Wednesday.
While drilling holes in the bathroom wall for new light fixtures, the electrician punctured the water heater. The house filled up with boiling water as twenty people scrambled for the hidden water main, ruining two rooms of hardwood and soaking four walls of brand new drywall.
Oh, and look. Christopher's here. And he bought a school bus off craigslist.
I must've broke the crap out of it.
I took
my car to the dealership today because it's October 30th, 2007, meaning the warrantee expires in approximately twenty-four hours. Some people might frown on my last-minute approach to car maintenance, but I'm guessing they're the same people who have their pants professionally hemmed and who check their voicemail more often than every full moon. People exactly like Randy, as it turns out, who got three minutes notice before following me to the dealership at seven this morning in his bare feet. The spousal equivalent of "I'm supposed to bring cupcakes today, Mommy."
There's nothing terminally wrong with the car, despite my best negligent efforts otherwise. I had a speaker fixed months ago but it's buzzing again. Watch as I attempt to explain this to the service rep before I realize he is hilarious:
"I brought it in maybe six months ago to have the driver's side speaker fixed, but it's buzzing again."
"So you broke it. Ha ha!"
"Well, no, it's doing the same thing it was doing before. Buzzing."
"So you broke it. Ha! Again."
"Like,
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."
"Yeah. You broke it."
And then of course there's the
slide whistle hiding in the dashboard. I've been dreading trying to explain this for months.
"It also does this other thing," I said, leaning in. Glancing around. Like I was about to admit the air conditioner spat out heroin. "There's this noise that seems to be coming from the dash, maybe the stereo. It's like a
BLEEEEEOOOooooooOOOEEEEEEP! noise."
His pen hovered over the diagnostic sheet. There wasn't a box to check for that, apparently.
"It's sporadic," I went on, "Sometimes I'll hear it every thirty seconds, and then other times I won't hear it at all. It seems to happen more when it's hot out, I think, and it might have something to do with the CD changer? Because sometimes I hear the
whirrrr of the cds and it happens then. But then sometimes I won't even have the stereo on at all and I hear it. And then once I heard it while it was raining, but not very loud. Most of the time I'm parked when it happens, or not most of the time, but like half."
He looked from me to Randy. Randy shrugged, he's never heard it. Only one other person has, and that's the woman who replaced me at the accounting firm. On her first day we drove to the post office in my car, and right in the middle of our polite introductory conversation my car screamed
BLEEEEEOOOooooooOOOEEEEEEP!, stopping us cold.
"That was my car," I whispered. Suddenly needing to clarify that my body didn't make that sound. "It does that sometimes. You're the first person besides me to hear it," I added reverently. She didn't seem to grasp the gravity of this honor and dove right back into talking about her kid or whatever. I had a whole ceremony planned for that moment but I skipped it, then. She probably wouldn't have worn the crown anyway.
If you haven't heard the sirens sing, how can you describe their song? All Randy could do was shrug at the service guy, bleary eyed, unable to offer an intelligible (male) opinion. The rep jotted down something illegible and avoided eye contact. I thought briefly of hijacking that new girl at work and making her describe the noise to Team Mazda, except she probably secretly thinks I just had a really foreign case of indigestion.
The rep promised to call me later and let me know if they find anything. I'm pessimistic, but I'm trying to have faith. He could call any minute and be like, "Hey! Yeah, I thought you were crazy but my guys took the stereo out and found a little mermaid jammed back in there. We took her out, put her in the RX8 dashboard where she belongs."
Yeah, alright. The speaker, though. It'll be nice to have that fixed.
"So I told him, I said, 'unless you're the single wooden stick holding this sticky house upright, you can just get on out of here.'"
I had this crazy dream last night. I was lying there unconscious and it just got crazier and funnier and crazier and funnier, so much so that I actually wrote a whole dream paragraph about it inside my head so I wouldn't forget it. A completely logical way to keep track of events while asleep, right? Keep a little brain journal? On a brain pad? Exactly. And it worked, too, it was all crystal clear at the time, and I was kind of excited to wake up and transfer my witty little dream critique to actual paper. But then I
did wake up and I realized that, while my subconscious recitation was indeed well-worded, its argument operated 100% under the presupposition that my house is made entirely out of blue rock candy.
The New Worst Thing About Being 32:
Last Wednesday night I had a fundraising meeting requiring my surrender to an elementary hygiene regimen, so I brushed my teeth with something other than a finger and cleaned my hair and whatnot, the standard "Tom Sawyer getting ear-pinched into the tub by Aunt Polly" routine, and I drove over. Only to find I'd written the date down randomly and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After fighting off my first residual impulse (finding a mud bog to squirm around in), I caved to my second impulse (liquor store) where I was carded by a very new cashier who is apparently easily fooled by lipstick.
"Wow," she said, "You're really holding your age well."
Holding my age well?
Holding it? Forget taking a compliment, I immediately had visions of a rolled up antique rug, propped up and sagging against a wall somewhere. Unroll it, shake the dead bugs out, you'd never guess it was A HUNDRED AND SEVEN YEARS OLD.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Thirty-Two: The Year of "What Did You Mean By That, Exactly?"
There's a whole lot going on over here. We're thigh-deep into a backyard remodel that started off relatively simple but now appears to rival the building of the pyramids in its complexity and design. Click on the picture for the whole sordid flickr set, although I recommend doing anything else BUT. It's literally like watching paint dry, this set. I'm not kidding, like if there's an ant crawling across your desk right now that you were considering sitting back and watching for a while, maybe putting some Frito crumbs in his way, do that instead. I can't compete with such genuine entertainment.
Thigh-deep today, and we've got to be neck-deep by November 6th in order to be top-of-the-head-deep on November 10th, the day my brother gets married in my backyard. I can't talk about that right now. Maybe when the house is safely
off the jack.
Kirstie Alley probably pushes her.
Randy and I started watching
Damages a few months ago for a couple of reasons. First of all, frankly, there was nothing else on television at the time. And Randy and I, desperate to clamber out of the
Cheers rerun crematorium, hit that shit like Google. Secondly,
Ted Danson costars in
Damages. We thought it would be like
Cheers methadone. We'd wean ourselves off slowly and be able to carry on conversations with other people in no time.
Damages, as we were to soon learn, is a member of that new breed of television show that manipulates the traditional concepts of linear time, bouncing back and forth between current events and the future. Of course, I immediately assumed this meant
Damages was necessarily smarter than other shows, other shows that continue to hang languidly onto the precepts of logical time and space. Lazy shows, these, what with their bullheaded commitment to the tried and true algorithms explaining our chronological existence on Earth. I settled into the couch, satisfied. I was really starting to get bored with always moving
forward all the time, truth be told, it's so predictable. I love Earth to death, seriously, but it's so 5197 BC.
The first episode we watched, wide-eyed absorbed. Understanding maybe 75%. "Wait, isn't that the attorney? Is she in jail? When... how did that happen?" We watched more closely, sure the fault was ours. Being silly Earth people and everything, hung all up in traditional sequential
time.
The second episode. We recorded it and watched it later so we could pause and/or rewind. We were able to grasp maybe half. "So, wait... she's still in jail? Or she hasn't gone yet. Is the bitch in jail or not? Did
Sam sell the bar again? Is
that what this is about?" Hand me an abacus and a rock that scratches wood. And that pile of excrement, I need to throw it at the wall.
The third episode I lost my edge. I spent the majority of the show wondering aloud why I even care why this chick is or isn't or
might at some point be in jail. Is jail even really a
threat to people anymore? Is jail supposed to put my teeth on edge? It's 2007, seriously, who hasn't been to jail? What, will she not get The Food Network? Plus, the girl's a
lawyer-- it's like asking me to be shocked when Elizabeth Taylor winds up in the hospital. Apples and apple trees, people, I'm drawing a straight line, here. If you expect me to sit and squint and pen a flowchart to understand a television show, the
least you can do is make it worth my time. Jail? No. Throw that girl into deep space or something. I want to see a tense dinner party, a dimly lit bribe care of Glenn Close, maybe Sammy gets hit in the head with a pipe, and then BAM! Flash to our tiny attorney in a full astronaut suit, floating freely through dark space. "Wow! How the hell did
that happen? She's in
space? Well, I better sit tight and stay tuned because
this is a good show, right here." I'll manipulate my brain around fancy skips through time for
that, it's riveting fucking television.
But no. Now it comes on and I just get up and pretend to do something in the kitchen. We have thirteen episodes on the DVR and we both act like we don't see them there, bold, at the top of the list, mocking us. I whistle and skip down to
King of the Hill, a cartoon in which the characters never age a day and everyone wears the same clothes for years at a time. It's like taking away my calculus textbook and asking me to sing the multiplication table song. Of course, by
not watching
Damages I'm no doubt going to miss the episode when Woody Harrelson does a walk-on as a barback, or when Kelsey Grammer cameos as a hostage negotiator or something. I guess it's a chance I'm willing to take. If Shelly Long comes back and gets pushed out of a space station cargo hold, though, just don't even tell me.
While also accidently warding off myself.
Yesterday morning we had twenty-five tons of gravel delivered. Apparently the gravel gets spread on top of the concrete and then there's a sand layer on top of that and it helps set the pavers when they're zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Exactly. It's gravel. Fine. I'm a
girl. Just shut up and dump it.
So he did. Exactly
three feet from the garage door.
Awesome plan, Rock Guy. You were obviously at the top of your class at Heavy Shit Delivery School. I don't know why you didn't just back on up to the front door and unload fifty thousand pounds of loose rock into my foyer, but I guess
then I'd still be able to move my car. So nevermind.
I'm going to set up a little shrine somewhere in the house, just a low table with maybe some candles, the New York Times Sunday crossword, a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I can start warding off some of the stupid.
Why am I not really a day trader again?
We are, after many many years of saying and hearing and screaming it couldn't be done, landscaping the backyard. I don't think "landscaping" is the right word-- I think technically you have to call it an "excavation" if you expect to find more than four human skeletons.
The first thing the crew did last week (well, after praying the rosary) was slice through the internet cable. "Hey, at least you have satelite television!" the foreman laughed. I just stared at my modem, two lights instead of four. Flatline. I briefly considered giving it mouth to mouth. Randy called the cable company this morning, shaky from withdrawl. Miraculously they'll be out tomorrow to fix the line. "If anyone asks," Randy whispered, "you're a professional day trader." Meanwhile I'm typing this whole thing on a PDA. I feel like I'm in "Your Name On A Grain Of Rice" training camp.
Oh, and this is awesome: I was in such a hurry to start my new freelance writing job that I went ahead and quit my old job as fast as I possibly could. Trained my replacement and everything. But after spending a confused nine days at home with no writing work to do, I've finally come to the conclusion that my timing was painfully off. So this morning my plan is to show up at the old gig and blend in. Like six people work there now, so they probably won't even notice me.
And I'll be the one dressed like a dentist.
Last Friday I convinced Randy to go with me to
First Friday, this gallery walk in downtown Phoenix the first Friday of every month, so I could throw some sock zombies on a table and look hopeful. Because no one ever responded to the three emails I sent to the Artlink sponsors asking how and when I could set up a table, I wasn't sure beforehand of the proper protocol. Meaning, I was looking for some advice as to how NOT to get stabbed for stealing Crazy Handmade Puzzle Lady's regular spot. And in case anyone else out there is thinking about setting up a booth or a table at the First Friday in Phoenix and you're worried about licensing or reserved spots or permits or potentially bleeding out, stop. All you need is a table, a chair, twenty sock zombies, some tiny bottles of wine, a six-foot telescoping fluorescent lamp, an inverter, a car battery, and some turkey wraps. But be nice to the puzzle lady. She's scary as hell and I heard she stabbed a dude at Oktoberfest.
I did learn, however, that simply throwing twenty sock zombies on a table isn't perhaps the best possible display strategy, since many people wandered over to get a look at the "stuffed teeth". I can also probably work on my salesmanship, as my main selling strategy began and ended with screaming SOCK ZOMBIES! at passers-by. You know that saying,
He could sell water to a drowning man? Yeah, I couldn't. I could get all up in that drowning guy's face and scream, "WATER! WATER!! SEE??" and he'd get pissed and thrashy and probably drown sooner, but he wouldn't reach for his billfold.
Melati, on the other hand, brought these amazing gourmet cupcakes to promote her new business, and all she had to do was stand serenely by and let the gravitational force of delicious baked goods reel people in. Girl made like eleven thousand dollars selling cupcakes and I didn't hear her scream CUPCAKE!! SEE? CUPCAKE! even one time.
Next month I will show improvement. I sold nine zombies this time, and half of those were to people who thought they were buying stuffed bicuspids. Next month I'll have a display wall and a big sign to scream SOCK ZOMBIES for me. Randy was in charge of our lighting situation, and needless to say he Mad Maxxed that shit out of the park; like six hermit survivalists crawled up out of the desert to marvel and ask about wattage and burn time. So if you're in the area you should come to the November event. We'll be the group that looks like it's actually on fire.
OKAY BUT YOU DO ALL THE WORK \ OW
Randy has one of those little embroidered throw pillows for the bed, the kind that read TONIGHT on one side and NOT TONIGHT on the other. I'm assuming he bought it when he moved into this house, a homey snake charm to fool women into seeing past a pool table in the dining room propped up with back issues of Playboy. I've been tossing it on the bed all these years, TONIGHT always bragging onminously to the room at large. I may not mean it, necessarily, but I like to save NOT TONIGHT for those special disagreements that call for something passive aggressive yet crystal clear. It occurred to me this morning that if we're going to continue broadcasting our biblical intentions to everyone who happens into our bedroom, we should at least do our best to make them accurate. And I can
make pillows. So now I'm just trying to decide between a FINE MAKE IT QUICK \ GET OFF ME combo, or DRUNKEN WHORE \ UGH IT'S TOO HOT.
10-4-1975
It's my birthday. I've got the day off today but some unseen force propelled me out of bed this morning at 7:45. I imagine this is how it started with my grandma, that on her thirty-second birthday her eyes popped open at a ridiculously reasonable hour and she stood up, lured by the prospect of a dry toast breakfast. I didn't have dry toast, I had a dark chocolate Haagan-Dazs bar, but I brushed my teeth right afterward. With
Sensodyne. We'll call that a push. I think maybe later I'll take a totally spontaneous nap sitting upright in a chair so everyone else has to tiptoe around me and mute the TV.
This is without a doubt the
best birthday tribute ever. And it's
Anna's birthday today, too, and she's excited and celebratory in the face of my shrugged shoulders and blank stare. Just give her a few years, that's what
I say. All the roses and cake and singing shit will fall away and it'll just be her and a couch and some green sweatpants, thinking about creamed spinach, not thinking about sex.
