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Last week I received an email from Haloscan, my comment provider.

"The hardware and software are physically failing," it read. "We have no choice but to discontinue the service."

The phrasing really bothers me, like Grampa Haloscan just made the jump to hospice care. "We're sorry," his doctors tell us in low voices, "there's nothing else we can do. He's physically failing, we have no choice but to discontinue his use."

While in the background Grampa Haloscan plucks weakly at the sheets and thinks loving thoughts about cream of celery soup.

It's possible I'm making this harder than it needs to be.

Bottom line is that Haloscan is done. The email provided a link whereby I could "upgrade" my service to another host to preserve seven years of comment archives and continue the service, but apparently my bullshit handhacked old Blogger code from 2003 didn't make the cut because I wasn't allowed an audience with this touted "upgrade" page.

And that was kind of the last straw. I've been trying to upgrade this stupid website for six months, but everyone I've attempted to hire to redesign and/or move it has ignored me. Which is telling.  Mia emailed me earlier today to tell me about the Haloscan thing in case I hadn't heard, and she offered to help me upgrade to the new and improved 2007 version of Blogger. You know, on the off chance I felt like launching myself into a brand new echelon of outdated source code. I wrote her back like, "meh, I've been thinking about maybe moving to wordpress and I don't know how to move my archives and it looks really hard and I don't really understand wordpress so what do you think?"

Turns out she thought I should maybe just take the ELEVEN SECONDS it would require to update to the latest version of Blogger and stop making shit harder. And since I'd pretty much spent the majority of my day avoiding the floor guy by eating Triscuits in bed, I went ahead and threw eleven seconds up against updating my blog. It boiled down to pushing three buttons. I felt like Blogger was rolling its eyes at me the whole time.

So here. I had to get rid of that MSPaint banner because I'm not seven. And I lost my "About" page that I didn't really care about at all and never updated, and no doubt some other Blogspot Plus bonus features from 2004 vanished as well but hey, I've still got the Blogger hoodie they sent me when they opted to make Blogspot Pro a free service six years ago so at the end of the day I'm still a big winner.

Okay, I've got to shake the bedsheets out now, it's like a shredded wheat bomb exploded in here.

Here, catch.

I just like ten minutes ago got back from Oxnard, California where I was helping Little Chel get moved into her and her husband's new apartment; he's in the military and she's been working hard to ensure he has a nice home to come back to after his most recent deployment. Chel and her mom really did all the heavy lifting; I drove out there yesterday morning with a Tahoe full of carefully labeled plastic totes and I drove back today with a bag of brand new, pride-filled NAVY tee-shirts and some "onion blossom" flavored Pringles.

(A word about said Pringles: they were $1.41 on base so I threw them in the shopping cart on the basis of scientific discovery. We couldn't reach a taste consensus, but if you took a big wad of horseradish and rolled it in orange table salt? There. Eat that.

I just looked at the Pringles website and they don't even list "onion blossom" as a flavor option anymore. I am either in possession of a very valuable can of rare Pringles or a very salty can of slow acting poison.)

The News Upon Returning Home: Tomorrow the floor guy starts lining out the travertine floor, the door guy comes to replace the wrong French doors with the right French doors, and the electrician comes to finish up the light trim and switches.

The floor is going to take three days-- three full days of no walking on it, meaning we'll have no access to the family room for those three days. The family room is only accessible via the kitchen death zone, and frankly we're all a little concerned about Randy tiptoeing across a still wet and slowly shifting floor on Day Two in a desperate attempt to reach His Chair. All of Randy's "best stuff" is in the family room, and since we can't move his entire impromptu kitchen table desk into the bedroom, Randy has calmed himself by deducing that we'll simply crawl in and out of the family room window for the next three days.

"It'll be fine," he assured me tonight, catching my sweaty backpack when I flung it at him. "We'll just take the screen off one side of the window."

"What about the dog?" I asked, flinging my shoes into the closet. I'd just been behind the wheel for eight and a half hours; "fling" was seriously my only available mode of handoff.

"I'll boost him."

I was just about to deal with my dirty clothes but I stopped mid-fling.

"You'll boost him," I said. "You'll boost The Jake. Through the window."

"Boost!" He made what I can only assume to be a gesture representative of a man shoving a ninety pound dog through a window.

I pulled my socks off and put them in the closet, fling style. There was an inch of drywall dust on the dresser. The bedroom door still needed to be painted. Randy's Tahoe now smelled like tacos and feet.

"Sure," I conceded, "boost. Boost him." Problem solved. "You have to do it, though, I can't lift him to boost him." I looked at The Jake, then, wiggling his fat ass around the closet. I bet I could fling him, I thought.

"Oh, I''ll do it! I'll do the boosting!" He almost sang it, like a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders-- and put squarely and furrily in his hands. He looked so happy, I didn't have the heart to tell him about his footy taco truck.

"Yes. Awesome, do it. Boost the dog," I relented. I moved into my optimum flinging stance. "Okay, now back up a little. Tell me what you think about these chips."

Kitchen Remodel '010

I've been taking and posting pictures of the kitchen remodel to flickr when I a) have time, b) have internet access, and c) can actually get in the kitchen.

I probably won't document the entire process here since it's already on flickr, but I'll do a better job of tying the two together.

Kitchen Remodel '010

The November / December wrap up post I promised is going to have to wait. We’re remodeling our kitchen right now and it’s infinitely more entertaining than a bunch of shit I made up to rationalize November.

We hadn’t actually planned to remodel the kitchen this year. Honestly I’m not sure how it happened. I remember talking about getting a new kitchen table? One that doesn’t have eight hundred small round indentations bored into the top from when Randy's little kids used to press open their Push-Up pops on it? One without a bench because we’re not Amish? One that isn’t so covered in assorted waxes and oils, both cleansing and meal-based, that it actually attracts slime and is completely immune to any and all efforts to clean its surface? I don’t even try to clean it anymore, I just pour muriatic acid on it every couple of months and press a crucifix into the top while it hisses.

But then something happened and without taking the time to fruitlessly attempt to connect the dots for you, now we’re completely gutting the kitchen. Cabinets, counter tops, appliances, flooring, we’re vaulting the ceiling from eight feet to like fourteen feet, we turned a window into a door and a door into a window, we’re highly committed. And Randy is on a roll; this morning—the morning we’re scheduled to demolish half the house—Randy strolls into the room and goes, “Hey, I think we oughta vault the laundry room, too.”


“Well yeah, duh,” I said. Obviously we should. “You’re just lucky I sold an Edward zombie this week to pay for all this.”

And then he gave me a fake checkbook and a kindergarten pencil to keep me out of trouble while he took a shower.

Back when we were still in the incredulous speculation phase of this whole project, my mom had a pretty fantastic idea for the house. It's a little hard to explain if you've never been to my house, but if you have been here then when I tell you what we did you're going to go, "Oh thank GOD, that was SO WEIRD before, why was it like that?"

Our family room and our kitchen are essentially one room, right, like a lot of homes. But the family room is a step down from the kitchen. A literal step, not a figurative step. We don't like the kitchen more or anything, it's just that when you want to go from the kitchen to the family room you have to take a step down off a ledge.

And it just so happens that the exterior door in the family room is placed precariously near this step, okay, and it's weirdly positioned on the wall, so if you want to use that door you have to skate along this odd ledge like a tightrope walker.

(All of these pictures are on flickr in a set that makes sense, FYI.)

We have three of these steps in our house. Babies in this family learn what "STEP!" means real quick; we've got the only ten-month-olds in town who will immediately stop what they're doing and evaluate their footing if you holler "STEP!"

Not to mention my mom. My mom who lost one of her eyes and now has zero depth perception. Every time she comes over and almost falls into the family room it's like someone's taking tweezers to my heart. One of those times, after I acted as her personal step buffer for the nine zillionth time, she looked hard at the room.


"You know what you guys should do, you should turn this door into a window, and turn that window, "she said, pointing at a picture window on the kitchen wall, "into French doors."

Huh. You know what? We damn well should, that would be amazing. And normal. And would cut down significantly on lawsuits.


So we did. We turned a window into a door and a door into a window. One of the things about the original door-- or the original door wall, to be accurate-- was that it had a small window to begin with. I did a poor job of capturing it here, but hanging from the top of that window on a small hook you can barely make out a single ruby red crystal ball on a loop of fishing line. It was a gift from one of Randy's ex-girlfriends. I just typed that and now I'm trying to figure out how that crystal managed to slink out of my path during the period of our relationship in which I routinely peed a circle around the property and set things other women might have purchased, picked out, or briefly touched on fire.

Curious.

In any case, the crystal has hung there for more than ten years. I like it. It's red. It's glittery. I'm essentially a raccoon so if something is shiny and/or brightly colored there's a fair chance I'm going to snatch it up in my tiny human-like fist and start licking it. I'm not joking-- when I was two I took a bite out of a round glass Christmas tree ornament. I have more jewelry in my lower intestines than you have in your entire body, and shit, we can't even have glitter in the house. But somehow the crystal and I forged a working relationship based on admiration, maturity, and the fact that it's not at eye level.

This is funny: Randy was on the phone once a couple years ago with the woman who gifted him the crystal and I quietly asked him to mention that said crystal is still hanging in the window. Which he did. And then, I'm not kidding, this chick launched into no less than a fifteen minute dissertation as to how the crystal should be cleaned, about power and energy and full moons and salt water... I just watched Randy as his eyes rolled further and further into the back of his head. I felt like I was watching their entire relationship completely replay itself inside of a twenty minute phone conversation, it was hysterical. Anyway. I squirted it with some Fantastic and wiped the gunk off so we're good to go.

Okay, so part of the "door into a window" schematic meant that the tiny window would have to be popped out in order to make room for the big window. Meaning the crystal would have to come down. And I like it and everything, right, but it's sort of hard for me to rationalize putting this big beautiful new picture window in the house only to drill a hole in the ceiling so Randy's ex-girlfriend's glass globe can continue to not bring us psychic harmony or universal empathy or a big stack of sweaty cash.


So the crystal came down. And I could tell you that I'm still looking for the perfect place for it, but you and I both know I ate it.

Right now Randy's reading this and he's thinking, "I can't believe we just ripped two enormous holes in the house solely because she's 'tired of babies falling' and all she can talk about is that stupid crystal snack."


He's got a point, my hypothetical Randy. So yeah, we hired some fantastic masons to come out and modify both the door opening and the window opening; despite how it looks here, "modify" was actually a lot more complicated than "beat the shit out of it with a hammer". This house is too old to match our particular block, so the masons had to carefully extricate all of the extra block from underneath the original window so they could then use it to build up the wall where the original door used to be.

It worked beautifully, I think they had six blocks to spare.


Here's the door. I love it in theory but the door guy actually made a pretty big mistake here; the door they installed is about five inches too short. You can see how they had to frame down the opening to get it to fit. Randy came home that night, all excited to see it, and then he banged his head on the door frame.

"This isn't going to work," he said. "We need a taller door. If this was our mistake somehow it's going to cost a fortune. Can you live with this?" he asked, ducking a little as he walked through, "What do you think?"

What do I think? I think I just wrote a giant fake check to the Empress of Unicorns for 39$779.5104 and dated it "Summer Solstice ", man. I am not qualified.

In the end it wasn't our fault and the new, normal person sized door is on order.


The window turned out really nicely, I think. It lets in so much more light, it's great to be able to see out onto the patio from the family room, and I can stop greeting guests with a four-page liability waver.

Of course, every time I look through it I'm struck by a distinct feeling that I'm suddenly more distanced from the universe and I feel sort of like my psychic abilities are receding, but I'm sure that will fade.

Happy New Year!

I'm working on a "November / December Wrap Up" post, but in the meantime I thought I'd bounce in here to wish everyone a happy new year. Randy and I went to a friend's birthday party last night and I made it until almost ten o'clock before I headed home to do some embroidery, so later when you're hurriedly pouring champagne and counting backwards from ten, just assume I've been asleep for five and a half hours. I'll go ahead and have my champagne in the morning, thanks, just like every other Friday.

We actually drove down to Rocky Point today so we could sleep through all the excitement next to the ocean. Right now I'm sitting on the patio amassing photos of all the damage we managed to do to our house over the last couple of months so I can start documenting the unfathomable remodel we're attempting on our kitchen. You'll love it, it's horrifying.

Looks like we're back to using sticks.

Randy and I each use a Sonicare toothbrush and today I noticed that the heads were looking a little grimy. So I did what any good 13th century housewife would do-- I boiled them.

I have a feeling this is going to earn me the same reaction as the time I tried to fix a scuff on Randy's dress shoe with Clorox and nail polish.

So I officially registered to run a half-marathon today.

I managed to squeeze it in between a breakfast of Diet Coke and Tylenol and a lunch that was at least 86% sour cream.

I'd talk more about how excited I am but I'm running late for a Happy Hour thing and I still have to bribe someone to carry me into the shower.

My apologies to clowns. And... everyone else.

Randy just got home from a monthly meeting and he had a joke for me. He often returns from this particular meeting with jokes but not anything I would ever repeat; not anything Randy would ever repeat either, since he usually gets about halfway through one before he resorts to wild gesturing and muttering, "you know, you know" because he can't bring himself to actually utter the punchline. I think the birth of his granddaughter rendered him physically incapable of articulating certain words and/or phrases that breech an understood base level of decorum. It's endearing, really; his mouth keeps moving but it's mostly high-pitched squeaks. Like one of those bark collars, but one that's activated solely by crude references to female genitalia.

So here's his joke. That he told. That I liked. And laughed at.

A clown is walking hand in hand with a child into the woods. The child looks up at the clown and says, "It's really dark out here! I'm scared! Let's go back!"

The clown pats the child's hand and smiles. Keeps walking deeper into the woods.

"It gets darker and scarier the farther we go!" whines the child. "Let's go back!"

The clown shakes his head and keeps walking.

"Mister, please!" the child says, "It's dark and spooky out here, I'm really scared!"

"How do you think I feel?" the clown says, "I have to walk out of here alone."


Annnnd that's the only joke my husband has told me in ten years that I can repeat. Now who wants to hear the one about the three-armed narcoleptic stripper who SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!

His sea monkeys greeted him fourth. With somersaults.

I saw a commercial early this morning for this stupid shoulder bag with a zillion compartments, and it never would have even pinged my radar were it not for the "FREE BONUS" gift the stupid bag people were using for bait. Because (as seen in the above link) the FREE BONUS gift was a "tapeless voice recorder"!

Tapeless! It's a recording machine that doesn't require tape! What year is this, 3042? Did the aliens bring this device as a high stakes bartering chip for our collective bone marrow? Because that's the only plausible explanation! Next thing you know they'll be giving away a magical wand that you wave at your television to change the channel! YES, I WILL BUY A BAG WITH A SPECIAL COMPARTMENT FOR MY CATHETER TUBES IF IT MEANS I CAN OWN TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGY TODAY.

Somewhere there's a guy who just got home from work, right, and when he unlocks the door to his townhome the first thing he's greeted by is the flashing "12:00... 12:00... 12:00" from the clock on his VCR. The second thing that greets him is the ERROR message on his answering machine letting him know his message tape is full. Luckily the third thing that greets him is his pet rock or this might have been a pretty rough day. THAT'S the guy who seriously needs to learn to program his VCR to record the shoulder bag infomercial.

Look...

I said I would post every day in October, I didn't say every post would be readable.

And I'm taking the weekends off from here on out, too, unless you want more Amazon screenshots and BlackBerry Messenger updates. I've got a huge craft show this weekend and I'm up to my nethers in stuffing over here. See you Monday.

In the meantime go read the latest issue of The Plug. Good luck on that "Treasure Haunt", damn thing took me four days.