And By "We," I Mean...

The wine won't be ready for another couple months, but we bottled the cider. It was quite a process.

First, we had to wash the bottles.

Then, we had to rinse them in sterilizing solution.

Then, we had to put them on the rack to dry.

(Actually, before all of this, we had to try to wash them in the dishwasher -- which we are for some reason never otherwise allowed to use -- and discover that it's broken. Which is odd because, ahem, we never use it. Then we had to fight for a little bit about whether or not to get it fixed, because some of us refuse to use it, so others of us feel we can just sell the house someday and let it be someone else's problem. So far, at least, the latter argument is winning.)

Then we had to go and get ourselves a couple spares. That was my job.

Then we had to put one of these in every bottle, so the cider will get fizzy (and, not incidentally, slightly more boozerrific). I did that part, too.

Then we had to fill them!

And cap them, but I didn't get a picture of that because that was also my job and I had both hands (and all my body weight) occupied on the capper.

Then we had to change our sticky clothes and make a stir fry for our loving wife, because she's getting over-hungry and when that happens she yells.

Yum!

Face Down at the White Horse

Do you want to know what's fun? Campfires on the beach.

Want to know what's funny? Johnny, a couple dozen beers into beachy-campfire goodness, trying to wander off into the dark to have a quiet pee. He can't get his beach legs, keeps losing his footing and toppling into the sand with every step. With every step. Step left, fall to the left. Much turtley scrambling. Step right, fall to the right. More turtley scrambling. Repeat, ad infinitum.

But you know what's not fun? Trying to help him and getting taken down yourself. Repeat, sand in-Erin's-bum.

And, last but not least, do you know what isn't funny? When -- the above mission somehow finally accomplished -- Johnny discovers that he's lost his matches and decides to light a cigarette directly from the blaze. He's got the damn butt in his mouth and he's bent over with his sand-scraped face inching dangerously towards the flames, when Gerry suddenly notices what he's up to and grabs him by the seat of his pants.*

So the moral of this story is: it pays to practice drinking a lot even after you have kids. You never know when those parental instincts might get called into play.



*Needless to say, this is also more or less how Johnny managed to get back to the beach house that night: with Gerry's help, and by the seat of his pants.

¡Uy, Mi Cabeza!

When I inaugurated Would You Rather Wednesdays, it was not my intent to declare winners at all. The goal was merely to ponder oddball questions and implement discussions on same. However, as no decent debater would ever fess to: I know when I'm beat. And last week, we all were.

As you may recall, last week’s choice was between getting stood up for your prom or taking the date of your dreams and having them leave with someone else. The general consensus, with one or two exceptions, was that we would rather be stood up, but the winning answer came from my cousin Donna. I always thought she was so cool anyway when I was little, but if I’d known this I might have gone ahead and just decided to be her. Here’s what she said:

How's this. Both of my senior prom dates wore blue tuxes (1978). I had a date for the prom and one after the prom. And oh yeah, date at the prom took off with someone else. He was my old boyfriend. My new BF had a date that already bought a dress and I wouldn't let him officially "dump" her until after she got to wear the dress. But would I rather be stood up? No WAY! Being abandoned at the prom wasn't so bad, I got to socialize with more people I think.

Not only did she have two dates, but she managed to make that sound like a nice thing, and get sympathy for having one of them take off.

Winner!

I don’t know if there’ll be a winner this go-round or not, but we are off (like a proverbial prom dress). Just to remind you, the game is really called Zobmondo, you can buy it here, and the only rule is that if you're going to play you have to choose: you're not allowed to say "neither" or come up with a third option.

Got it? Okay. Gather 'round…

The category is Food Ingestion, so the squeamish among you may wish to recuse (although, as Food Ingestion questions go, this one is not so bad)…

Would you rather suck down a 64-ounce frozen drink in 60 seconds – OR – eat the icing off two enormous wedding cakes?



Okay, here’s a story for you:

When I was fifteen years old (sixteen? I don’t remember) I did an exchange-student program thingy and spent a month (six weeks? two? I don’t remember) in Granada, Spain. While we were on the plane on our way over, our poor faculty chaperone’s older brother died, so pretty much as soon as we landed she got on another plane and went back home. Leaving us, a bunch of sixteen-year-old girls (and one not-so-lucky boy) alone for a day or so till her replacement came.

Did you know there is no drinking age in Spain?

That first day, actually, we didn’t do so bad. We were still intimidated by the strange money and the stranger language (a language which, incidentally, we'd all been studying for seven years, but those people don't pronounce their s's! Who ever heard of dropping a perfectly good consonant for no apparent reason? Weihd.). We did, of course, go immediately to a bar and order a cerveza, but then we pretty much just giggled and ran back to the hotel.

Her replacement, though, was a fresh-out-of-college 21-year-old, whose only response thus far to us acting up in class had been to say “You guys. Come on.” She had no idea how to rein us in on foreign soil. And when we discovered that not only could we order cervezas in corner bars, but could also buy Bacardi off of supermarket shelves, there was no stopping us.

Unfortunately, we were still sixteen years old. An age when “no stopping” and “Bacardi” ends in broken toilet seats and puke stains on hotel floors. ("What is that awful stain?" asked our Dozy Chaperone, and shook her head when we refused to answer. That was the extent of her disciplinary act.)

So the point is, I don’t know if I could or not, but I would much rather suck down the frozen drink. Because I like frosting (which is what that sugary stuff on cakes is really called, no matter what the printed game-card says). I like frosting a lot. And I don’t know what might happen if I ate two wedding-cakes worth.

But I do know I haven’t been able to enjoy a rum drink in twenty years.


You’re up: What would you rather do?

Day Seven, Project Four: Finally Finished (After A Fashion)

What was that word I used? The one about how nothing could go wrong because I thought I knew what I was doing…?

I got the first window completely taken apart before I realized that the sashes in it weren’t even broken. Okay, that’s fine. Less work for me. At least I got the paint off all the screws and buttons (that’s what Johnny tells me the things I’ve been calling “screw-casings” are really called). Putting it back together I managed to slip with the screwdriver and gouge a four-inch arroyo into the window frame -- which I may or may not have mentioned that I spent two years stripping and refinishing. But that’s okay. It’s in a place no one will really see it, in a corner and hidden by the curtain. And someday, when I get around to it, maybe I’ll sand it down.

Yeah right, that’ll happen…

On to the next window, I actually checked first to make sure it was really necessary before I took this one apart. It had been staying open on its own so I thought maybe it, too, would turn out to be fine -- but sure enough, the right-hand sash was busticated. So here we go...

Got the facing piece off of the right-hand side and the pulley screws removed, leaving the window dangling by its intact sash cord and balancing on the back of the couch (not a bright idea, in retrospect, but it turned out okay so there’s no need for scolding). Except now the little wooden piece that hides the weight-hole wouldn’t budge. It looked to me like it had never been cut out completely. Johnny said (and I know, duh) that that’s impossible -- how would they get the weight in there in the first place if they never cut the piece out? But here’s a picture; you decide:


See? The two vertical cuts don’t quite go all the way up to the horizontal one. I think I can see the continuous grain of what I say is still-attached wood. Johnny says the corners have been filled in with glue. But it doesn’t matter what it is. Either way it makes no sense. He got me a scraping knife and I wedged it in there and managed to scrape whatever it is out (this picture makes it look bigger than it is, it was really only about 1/4 of an inch. It could still be wood -- just because I scraped it out with a putty knife doesn’t mean it can’t) but the piece still wouldn’t budge. I asked Johnny to do it and he tried, but no. Apparently there’s some sort of nasty gremlin living in the weight-hole that doesn’t want to see the light of day, because he’s holding on for dear life from the other side.

Fine. It always opened and closed just dandy, anyway, I was only changing the sash because I said I would. So I went ahead and put the window back together. At least I got the paint scraped off of all the screws and casings, I mean buttons. And now it’s all back together and it looks just grand. Damn! It won’t stay open now. But hey, at least it looks grand.

Since I am actually now two steps behind where I was when I began, I decide to go ahead and scrape the paint off the screws and buttons in the three remaining windows. The ones I never intended to take apart. The two little decorative ones on either side of the fireplace go uneventfully, but when I get to the one by the front door I notice that the right-hand sash on this one is, in fact, defunct.

Redemption! I never meant to do this window, but I can do it now and -- combined with all the button-chipping -- it will make up for the one that didn’t need it and the one I couldn’t do.

This one has a couple nails in places that I’ve not seen nails before, but they’re tiny and I prize them out with my screwdriver. Facing off, pulley out, window dangling by a sash cord and balancing on a rocking chair this time (I tell you, that learning curve is squiggly little thing)… and this g-d wooden piece won’t come out either. Well, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never heard of such a thing, and now it’s happened two times in a row? Is it me?

Seriously, is it? Me?

No, the first window that I did worked fine. It’s got to be the stoopid house.

The giving-up-and-putting-back-together stage went faster this time because there was no second set of hands to try to make it work, and no bickering to be done about the cause. Johnny had gone off with Andy to a meat raffle, which is something Johnny’d never done before so he didn’t realize a meat raffle is really just an excuse to drink a lot of beer on Sunday. He was pleasantly surprised (and he even came home later with a big old carboard carton of assorted meats).

All told, I spent longer doing this “work” yesterday than I have spent any other day so far on this Puritan Manifesto project, and I got fuck-all accomplished. No, wait. Scratch that: I managed to make one window that used to work perfectly not work anymore, and I managed to mar the finish of the woodwork that I (last time, I swear) spent two years refinishing. The kicker is, it just now occurred to me that I could have easily been stripping that door right where it’s still standing, in the hall. There’s no reason it has to be done out in the yard. I spent two years doing the rest of it inside after all (oh, so I lied. Big whoop. You spend two years stripping woodwork and see if you don't want to mention it once in a while.).

Ain’t gonna be any stripping in the hall today, though. Today, I just got home from a rainy day at work and Johnny has the fire going and dinner started. Today is Johnny’s last night home before heading off to Bourne for a job that isn’t worth driving down through Cape Cod traffic every day and back again, so he and Larry have decided to stay down there till it’s over (there’s no-one in the house they’re painting; they have permission to crash there). I have no idea how long he’ll be gone, and since I just got back from vacation myself, this isn’t one of those “Woo-hoo, my husband’s leaving” times. More like: “Boo-hoo, who’ll congratulate me on all I plan on getting done this month?” Plus, you know, I’ll probably miss him. (The raccoons’ve been making some scary-ass noises in the trees of late, and Johnny says it’s because there are coyotes...)

So today all I did was clean up the paint-chip window-carnage that I left lying around over the weekend (so at least it can’t be said that I did nothing), and now I’m going to put my new pyjamas on, take my wet socks off, put my toes up to the fire and wait for my suddenly-attentive husband to bring me whatever it is he’s cooking up out there.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have one teeny-tiny glass of wine. For purely medicinal purposes, of course. My feet did get awfully wet out there…

Day Seven: Accomplished (sort of -- I cleaned up the paint chips; that counts. Sort of.)
Total Time Spent: Ten minutes (if you count setting up and putting away the vacuum cleaner and changing the bag)
Total Cost: Nothing (we had the wine already)
Writing (and posting) your blog entry before you actually do the work you’re supposed to have been writing about: Presumptuous, that’s the word I used. Presumptuous

Lincoln, Lincoln, I've Been Thinkin'...

...if you're going to drink light beer, you might as well drink the cheapiest, crappiest light beer you can find, because it all tastes the same anyway. Like seltzer water with a penny in it...

PIa

Today the chimney sweep came and said he couldn't sweep the chimney because it isn't up to code, that it would cost us two and a half grand to bring it up to code, and that whoever swept it last time really didn't, so we're about an inch away from a chimney fire. He advised us to get someone less conscientious than him to go ahead and sweep it, then we can sue them when the house burns down.

Um, are there any other alternatives?

It turns out there are. We can go buy this powder that you put up the flue with a little fire going and it whisks you away to an alternate universe where everything always goes according to plan and there are never any unplanned-for expenses. Oh no wait, that's something I read in a book somewhere or something. This real-world flue powder apparently just loosens up the gunk in the chimney, thereby reducing your chances of a chimney fire by, like, whole tens of percentage points.

The store that sells the magic powder is closed now, so we're going to go buy it first thing tomorrow. Johnny's not working (which is one thing I never thought I'd be thankful for), so when we get the powder he can light the fire and do it straight away. Because we also made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon with a different and, we hope, less ethical chimney sweep (another thing I never imagined would be good). In the meantime we've shut the heat down as low as humanely possible, and I'm about to commence to drinking...

I'm sorry, should I back up a bit? Okay, let's see: Yesterday I discovered that our mortgage payment has gone up by $100 a month. Last week I learned the car needs brakes. Last month we were informed we need a furnace. And, at the very tail end of last year: a new roof.

I just called the bank. They say our balance is the brake job and one month of extra mortgage payment. Maybe two, if I can get away with just the front brakes.

I'll back up farther and explain more some other time. Right now, I've already commenced to commencing and so I'd better go. The last time I commenced while I was on the computer, I spilled beer on the keyboard and haven't been able to type a capital "a" ever since. (I can get one, by letting the computer do it automatically, but it's a big pain in the a...)