The Kid Is Hot

¡Tenemos agua caliente!

And apparently we're also Spanish, now? I've no idea where that came from. Just ¡Olé! I guess...

Anyway, for those of you poor, deprived (or of-a-certain-age, or foreign) folks who didn't grow up watching Sesame Street:

We have hot water!

I washed dishes (they were stinky), I washed my face (it was sticky), and although I don't feel like taking a shower, I know that at some point in the next few hours I'll be dashing for the en suite (pardon my French) like there's a chance it might be serving beer.

In the meantime I'm finally going to clean out that junk drawer in the bedroom, because (boo hoo) I can't find my girly screwdriver!

Not That I Needed It Or Anything...

Have you ever tried to wash your armpit, or the back of your neck (or the front of your neck, for that matter) without getting a drop of freezing water on any other part of your goosebumpy body? The resultant contusions – I mean contortions! – are Cirque-du-Soleil-worthy…

The Kid never came yesterday to fix the water heater, but it’s not his fault. I told him not to. He had told me in the morning that he had a family thing to go to, so he didn’t know what time he’d make it over, but he swore I’d have a hot shower this morning.

I’m so used to people just not showing up that I took this statement with a grain of salt, and I wasn’t surprised when 5:00 rolled around and there was no sign of him. I didn’t even have the heart to hold it against him. It was Sunday, after all, and it’s not like the faulty water heater was his fault.

But damned if he didn’t call at 5:04, apologizing, and saying he was on his way.

I put him on hold for a second and asked Johnny if it was okay if I told him not to come. Johnny didn’t care: he was watching the last fifteen minutes of The Illusionist. I could have asked for anything and he’d’ve said “yeah yeah yeah.”

Dang. I should’ve asked for anything! Eh. Like what? Anything I want that I can’t have it’s not because my husband says so. Well, except maybe for this (yes I could have that if it weren’t for my husband – yes I could).

So anyway I told the Kid to just stay home. I could have one cold shower on a hot August morning, I wouldn’t freeze to death. He did the whole “are you sure are you sure are you sure?” thing, and when I convinced him that I was, he offered as how maybe Johnny could go down and try to light it one last time. “Sometimes,” he said, “you never know.”

Now, Johnny doesn’t know anymore about these sorts of things than I do. I could have been the one to go downstairs. But I didn’t want to. It’s as simple as that. So I handed him the phone. With, now, five minutes left in The Illusionist. The kid hands Giamatti the book and runs away, and I hand John the phone.

He gave me such a look!

Needless to say, he wasn’t listening to the Kid’s instructions. I paid close attention to the movie (even though I’d seen it once before) so I could tell him exactly what had happened in the minutes that he missed, but when he hung up and I told him, he said “I know I know.”

Which meant: “would you ever shut up already so I can at least watch the last two minutes in peace!?”

When it ended, he turned to me.

“He wants me to go down and try to start it.”

I say don’t bother, hon. It’s not like luck is usually on our side.

“But he wants me to call him back and tell him how it went.”

Yeah, so?

“So call him and just say I tried it and it didn’t work?”

Yep.

So that’s what we did. If we tried it and it had worked, I would have avoided the cold shower, but I’d still want the faulty part replaced. And anyway (Home Hint from the AssVac!), trying to light pilots when you don’t know what you’re doing is really never exactly a good idea.

Johnny will probably fess up when he gets here, but this morning I had to shimmy around with the hand-held shower nozzle, whooping and hollering for reason not at all related to its quadruple-head massage.


I dreamed last night I asked the Kid about the spiderweb tattoo, and he told me it’s because he’s from Virginia.

Whatever that’s supposed to mean…

The Plague And I

The Kid just called back. It's not called a thermocouple after all.

He said he knew they were going to try to give me a thermocouple, so he wrote down what he wrote down specifically so that they would know not to give me that, but the Surly Plumbing Guy obviously doesn't know his ass from his elbow joint. The Kid is calling Home Despot himself, and he'll call me back.

In the meantime, I put the cicada in a cup (used the thermocouple packaging as a lid -- so at least it went to some use, anyway) and put him outside. Just after I did, Johnny came home (he's across the street still, finishing).

"Did you see the cicada on the back step?" I asked him. "It was in my office but I caught it and I put it out."

"No," he said. "What's a cicada?"

"You don't know what a cicada is? It's a green, grasshopper-like thing. It's what's making that buzzing noise out in the heat. It's like a locust--"

Oh.

"How did it get in your office?"

I truly cannot imagine. But (I shit you not) I just saw another in the dining room.

The plagues are starting...

Bugging Out!

Remember this?

Well, it happened again.

The water heater we bought yesterday doesn't work.

There was, of course, no way we could know this until the Kid spent nine hours on a Saturday taking the temporary electric one out and installing the new one and hooking up the gas.

So now -- da da-da daaaa -- we have no hot water.

I had to get up at the crack-o-dawn this morning (because, after receiving this news last night, I had too many beers to do it then) and convince the surly plumbing guy at Home Despot that he had to give me a free replacement for the faulty part, because there was no way I was paying the plumber to take the water heater out so I could return it for a working one, and then paying him to put it in again. Which the Kid would probably not have charged us extra for, but that wouldn't be right.

Surly Plumbing Man at first gave me all kinds of hairy eyeballs. Said he didn't understand what part we needed -- which the Kid had written down quite clearly. Said he didn't really carry parts. Quizzed me on what, exactly, wasn't working with the thing -- I played Girl (shrug and say "I'm just delivering the note. Where am I, anyway?").

Finally he took my note and went to check, leaving me standing there fighting the urge to peel all the stickers off the counter out of sheer, twenty-minutes-at-the-crack-o-dawn-with-nothing-to-do boredom. He came back and handed me this little tube -- no price tag on it, but it doesn't look like it could cost more than five bucks.

For this, he's giving me the hairy eyeball? Does he think I run this scam at Home Despots all up and down the eastern seaboard? Does he think if he searched Chuck (TFT) he'd find thousands upon thousands of these little tubes?

Anyway so we called the Kid and told him the part he needs is on the kitchen table (it's called a thermocouple, by the way -- or at least I hope it is, because that's what I got) and he should let himself in the back door whenever he likes. We feel bad about making him come over on a Sunday morning, but I really am going to need to shower before I go to work tomorrow, and the dishes are starting to pile up.

And now I gotta go, because this just flew by my head and I'm kind of freaking out:




It's a cicada, and I've no idea how it got in my office...

A Timeline...

7:30 p.m. (last night) Johnny comes back with the pizzas. They’re not take-out really. The bar up the street serves them and for three dollars they’ll sell you one frozen to take home and cook yourself. Except last night they upped the price to $3.25. Johnny decides it’s a sign that the universe hates us.

7:40 They’re individual-size pizzas. We slice up some onions to throw on there and some, well, what we thought was pepperoni in the freezer turned out to be turkey kielbasa – further proof the universe despises Johnny. I decline but Irish Johnny stubbornly insists on meat, any meat, even if it is Polish and actually made from a bird. The pizzas don’t come with instructions, so we guess at 425 and set the timer to check on them in 15 minutes…

7:52 The smoke alarm goes off. Guess we guessed wrong.

7:55 Only Johnny’s pizza burned. They are side-by-side on the same rack in the oven, mine is perfectly done and his is burnt black and solid and smoking up the house. He laughs so hard at how much the universe hates him that he bumps into me and almost makes me drop mine on the floor, but I catch it in time. I offer him half but he declines. He’s going to eat his burned kielbasa pizza dammit, and for dessert – worms!

8:20 I finally convince him to eat what’s left of mine because I’m tired of the grunting noises he keeps making as he chews.

8:55 We both fall asleep on the couch waiting for Men to start.

7:30 a.m (this morning) Andy shows up – yay Andy! – to install the water heater. No. To make a list of stuff he needs to buy before he can install the water heater. I thought he did that yesterday? No matter. At least he’s here. Not that I was worried. Well, okay, maybe a little bit. Sometimes Andy does flake out, but he knows we need hot water so he’s here. Good man.

9:00 Andy’s not back from the store. Do I need to worry? Should I call him? No, I don’t want to bug him, he’s doing us a favor. Sit tight.

9:15 Jack calls to say that if Andy doesn’t feel like it, he’ll do the plumbing. He’ll be here at 11:30. Um. I don’t think that’s the plan but nobody’s here but me and I don’t know what everyone agreed on…

9:16 I call Andy. He was taking a nap. Doh! I thought he was just going to the store and back. I tell him about Jack and he says tell Jack not to come, he’ll do the plumbing.

(There are things people don’t say out loud but you hear them anyway. What I hear is that Jack thinks Andy’s incapable of doing the plumbing, and Andy thinks Jack’s going to rip us off. Neither will say either thing about the other, though, so now I’m afraid of both.)

9:17 I call Jack back to tell him not to come. He says he has to anyway to make a stock list and talk to the guy from Keyspan. Okay. Wait, stock list?

9:18 I call Johnny at work to ask him why Jack is making a stock list when he hasn’t even given us a price yet and we’re not having the new furnace installed right now. Johnny says Jack needs to make the stock list before he can give us a price, but I’m to make sure he knows we’re only looking for an estimate and not to buy anything yet.

I’m glad I’m fluent in English, at least, otherwise I wouldn’t know what the hell was going on.

10:00 Andy’s back! With a guy named Sparky. Which makes me feel a little better about the impending electrical work they’re gonna do…

10:23 I finally finish the chapter I’ve been trying to get done since Thursday. At least I think it’s finished. I’ll read it one more time and hand it over, then we’ll see what Sucka M-C has to say.

10:30 Since I need to let that chapter sit a while before I read it over, I decide to whip up a couple of banana breads to give to the boys to thank them.

11:00 The bananas are frozen so I put them on the porch in the sun to thaw and go back to the kitchen to mix up shortening and sugar in one bowl, flour and baking powder and salt in another, everything ready to slam together when the bananas are mashable. But the bananas won’t get mashable and I’m starting to worry about the cats. So I peel them (bananas, not cats) and stick them on a plate in the microwave. Bananas, turns out, exude all these banana juices as they thaw. A sticky, sticky, sticky mess ensues inside my microwave, which I can’t clean up because I have no water – and no matter how many times I absent-mindedly head for the bathroom, the water isn’t on in there any more than it is in the kitchen. Every time I get my fingers sticky I have to go rinse them in the bucket of water that Johnny ran last night while I made fun of him, but now I see he really is a genius. By the time I get the five bananas thawed and mashed I see I needed six, but I’ve had just about enough of this.

11:30 The banana breads go in. No sign of Jack.

11:45 Andy says he needs to cut the electricity. Including, you know, the stove.

12:00 p.m. It’s okay. He only had to cut it for like five minutes and the oven held the heat enough to cook them.

12:45 Banana breads are out.

12:50 Hot water heater is installed.

12:55 The boys don’t want banana bread

1:00 Who cares? Fuck ‘em. I’m off to run an errand and when I come back there will be hot water and I will wash.

1:00-2:00 In the car while running my errand I hear Led Zeppelin bookended by the Who – “Behind Blue Eyes,” “All Of My Love” and “I’m Free” – and topped off by “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns ‘n’ Roses. I listen to them all at maximum volume with the windows down and my hair blowing in my ears and eyes. Awww, it really is spring!

2:28 I’m home. I’m getting in the shower.

3:13 I’m clean. I washed everywhere and shaved everything and I am clean. I even re-discovered the joys of listening to music really loudly and singing in the shower, which I haven’t done I don’t think since we moved into this house. What did I listen to? Like A Prayer. It was in the player in the bathroom that I haven't used in years. I think it's some kind of sign…

3:16 Just took a first glance at that chapter. Afraid it isn’t finished after all. Sorry, Sucka.

Bad News, Good News

I just got home and there is more bad news. I'm obviously not getting any work done this afternoon (sorry, Ms. M-C!), so I figure I might as well back up a bit and see if I can't find the funny. It's gotta be here somewhere, I just had it Saturday...

Last night Johnny and I stayed up way too late drinking way too many beers and watching Jesus Christ Superstar on some obscure cable network. We didn't watch much of the actual movie because we kept getting off on random and intense theological debates. We love to do this: he believes in the whole Apostolic kit and kaboodle, and me, well, I'm just morbidly fascinated with the entire business. He loves to try to stump me but I always pull it out, and he's constantly shocked at how much I know about it when it all means nothing to me. But that's what he doesn't understand: it doesn't mean nothing to me; I love it. I just don't Believe.

Anyway, so it was after twelve beers, eight nature-of-faith dilemmas, four hours of sleep and two packs of cigarettes worth of smoke in my hair that I had to go off to work without a shower. In what turned out to be 86 summery degrees. I sweated hops and nicotine all afternoon and came home to Andy (remember Andy?) passed out in the living room and Johnny with that manic grin he gets when he's trying hard to laugh away the pain.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" he asked me. Bad. Always bad. Get it over with, like ripping off a band-aid.

"Boiler's dead. Kaput. Thhppp."

"No shower?"

"No shower."

Ew. And the good news?

"Andy," who collects junk even worse than Johnny does, "happened to have an electric water heater lying around." He hasn't given it to us, but he's lent it, and it's already in the basement. "He'll be by first thing in the morning to hook it up."

It means we don't have to buy the new furnace right away. We can take a couple months and save the money first, because we'll have hot water in the meantime. (If it gets to be, like, August and I haven't mentioned the new furnace yet, please remind me to get on the stick, okay?)

Johnny wanted me to go down and have a look at the new/used/not-really-ours water heater. I didn't think this was particularly necessary, considering I'm well aware of what a water heater looks like, but Johnny was in something of a fragile state so I went along.

The good news is the basement is still dry. It's a mess, but not a wet one.

The boiler, however, is messy and wet and just generally foul. It had been left at the time-of-death stage: top open, guts spewing out, all nasty and infected-looking in there. It's a Burnham. Pronounced "burn-'em." I'm just saying.

That Budweiser can is Johnny's. At least, I'm assuming that Budweiser can is Johnny's. Jack was here at eight o'clock in the morning for crying out loud. Then again, I smelled like a beer at eight o'clock this morning, so who am I to talk? Still do, in fact, and will again tomorrow. Anybody wanna hug?

(Jack still charged Johnny $80 to service the boiler, by the way, and Johnny paid him because he's the brother of a friend. But I'm having second thoughts about contracting him to do the changeover. If he charges $80 to not-fix it then I shudder to think what two days of actual work will end up costing. I mean, the hateful oil company only charged us $69 to not-service it -- but then again not-fixing is a bigger job. Plus, without him how will I ever get Keyspan to return my calls? )

So anyway while we're down there examining the soul of our old machine and the rust spots on our new one, Johnny suddenly looks up and sees a two-inch, black plastic crucifix, dangling on a bit of twisted coathanger from the pipe that feeds the boiler.

Jeez, what are you doing here?

We have to assume it's been there all along - we have to - and that we just never noticed it. But what we can't decide is whether he's supposed to be a comfort (telling us to hang in there, so to speak), or a warning (shape up or next time it's the -- what? Grass fires? Locusts? Frogs?).

Johnny just went out to pick up a pizza and tonight we're going to hash out this latest test-of-faith over the few beers in the fridge that escaped our clutches last night. Being a non-believer, I'm leaning more towards the Old Testament, wrathful, my-way-or-the-highway interpretation, whereas Johnny -- well, Johnny's still a little delicate, so for now he thinks it's laughing at us, but I'll go easy on him and he'll get his Good News thinking back tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm not allowed to take the trinket down.