrabble my fingers through to fish it out. But I did get it. My knife. Phew. It’s still broken, but it’s back. Even if it doesn't want me anymore. I'll kill it before I'll let it leave me for someone else.

Now, I still say I can’t be blamed for any of the above. I accidentally dropped the knife, it made its own pathetic dash for freedom, and I’m pretty proud of myself that I managed to get it back. But here’s the fucking retard part:

I took all sorts of pictures to illustrate this story. The doorway where I dropped it. The expanse of floor it shot across. The hole that it went down. I even brought the camera to the basement and took a picture of my knife in the dust, illuminated by the beam of my Black & Decker flashlight. But, after I took that last picture, I put the camera down on the cement shelf created by that hole the pipe goes through…

And dropped it through the cinder-blocky hole.

I tried to reach it. I put my arm down through at least two and maybe three cinder blocks worth of dank, dark hole, but then I got a little skittish. I’ll try later, when I’m dressed, with a long stick and maybe a really, really giant wad of gum.

But for now, just now – just now – I’m having coffee.

It kind of tastes a bit like spider poo.


Let's have an "Explain the Title CONTEST," shall we? I'll write a sonnet for whoever gets it first...

Bear With Me

Here's the digital camera I bought yesterday that didn't work...

Oh lovely. I'm very good at this. And seriously, now that I've agreed to play this game, the dial-up has got to go.

Can you hear me being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age?

You would have been proud of me when I bought that camera. I knelt in the store (because for some reason all the digital cameras were at knee-level — and what is that about? Are toddlers their target market? Am I at the technological level of a two-year-old? Well fine then, goo.). I read the labels. I compared the products and thought about what I might need as far as functions go in digital cameras. Take pictures, check. Put them on the computer, check. What's this? Oh, yeah, the screen to view them in, that might come in handy, check. But how do I— what kind of batteries do I need? What's an SD card?

Got it all. Got it all figured out and got it all gathered (camera, SD card and rechargeable batteries, with charger, came to $80 all together), and was headed for the checkout when I overheard a woman offering to buy her kid a Dora the Explorer camera. And I thought: what do I care what my camera looks like? Maybe Dora's cheaper...

So I went back to the left end of the knee-rack where I'd seen the baby stuff, and that's when I spied the black little $20 beauty above. Didn't need an SD card, didn't need a battery (well, did, but came with one). Probably a piece of shit, I realized, but probably good for twenty dollars worth until I figured out what it was I really needed — because I know me and I know the eighty bucks I was about to spend was going down the drain soon anyway.

Do you know me, though? Can you guess what I'm about to say?

Got it home, installed the software, turned it on, aimed it at my sleeping cat... and watched the little fucker beep one time and die. The camera, that is, not the cat. The cat has never beeped — but then, the cat has never died yet, either. So.

That battery it came with (camera again, of course) was rechargeable but not recharged, and the piece of shit didn't come with a recharger. And, because I'd spent so long (for that one time in my whole entire life) examining every single item on the shelves, I knew the store I'd been to didn't carry the recharger for this particular machine. For a twenty-dollar piece of shit, I was really going to shop around to find one? So of course I threw the camera in frustration, and of course when it hit the wall a little piece went flying, so now of course I can't return the damn thing either.

Johnny kissed me once and said he loved me before he ran off to the pub. Brave man for hazarding that much.

So anyway I went back again today prepared to spend that $80 after all. The three things I'd picked out (camera, SD, batteries) were right on the floor where I'd abandoned them in favor of my bad decision (which at this point I really ought to just say "decision" and let the "bad" part be implied), so I picked them up — but wait. The recharger/batteries combo I'd selected didn't come with an adapter to plug it in. Huh. And, now that I look, there are two AA batteries in this pack and two AAA. What kind of batteries does this camera require, anyway? Three, it turns out, AAA.

Well, good thing I didn't waste my time!

I decided to spend just five dollars on non-rechargeable, regular-old AAAs, because at least when they turned out to be wrong I could at least use them in the TV remote or something. But in the end this bastard wasn't such a failure, as evidenced above.

So. Here's the digital camera I bought today that does work....

Hm, well, guess I can't exactly show that to you, can I?

Tune in tomorrow (if I don't have a stroke first) for some pictures of my (honest to god) house...

The Fix Is Out

It's getting to the point that I can hear that toilet running even through the closed-tight door. Crap!

I've gotta do my taxes today - today! - so I can fix that thing tomorrow. Tomorrow! Or, well, okay maybe Saturday. Which I suppose means I could put the taxes off until Friday or so...

When I get them both done, though, I'm going to buy myself a digital camera so I can finally start showing y'all the disgusting hole I live in.

Course, that'll probably break on me as well. So what's the one thing I should post a picture of before the camera breaks? The outside of the house or the grossest thing inside it? The nicest thing we've done so far or the worst thing left to do? Just don't say me: I'm not posting a picture of myself - or of Johnny, either.

This is still Townville, after all, and I haven't said the nicest things about it. Just in case anyone in this place actually reads, we don't need to risk being recognized when we walk down the street. Two sidewalk incidents are plenty, thank you.

Then again, I suppose there is a chance they'll recognize the house.

Well, if I stop posting after I put the pictures up, I guess you'll know what happened.