...So Now We Have To Finish the Kitchen

I got this for Christmas, from someone who shall remain nameless but whose relationship to me rhymes with "blister":

It's a soap dispenser, in case the hand model is not making herself clear, except mine's not so shiny-crome. Mine's -- what do you call it? -- like a brushed-y looking steel? But I had to go fishing for a photo on the internets because, well, I believe you know about my camera.

My blister gave me the dispenser, and she was so excited. "I kept looking at this," she said, "and it just kept saying to me that it wanted to go live in your house!"

She's right: it is smart-looking. Also, just odd enough to be something that ought to belong to me. Not to mention virtually indestructible, especially once you mount it on the wall. All in all, it really is the Perfect Gift For Me.

Unfortunately, however, this is what was going through my head as I unwrapped it:

Ooh, pretty... what is it? Ooh, a soap dispenser... what's that mean? Liquid soap? I don't use liquid soap. But I could. For this beautiful thing I would start using liquid soap. Which bathroom should I put it in? It would look pretty in the en suite! Except where would I hang it? There really isn't any room over the sink [without the camera, you're just going to have to trust me] and besides, all the fixtures in there are rubbed-brass. It wouldn't go. Well, then, we'll just put it in the old bathroom -- the one Johnny recently finished repainting. It doesn't go that well in there, either, but it's so pretty... Except putting it in there would mean drilling through antique art deco tile, and I just know that's bound to end in a gigantic hole. Poo-oop. Where will I put it? It's so pretty.. My god, Erin, say thank you, quick, or she's going to think you hate it!

By the time I popped out of my renovation reverie, remembered my Miss Manners and beamed across at Blister, the damage was done. She thinks I hate it, and she called later to implore me to exchange it -- which is something I would simply never do.

I hung up from that phone call looking dejected. I felt bad. I really did love the soap dispenser, and she'd been so excited. But, by thinking too many steps ahead -- which is something I simply always do -- I'd managed to take away her sunshine. And this is one sunshiny-blister, let me tell you.

Johnny saw my face and asked me what was wrong. He'd been asleep on Christmas morning when I unwrapped Beautiful Thing, so I had to start by showing it to him and then quoting the italic paragraph above.

"So?" he said. "We'll put it in the kitchen."

The kitchen! Where all the fixtures already are brushed-steel! And where we actually do use liquid soap, to wash the dishes! And where it will fit very nicely -- and be very convenient -- over the sink! Oh, Johnny, you really are my hero!

I held it up to the space on the wall where it will eventually go. Perfect. But there's no sense mounting it until the wall is painted. Which, actually, we really ought to put a tile backsplash there. But no sense doing that until we get and hang those last few cabinets. And if we're doing that, well, then those last few old ones can come down. And if those last few old ones are coming down, then we can finish pulling off the fake wood-panelling. At which point we really might's'well hang new blueboard. And it would be stupid to do all of that and not call in the electrician. Which means...

I'm going shopping for light fixtures!

Thanks, Blister!

Bye Week

I'm posting over here today. And then I'm taking down my Christmas tree. I can't show you pictures of its dried-up pathetic-ness, even though I know how much you'd love to see them, because the stupid camera I ordered refuses to arrive.

Damn camera. It's not even here yet and I'm mad at it already.

Just Think, People!

You are two short appointments away from never hearing about my dental woes again!

Double-jinx, touch wood, bite tongue, etc. But in the meantime...

The dentist Johnny and I both saw yesterday is not the one I started with, but it is the same one as last time and, I think, the time before. I might have told you she was Japanese – if I didn’t say it, I definitely thought it – but it turns out she’s Korean.

She’s good. She can fill two cavities in twenty minutes flat: zip-zip, and out. She also has a magic way with the Novocaine that takes some getting used to, whereby your actual tooth that she’s going to be working on gets numb, but nothing else does. So when she asks you if you’re numb yet, you say no, and she says she thinks you probably are, and you insist you know that you are not, so she agrees to let you sit a minute longer but doesn’t so much as consider the possibility of a second shot. And when she gets sick of waiting for you and moves in with the drill, you tense up and tell her you’ll holler if she hurts you, then she thinks that you’re a giant baby. Then she starts, and you feel nothing, and agree.

You see why this takes getting used to.

Yesterday, she took me late. She’d had a particularly difficult appointment before mine, so I wasn’t in the chair for my 9:00 until almost 9:30. This probably explains why she wasn’t over-eager to hear about my so-called broken filling. She looked, said that what came out was just a piece of extra filling-stuff, and I was fine.

“Okay, but um, so much food gets stuck in there, and it hurts.”

“You’re in pain?”

“Well, no, not right now, but—”

“Yes. The piece was irritating you. Now that it’s out, you’re fine.”

“But I haven’t been eating, so—”

“You can go ahead and eat. You’re fine.”

“But when I do, it hurts.” Around here is where I started to tear up a little. Was I really going to just have to live like this? Forever? “I think it—”

“So now you’re telling me it hurt after the piece came out. You said before, now you’re saying after?”

Oh hey now. Way to dry up those tears right quick, Doctor.

“You didn’t,” I hissed, “let me finish.”

She stepped back.

“The problem started on Thursday,” I said. “The piece came out on Saturday. I stopped eating on Monday.”

“Okay, I hear you,” Doctor Interrupty said. “I am listening, I promise.”

I think I truly had snapped her back to attention. I think the problem was just that she was behind schedule, that she’s the kind of person who hates being behind schedule, and that she didn’t even realize she’d been getting rushy with me. Her opinion was the same, but now she spelled it out for me to understand.

“You have what’s known as a ‘gingival trauma’” (oh goodie, a new trauma to add to my collection!) “from that piece of amalgam we left in the last time. I’m sorry. We try to floss it all out before you go, but sometimes we miss some. As you flossed and ate, you pushed it down into your gum until it caused trauma and inflammation and dug itself, essentially, a little hole. Now that it’s out, the gum can heal. If you rinse with warm and salty water, you’ll be fine. And keep it clean. You are still flossing the area and everything?”

“Honestly, I didn’t for a couple days. But now I am.”

“You really have to always floss, even if it’s swollen and painful. Especially, in fact, if it’s swollen and painful.”

Of course. We had to find something that was my fault, didn’t we?

“Go back to eating normally, rinse with warm salt water, you’ll be fine.”

Then she puzzled over my chart a while and took a deep, thoughtful breath. “We could do both those wisdom teeth today if you like, but I don’t know how numb you want to be.”

“I don’t care! If we do them both today, I’m done, right? That’s it? Right? After these I don’t have any more fillings left to do? That’s right, right? I don’t care how numb I am! Let’s do them both!”

I really did giddy on like that. For about three times as long.

We’ll skip past the actual working-on-my-teeth part -- pausing to acknowledge briefly that, when I insisted the right side of my face wasn’t even slightly numb and she, for once, agreed to giving me a second jab, I didn’t feel the shot go in at all. Because, apparently, I really had been ready all along. Needless to say, I did not admit this to the doctor.

She did both my upper wisdoms, I shit you not, in twenty minutes. Not until I got out of the chair did I notice she was twelve months pregnant, which made me forgive her initial snippiness a little more.

Johnny had the appointment behind me. She did three cavities for him in the same amount of time and when she was done, he asked her if she’d ever worked a M*A*S*H. The dental assistant actually punched him in the arm.

“Ow!” says Johnny. “What’re ye hittin’ me for? All I meant was she’s the best I’ve seen, and where’d she learn to work so quick like that?”

So that’s how we found out Dr. Pregnant is Korean.

Or at least that the assistant thinks she is.


When Johnny left, Dr. Pregnant told him to take care of me, and to make sure that I rinsed with warm salt water. So I triple-forgave her, and I’m following instructions. Even though saltwater-rinsing makes me gag.

Guess What I Have To Do This Morning?

A. Go pick up my million-dollar check from Ed McMahon.

B. Go accept my Thurber Prize in their recently announced sub-category: Sophomoric.

C. Go politely turn down the Mark Twain Prize because really, folks, I have not been at this long enough. But thank you. (Also, not a lesbian.)

D. Go to the airport and pick up the photographer from Arch. Digest to come here and shoot the AssVac. Preferably in the head.

E. Go to the dentist, because my latest filling broke off inside my gum and I haven't been able to eat solid food since December 29.


Go on, guess! And while you're at it: tell me what sort of celebratory dinner y'all think we should have...

We. Won.

Not Ed McMahon. No, the privacy fence will have to wait a while longer, but we got our first full-month, heat-on gas bill yesterday.

Actually, the truth is, it wasn’t yesterday. The bill is dated December 26, and I believe it arrived on Saturday, the 29th. I was saving mentioning it until I got my camera, so I could post a picture of the actual bill and y’all would know I wasn’t lying. But the camera hasn’t arrived yet, and the bill’s making me nervous just sitting there unpaid (I have a history with due dates; I’m much better relying on a rapid turnaround). So I’m commencing to remit, and you’ll just have to wait for photographic evidence of some other thing.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned yet that I ordered a new camera? I don’t know if I have. A $400 jobbie that I Love Upstate alerted me was on sale for $199 – and then my mom offered to make up the difference between that and the amount I’d been prepared to spend. So for $129, I’m getting a truly useful device for taking pictures, one that I can fail to figure out and/or ruin at my leisure. The AssVac is all nervous. She feels like a local anchorwoman whose network is changing over to HD.

Don’t worry, sweetie. Everyone already knows about the pockmarks.

So, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, that’s right, the bill.

$301.87

Now, to some of you this may not seem so cheap. Some of you may live in Florida, or heat with turf dug from the bog in your backyard. But for the rest of you, consider this:

1. That includes hot water.
2. That includes cooking.
3. Last year, in the same month, we spent $450 on oil alone.
4. Last year, in the same month, oil was averaging $2.45 a gallon. I have it on good authority that it’s up over $3.00 now.
5. Last year, in the same month, it was a heck of a lot warmer.

And, finally…

6. Neither of us had to go to work yesterday. We spent it – our very last Holi-day – lolling around. Putting away the last few Christmas presents, throwing away the last few Christmas cookies, watching the Super Modelthon on VH1 (okay, that last one might have been just me). We didn’t even know that it was cold outside until we went to bed and Johnny, in his t-shirt, opened the door to make sure it was locked. He came back chattering and we put on the Weather Channel just to see:

-15º

Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, that says negative fifteen. Degrees. Farenheit. And I slept in my R-19 bedroom with no socks on. For half of what I would have paid to freeze.

Keyspan, or national grid, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself these days, I take it all back. Every bad thing I ever said about you.

Well, no, actually, I don’t take it all back. You do have assy customer service and you don’t exactly make it easy for people who want to become your paying customers. But once that ordeal is over with, you rock.

And us? Me & Johnny & the AssVac?

We freakin' won!

I Broke My Chair!

My office chair. The other day I just sat on it and it up and broke. It's still functional -- that is, I can still park my butt in it and type and everything -- but it sinks and wobbles in a way it never did before and it's definitely not supposed to do. The chair was last year's Christmas present from Johnny, so at least it lasted twelve whole months before succumbing to my super power.

This year, in my stocking, he gave me a bunch of shower stuff. Scrubbies and soaps and accoutrements like that. The shower he finally caulked is holding up just fine, by the way -- which may, now that I think about it, be why he selected that category of stocking-stuffer -- but one of the scrubbies broke the second time I used it.

Those onion-bag-like things that are scrunched up in a little ball and you're supposed to wash your body with them? I've never had one of my own before, I always just used plain old soap, but I kind of liked it. It made lots and lots of bubbles! And then, when I lathered up the next day, it just came unraveled in my hand. I was left holding a twelve-foot-long, sudsy plastic sock. I don't know that a twelve-foot sock might have some sort of useful purpose, somewhere, but it's not the most practical tool for washing bodies with.

I really should never be allowed to lay hands on anything.

Seriously, I broke a scrubbie?

Five Things We Probably Won't Get Around To Doing This Year, Either

1. Painting the house.
On my very first post in this blog, I said we were going to paint it last year. Barn red, we had decided. Well, I lied. We had our reasons -- it was not mere procrastination -- but when I speak of those (completely valid) reasons, I'm told I sound like I'm making excuses. Fine. We're big fat lazy slobs. Is that what you want to hear? All those reasons still exist, however, so we probably won't get around to it this year, either. Nyeah.

2. Blowing a bulkhead.
This, actually, is one of those reasons why we haven't painted, and we're at loggerheads about it. It would sure make our lives easier if we didn't have to bring everything in and out of the basement through the kitchen and behind the refrigerator, plus we're told that basement access would pay for itself in the long run when it comes time to sell. But every time we talk about it, Andy wants to do the job. Andy would do fine, he's done this sort of thing plenty of times before -- but Andy also works long, unusual hours, and he drinks. A lot. Therefore, he has a tendency to not show up when he says he will. And I don't want to blow a hole in my basement just to have to wait indefinitely for it to be filled. But then there's the fact that Andy would only charge us $1000 and it would cost three times that if we got somebody else. So, knowing us, we'll just keep dithering for a little while longer.

3. Jacking up the porch.
This needs to be done. See, in that picture up above, how the house looks like it's sort of smiling? Yeah, it's not supposed to do that. This is another reason why we haven't painted yet. Why paint if you're only going to jack it up and knock everything out of whack? But Johnny is under the impression that jacking up means digging holes and pouring concrete, whereas I have it on good authority that a few posts and cement blocks will do just fine. Until we can agree on this, nothing's going to get done.

4. My privacy fence.
We've decided that if Ed McMahon rings our bell (or, rather, knocks -- seeing as how the doorbell doesn't technically work yet), we will first: finally pay off our solicitor's fees from acquiring the Dublin House; second: pay off our credit card debt from my Dental Woes; third: get a brand-new (or, actually, probably gently-used) Ford F150; and fourth: put up the fence that I've been fantasizing about since the moment we moved in. Johnny thinks a new roof should be fourth, but I say if it isn't leaking yet then it isn't necessary. Of course, by the time ol' Eddy drags his hundred-year-old ass around here, we will probably have Niagara Falls running down the chimney stack. Again.

5. Re-wiring.
At least we can rest easy in the knowledge that we're insured for $70,000 more than we owe on the mortgage. So, if the wires short out and the house burns down, we'll probably be able to put up that fence.

(And, hopefully, one thing we will get done)

1. Finish the kitchen.
I'll write more about this later, when my new camera arrives and I can show you what I mean, but we have been living with a literally half-finished kitchen for going on two years now. And when I say "literally," I mean literally. It is sawzalled down the middle: new on one side, old on the other. Which is, believe it or not, better than what we were living with before, but it wouldn't cost that much to wrap it up. A few more cabinets, some drywall, an electrician for a day and floor-sanders for another two, a few gallons of paint, a light fixture and someplace to sit and eat... Oh crap, that's adding up pretty quickly, isn't it? Damnit, that's looking like more than $3000 already.

Man, I am never going to get that f-ing fence!