Dang!

Cheese and crackers, Johnny's on a tear...

Home from the Cape, no work lined up for the week, looking at all I've been getting done while he was away, house a mess, 4th of July coming up next week and people coming over -- he's like a Tasmanian devil (only without the awful mouth-tumors), spinning around and around and around, kicking up a storm all through the house!

It's hot and I'm lazy and I was considering just dragging the grill outside and calling it accomplished, but Johnny went and dragged it out while I was in the shower.

Dang!

Now he's organizing all the empty cans and bottles (and if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know there are a few) and loading them into Chuck the Fucking Truck so I can take them to the place. I sure wish he drove, then he could take them to the place.

And he's written up a grocery list for me to pick up on the way home that includes stopping at three different stores.

Dang!

I asked if he wanted to come with me on this little excursion but he said no, he was going to be too busy around here, cleaning up the yard and mowing the lawn -- the 4th of July is coming up, you know!

Oh, dang. I'm exhausted already.

So I'm off to run the dang errands, and then when I get home I guess I'll hang some dangin' shelves.

Dang ity.

(another typo that I like and so I left. Dang ity. Pass it on.)

Day 20, Project 3 (but mostly a little rant about Project 8): Hairy Underpants

I have this thing about leaving dirty clothes lying around waiting to go in the laundry. I don’t know why. I don’t have anywhere near the same hangup about the clean clothes.

Obviously:


But for the most part, ever since I’ve had a washer/dryer of my own (and maybe, now that I think of it, because of all the years I didn’t have a washer/dryer of my own), the washing machine is my laundry hamper. Dirty clothes get tossed in there the minute they come off of a warm body (except for the occasional cold sock of Johnny‘s I find lying around). Dishtowels go in the second they touch anything other than water. Bath towels, after embarrassingly few (and a decidedly un-green number of) uses. And then it gets turned on when it’s full enough. Or almost. And only Johnny cares about separating out the colors from the whites (because he’s a painter, his whites are dear to him). This explains why of all my t-shirts are the same dingy gray, and why I don’t wear reds or blues too often.

So, even though there are only two of us, we do a load of laundry almost every day. Which in turn explains why I’m finding blue jeans in the closet that I didn’t know I had. I never get around to the back rotation when there’s always a clean pair spilling from the pile on the couch. (That couch -- or really love seat -- is, by the way, in the master bedroom. Which I point out in my own defense. It’s not like I leave the living room looking that way all the time. No. The living room is full of newspapers.)

But this week there aren’t two of us: Johnny’s still down the Cape. He’s on the home stretch and will be back for good tomorrow, but it’s going to rain tomorrow and I want to break in my new clothesline. Now! I’ve been waiting for two days and finally, finally, I have managed to dirty enough clothes to run the washer. Or at least enough to not feel guilty about it. Or almost.

Oh hell. There’s not much point having the clothesline if you’re going to run a half-full washer, is there? I mean, it’s not like I did this for Jolly Green points or anything -- I did it to save money -- but still, it just seems silly. The pisser is that of course tomorrow it will be full enough and I’ll have to run it (because I’ll simply have to) and then I’ll have to dry them in the dryer after all because it will be raining. Unless…

Yes! See, the cat has been sleeping on this one particular sheet in the clean-clothes pile for a while, but now that it’s finally warm at night she’s moved on to cooler climes (to give you some idea of how long this sheet’s been in that pile, let me just say: it’s flannel. Again though, in my own defense, this particular sheet has been left there just for her. Everything else in the pile has been worn and washed and rotated back in again a bunch of times since then.). Two months of cat-bed service counts as dirty even if it’s never touched a mattress, so in it goes. And one king-sized flannel sheet fills a washing machine very nicely.

It also throws a lot of cat hair. Which, I realize as I pick soggy clumps of it off my spun-flat underpants, doesn’t come off the laundry when you dry it on the line.

So I threw them in the dryer. And then I threw them on the couch. We’ll try this whole thing over whenever the sun comes out again.

In the meantime, I squirted the door with bleach and scraped it with some steel wool. I’ll tell you about that some other time. For now I’ve got a grill to see if I can put together. If I can, I think I just might have some tuna steaks from Trader Joe’s in the back of the freezer somewhere…

Day 20: Accomplished (even though I chose to write about the laundry, the work I did on the door still counts. And the grill will count too, if I finish it. Jinx jinx, spit spit…)
Time: 30 minutes (door again -- I’ll tell you all about it later, I swear, I’m just tired of bitching about the door for a little while, k?)
Cost: Nothing
Hairy Underpants: Perturbing

Day 19 PS: 'Zat MY Th-Donk-A-Donk?

I forgot to mention yesterday that between the hardware store and grocery #3 I stopped into Home Depot to look for a gas grill there. They only had $600 ones, but that isn't even my point.

My point is, as I pulled out of the parking space, Chuck the Fucking Truck started making an altogether new noise. If I put him in reverse and turn the steering wheel, he goes th-donk th-donk th-donk -- almost like the sound a flat tire makes, only different.

Definitely down.

But it only happens if I put him in reverse and turn the steering wheel, so I'm just gonna not do this, and not worry about it. I will, however, try to remember to put on my seat belt.

La la...

Day 19, Project 8: Up The Down Staircase

I knew before I was dressed that it was going to be an up-and-down day today....

See, I pulled on my jeans only to remember about the whole button-falling-off-them-thing that happened (definitely down). So I went into the closet for the other pair and, well, apparently this Puritan Manifesto thing is agreeing with me because the other jeans don’t fit me anymore -- they were just falling off, and they had all their buttons (up!)! So I got the step stool, dug through the top shelf to see if my skinny jeans might fit me, and… I couldn’t find them (down). But I did find this completely other pair that I’ve no idea what they are or where they came from (odd). They say they’re the same size as the falling-off-me ones, but when I tried ’em on they fit me, so voila (up)! They’re kinda skinny, too, no matter what the label says.

I realized at work that before I went spending my free money at Ace Hardware, it would probably be a smart idea to check the other two Stop & Shops in my area to see if maybe one of them would have the $100 grill I tried to buy for Johnny yesterday. Except for that one of them is like halfway back home from where I park the car, and I knew that if I went there and they didn’t have it I’d just keep right on going until I was feet-up on the couch in my pajamas watching Happy Feet. So I worked out a compromise. Stop at the one that’s on the way to the hardware store, and if they don’t have it then try my luck with Mr. Helpful.

They had it (up)! But it wasn’t on sale (down). And I wasn’t about to spend my actual (read: not free) money to make up the difference in price, especially for some cheap-ass, made-in-China thing from Stop & Shop.

Ace Hardware had a billion grills of all sorts of sizes. But the only one in my price range was so small you’d have to rock-paper-scissors for first dibs on cooking your hot dog. Down. But here’s a good tip: Ladies, when you’ve decided you don’t want something and the pushy salesman just can’t seem to let you go, tell him you have to talk it over with your husband. Up! I don’t care if you’re single, or gay, or if your husband doesn’t know the difference between BTUs and BLTs -- just say it. He’ll never know and I’m telling you, it is a magic word.

Me: “I think I better talk it over with my husband before I make any decision.”

HHM: “Here, take him a brochure.”

And I was outta there. My bell jar rings a little at the thought of it, but I tell myself I’m like a kung fu master, using my enemy’s own strength against him…

I was dreading the idea of having to tell Johnny that I’d failed again --

Actually, that’s a total lie. He would neither care nor blame me. It’s obvious the retail gods have a vendetta against me and unless I’m prepared to kill a goat or something I’ll just have to wait until they tire of me and go mess with someone else.

What I was actually dreading was having to do something else around the house, because buying a grill was supposed to be my only job today, and I hadn’t yet made up a rule about what happens if I try to do something and fail. Would I have to come up with something else to do instead? I was afraid I might -- down, down, down -- and I knew for sure I would tomorrow, when my job was supposed to have been putting the grill together…

Neither of which, Prudence, are exactly home-improvements.

Back off, Goody: my Manifesto, my Rules.

But suddenly I remembered that third grocery store! The one on the way home! And guess what? They had it! Up! Just the display one left, but I didn’t care. Maybe I could get even it cheaper!

When I asked the guy if I could buy the display one he said he supposed so, but he did still have two in boxes right there on the shelf (where I, of course, had never thought to look -- not in the first store, either). Up. And then he put it on a wheely cart and wheeled it up to the register and all the way out to my car for me! Up! And when I opened the hatchback, all the empty cans and bottles that I’ve been meaning to return but haven’t quite gotten around to doing came crashing out all over the parking lot. Down. So we put it in the side door. Or, rather, he put it in the side door. I, Grasshopper, slid the front seat forward for him.

Oh, I forgot to say I also got the clothespins. Grocery store number two: $3.99. Up.

And when I was almost home, the bridge went up (down) and I got stuck for a half an hour listening to Hamas-talk on NPR (down-down). It was either that, creepy old James Taylor, or creepy young Justin Timberlake (both way down, and ooh, is it a coincidence that those two creepies have the same initials?).

Day 19: Accomplished (is so if I say so)
Time: 1:10
Cost: Hmm, now that I’m looking at my receipt it looks a little fishy. The sign said “$99.99 with your card, regular $149.99” -- but my receipt says I paid $103.99 (plus $5.20 tax) and the regular price was $129.99. Hm. Either the sign was wrong or I bought the wrong grill. Which do you think is more likely? And how likely do you think it is I’m gonna do anything about it now? Anyway, minus the $100 Johnny gave me, plus the clothespins and tax on them (which I really ought to put in yesterday’s column but I don’t feel like it) it comes to $13.38.
Spending An Hour And Two Days Driving Around To Buy The Wrong Grill At The Store Two Miles From My House That I Probably Could Have Gotten The Right Grill At Yesterday: Brainless. But at least I got a new pair of jeans out of the deal.