Dudes. I KNOW I promised you that today I would provide you with the answers to the questions that you asked Dick Whitman's mom, but I have so many things to COMPLAIN about. Also, cutting and pasting all those DW's mom questions is gonna take a coon's age and I have to get some freelance work done that I've (wait for it) put off and then I have to scream on over to Jo's this afternoon to read her tarot cards.
I'm swamped.
Anyway, complaining will just take me a second, because I'm good at it.
FIRST of all, ...friend/Ned has been gone since Tuesday and I hate it. Then he gets back tomorrow, and after a few days I will be gone FOR EIGHT DAYS, and all this lack of ...friend/Ned is making me bereft. I realize the part where I will be gone for eight days TO HAWAII makes you a little less sympathetic than you might normally be.
I have still not informed ...friend that his new blog name is Ned, and I am certain he will care deeply either way.
At any rate, the day he left I was drying clothes, because I am fascinating, and when I walked past the laundry room (it's like a four-foot-wide closet. The "laundry room." Pfft.), I said, Geez. Why is it so HOT when I walk past there? It's like I crossed the equator or something.
You know why? You know WHY it was so ding-dang hot? The silver hose-y thing® (official name) was DETACHED from the WALL and just SPEWING heaty hot heat EVERYWHERE.
I'll bet my air conditioning was having a good time with that. It was like dueling banjos over at my house.
HeatheatHEATheatheatheatheatheatheat.
CoolcoolCOOLcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.
No, really, you're welcome.
So THAT happened in the evening, which meant I couldn't DRY anything else till morning, and I realize this is not, you know the worst problem in the world. "She couldn't dry anything for the rest of that night? God, that woman is brave." But still.
So I got up in the a.m., as one is wont to do unless one is a bat, and called the dryer repair and of course they said, "We can get someone to call you when he gets time" and I was all, fine, just not between 10 and 11 and guess what happened. GUESS WHEN THEY CALLED.
So while I'm waiting for the stupid listening-really-well dryer people to come over--and did I vent about my dryer enough? BAH!--I looked under the sink, or "zinc," as I hear people in Michigan say sometimes, and I noticed my pink bucket had, you know, liquid in it. Which is not something I did on purpose.
"Say! That's disgustung!" I said, pulling out the bucket to see what the Sam Holy Dueling Banjos Hill was going on. And when I did that? When I did? GUESS WHAT.
The entire black huge thingy® (official name) fell off the pipes, there. The whole thing. BOOM.
"%#&**#$," I said, and have I mentioned my unemployment? And how the place who interviewed me Tuesday has not called back and I don't think they're gonna?
So then I had to call a PLUMBER, while I was waiting for the DRYER PEOPLE to come (those dryer people are hot.) (They have a lot of Bounce in their step) (Robert DOWNEY Junior is one of their technicians) (I adore me, so bad. Why does God see fit to punish me, do you think?), and everything was delightful.
Naturally they both got here at once: the same foreign guy who came to fix my dryer in March, the one who kept saying, "Oh, wow," about my vent. And the sink guy was clearly having a midlife crisis, as he had not one but TWO earrings peeking out his gray hair.
They eyed each other suspiciously. Edsel, meanwhile, had TWO MEN in the house at once, and had already done a preliminary sketch of them in charcoal so he could use it for his 70-foot-long mural he's creating: Edzul best dayy evur.
It turns out the whole GARBAGE DISPOSAL had fallen off, which is not, you know, great, and I opted to not get one at all because I HAVE NO JOB. Midlife Crisis Plumber did, however, have to get something or other so that my water in my sink wouldn't just splay everywhere, which apparently it had been doing for weeks without my knowledge. A whole lotta living had been going on under my zinc and I was over here oblivious.
"You're gonna have a lot of cleanup, ma'am," Earringo Starr Plumber told me.
Dude, it was disgusting. We had to take everything out from under there, and the guy TOLD me I was gonna have to put a fan under the zinc (who has to get over saying "zinc," do you think) to dry everything off, but it turns out whatever sort of tile or whatever was under there was so warped I was just able to peel it off and throw it away. And I'm sorry, Marvin, but any stupid motor oil or car-looking tool or whatever that you left under the z---sink has now been disposed of.
Then I had to sweep and scrub not only under there, but the entire kitchen floor. Good times!
At least it's a little more tidy under there now. I mean, in case you were planning to stampede over and rip open my sink door.
So that was a stupid day, and then yesterday I decided to celebrate by peeing.
And guess what. GUESS EFFING WHAT. The toilet wouldn't flush. I mean, you press down on the thing® (official name) and? Nothing. Now, I am man enough to know that this usually means the chain is disconnected from that other thing® (official name), so I lifted the lid on the tank and, "?" We just bought this toilet when we moved in, I forget why other than the toilet that was in there was from 1950 and said, "Heyyyyy" whenever we sat on it. See, it'd have been funnier if I'd said, It said, 'Sit on it' whenever we walked in. But I didn't think of that till just now. We really need to bring back the phrase "Sit on it."
Anyway it's a weird toilet. So I did the thing any responsible adult would do--I went next door and made my neighbor Paul look at the toilet. Not the OLD GUY who is my neighbor named Paul. My next-door neighbor is also named Paul, and he's my age, and I am sorry if that's confusing. Do you want me to MOVE so my BLOG makes more sense?
Oh, and I'd lifted the flapper thing so the toilet was flushed when Paul came over. In case you were worried sick.
Anyway, he confirmed the weirdness of my toilet, and I had to go to Lowe's and get a new flapper thing, and I had this middle-aged woman who worked there help me find what I needed. Naturally I told her my life story, or at least my last-48-hours story.
"Honey," she said, grabbing my arm. I'm the kind of person who people think I don't mind being grabbed by the arm. The other day a sales clerk stroked my back. Let me just tell you. I MIGHT LOOK TOUCHABLE BUT GUESS WHAT.
Anyway "Honey," she said, grabbing my arm, "I love my house. Lord knows I do. But you are COMMITTED to that thing! It never ends." She seemed like maybe she'd thought this over a lot in her days over there at Lowe's. The good news is she knew just what kind of flapper I needed, and that damn thing did the Charleston the whole way back to my house.
After just 10 hours of me fussing with it and screeching, "@^%&##$" at the toilet, and I do hope the neighbors didn't hear me saying, "Ampersand percent" like that, but I was annoyed, I finally got the thing to work. I am strong. I am invincible.
After all that, the dogs ran in from outside--and did I mention Edsel figured out how to open the screen door and let himself in? That dog is smarter than he looks, which is not saying much because he is Goober's doppelganger. Anyway you have never smelled anything so awful in all your life.
"Mother of GOD, what have you two been into?" I said, still admiring my plumbing handywork. So then I had to BATHE THE DOGS, which is a good time, and there's nothing like lifting 50 pounds of terrified dog into the bathtub all by yourself.
Tallulah is pretty dignified about it, but you'll be shocked to hear Edsel cowers and hides his tail and KEEPS JUMPING OUT of the tub once you put him in. So then eventually you have 50 pounds of terrified WET dog, which is super easy to grip and you don't at all want to run him down to the Euthenasias R Us 24-hour store. You don't at ALL think of driving to the country and watching that underbite get smaller and smaller in your rearview mirror. No, sir.
Don't even TALK to me about how I have to work on this floor. DON'T EVEN TALK TO ME.
You can't even tell Talu is wet, can you? It takes 87 hours for the water to actually drench her fur. I guess it's the Beagle in her? Is it the Beagle that coats that dog in Teflon? Edsel gets wet immediately, but he's furrier than you think, and rinsing him is pure pleasure. Especially when you have to keep placing him BACK IN the tub.
My life is stupid.
You know Anne Lamott? She's one of my favorite authors and I highly recommend her. She says when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born--and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.
If I'm pregnant Ima kill somebody.
