30 April 2004, 2:43 peeyem
Burning down the house...
Tuesday
I spent lunchtime carefully assembling the rest of the things I would
need to hang shelves in my bedroom closet. Then I came back to the office
and charged the battery pack for the drill. When I got to the house, I
was ready to install the shelves.
Mind you, I am not going blindly into any of these home projects (except
for electrical things, which I have vaguely known about, but then, I'm
not rewiring the whole house, either). For one thing, I have owned a house
before and it needed all kinds of work. For another, I was a theatre major
and learned a great deal about construction from the master, Tom Jeffrey.
For another, I grew up in a rural area and when things had to be done,
they just had to be done. So I know a little more than your average person
about making things happen in a house.
It quickly became clear to me that I had a wood that was entirely too
hard for me to drill a drywall screw through, so I decided I should find
another project.
I wandered around the house for a little bit, considering my options.
I believe we have all known from the start that the kitchen cabinets were
going to have to go, at least the uppers, the ones at eye level, because
they were a barnacle on the ass of good taste. Not only were they unattractive,
they were too narrow to even hold a stack of dinner plates, and I've got
dinner plates coming out my ears. There was also a vent hood that was
not in any way vented to the outside of the house. I made an executive
decision that it would have to go, too.
Since I was already over there and the drill was already out, I thought
I might should go ahead and give it a shove.
I climbed up on the counter with the drill and started unscrewing screws.
Then I realized that not only were there screws, there was also grout.
So I chiseled all that out. There were some screws that turned but didn't
come out, so I called my brother and asked him what that all might mean.
He said those screws weren't caught on anything, so I could just pull
hard and they'd scrape out. And he told me if the cabinets would wiggle,
they'd come down, one way or the other.
So I got up there again and gave them a mighty tug, then climbed down
to pull some more. I heard a pop just as the fireball came from behind
the cabinet and over my head. At this point, I decided I might ought to
check out the situation behind the cabinet, so I stopped yanking and climbed
up on the ladder to see what was back there. Just as should be, there
was an electrical wire from the wall to the rangehood (duh).
I turned off the power and found my little rubber handled clippers and
climbed up there again and clipped the wire, then pulled the cabinets
the rest of the way out and took them outside. Then I took a look at the
three wires coming from the cord and decided that those shouldn't be exposed
that way and I should terminate them in wire nuts. I got the biggest one
I had and hitched them all together, just like I knew what I was doing.
Then I heard another pop and realized my mistake.
I killed the power again and un-nutted them and called my daddy, who told
me to leave the cabinets alone before they fell on me and I broke my neck.
Once I explained about the big wire nut, he forgot about my potential
broken neck and said he was surprised I didn't burn the whole house down.
So now I have been lectured about what comes out of each wire and how
they're not to touch each other, and how I don't need to be touching them,
either.
After I got off the phone, I saw that one of the knobs on the stove had
been turned to low, so I turned it back to off. I was getting ready to
leave, turning off the lights and all, and I saw that there was light
coming out of the register in the hall floor. I've never been there at
night by myself, so I had not been aware of any light under the house.
This disturbed me somewhat, so I called Leanne and told her about my adventures
and the stove and the electricity and all, and we decided that I should
call the gas company and they would look into the situation for me, and
if this involved going under the house to check out the pilot light, it
would be them and not me doing it.
The lady on the phone made it all sound very dire, telling me not to turn
anything on or off, not to spray anything, not to light any matches, not
to create any friction, so I was a little wiggy about hanging about the
house while I waited for the gas man, but I couldn't just leave and I
didn't so much want to burn the neighborhood down, so I waited and cleaned.
When he came with his little detector, it started making all kinds of
noise and I immediately knew that wasn't good. It was so bad, in fact,
that it made a little siren noise. I felt that we should run, run like
the wind, but he didn't seem shocked (due, likely, to daily inhalation
of gas fumes) and he pulled the stove out. I finally remembered to tell
him about inadvertantly turning the knob and he got a look of incredible
peace on his face and said that explained it. Then I had him take a look
at the light in the register; for future reference, you can have a light
under your house just like one inside your house, and apparently mine
was left on by the last person there.
But now it's all better, and I am much happier with those cabinets gone,
even with the walls needing patching and skimming and painting.
27 April 2004, 3:15 peeyem
I've been working on the house, getting it together to move into. A lot is involved, more than I thought, to start with. Because that's how it always is. I found a yellow sink at the salvage last week and wanted it put in, so my brother, Steven, spent a great portion of Sunday monkeying around with that. Before that, he was there to paint and do other things, because if there's something that needs to be done to a house, he's your man.
Tonight I have to put shelves in my closet so I can put my clothes in there. Tomorrow night, maybe I'll put up the shelves in the kitchen and tear out the rest of the upper cabinets in there, because they just look cheap. I already took the doors down, and they just look like hell, like cabinets without doors.
Sunday, with the help of my stepsugar, I installed a dimmer switch, if you can even believe that. I feel very advanced in my electrical abilities now.
When Steven was putting in the sink, he said that a plumber friend of his told him that there's not that much to know about plumbing except hot's on the left, cold's on the right, shit runs downhill, and the boss is an asshole. That seemed to about sum it up. I don't so much enjoy your plumbing issues, because my life seems to be full of water problems.
This morning's Writer's Almanac had a poem by Bob Hicock that had the following lines:
He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ad for Budweiser follow cars
painted
with ads for Tide around an oval
that's a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle
for
getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog.
That was kind of hard to excerpt because it's written in stanzas of three lines each, but they break in odd places. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's broken right, unless you want to go and look it up yourself.
21 April 2004, 2:47 peeyem
There is a lot of talk about the Patriot Act, how the Patriot Act will make us able to maintain our liberty. I posit for you that the Patriot Act will take away our liberties, glacially, of course, but that is what it will do.
Besides, we already have a patriot act; it was written in 1776.
19 April 2004, 2:26 peeyem
Yesterday,
like practically every other Sunday afternoon of my life, I had a tennis
match.
A ball was lobbed up over my partner's head and I took off across the
court. I am pleased to tell you that I got my racquet on it and it went
over the net (and out), but in the process I became horizontal and airborne.
Because I am somewhat accustomed to unintentional airborne episodes, I
immediately dropped the racquet and went limp. I hit the wacoal on the
heels of my hands and then I rolled and slid, scraping a sizeable chunk
of skin off my upper shin. I also heard a loud pop coming from the neighborhood
of the ball and cup socket affixing my leg to my pelvis.
I finally came to a halt on my back on the court and vaguely thought,
"Well. This isn't right."
I was afraid to move my leg, but the hot court underneath my back and
legs felt good, and the blue sky above my face was really beautiful.
Katie came over to ask if I was okay and I couldn't seem to answer.
Inexplicably, she placed the grip of my racquet across my palm, as if
to signal to passing airplanes that I was okay, getting up in just a second,
nothing else to see here, just resting for a second.
I lay there for maybe three minutes wondering what I should do and wondering
if I was bleeding from my leg, if I was crying, if my nose would run if
I stood up.
When I finally did get up, the scrape burned so terribly that all I could
think would be right would be to pour something cold over it. Since what
I had was Gatorade, that's what I used. It felt oddly good, despite the
salts in Gatorade.
I must have been in some small amount of shock because I played out my
service game amazingly, two winning shots right in the corners, to win
the set.
We started the second set and were up, and I started to be able to feel
my heartbeat in the rash. I couldn't concentrate anymore and it hurt and
burned so terribly that I felt I might vomit. I knew that if I vomited,
I would cry from embarassment.
I had to retire the point. I am dying. We were winning.
It hurts and it's covered in squick, very much like that time I fell out
of the liquor store in Savannah, only this time I haven't been to the
hospital.
I wonder how long this will burn and hurt. I know a song about it...what
a drag it is getting old.
16 April 2004, 9:58 ayem
For those following along at home, I am no longer homeless.
Not that I was living on the street, you understand, I was just disenfranchised in that my name wasn't on any papers.
Yesterday I closed on my new old house and it couldn't have been any smoother than it was. My agent, Jim Krider, has not only been a wonderful agent for selling my old house and helping me buy another one, he has been a wonderful friend and managed to stop himself on numerous occasions from reaching across the table and choking me. The other agent, Zana Dillard, showed up on time and was prepared with everything and was pleasant and on the ball. I think that's her website that I linked you to. I'll find out and fix it if not.
The guy I bought the house from is with HomeVestors, and they put up those huge billboards all over town that say "We Buy Ugly Houses." And you can say what you want to about the idea of that, but I believe in the concept of buying an existing house and making it better, rather than razing them all and putting up five matching JC Penney model homes on a quarter acre. If I could figure a way to afford to do it, I would. I'd buy houses from people who could use the equity to move into retirement homes (if they've reached that age) or into bigger houses and I'd take care of the cash intensive upgrades they perhaps couldn't afford to do and sell them to people like me who are willing to do the elbow work of making it pretty.
Anyway. Now I have a new old house. This afternoon I'm going to paint the dining room RED. I also, unfortunately, have to take back the fantastic light I bought for the dining room because it's just too big and will hang too low over the table. This is unfortunate because not only do I like that light, but the woman where I bought it has turned rather suddenly into an old bat about the whole thing. She snapped yesterday that she thought it was what I wanted. I pointed out that when it was hanging 14 feet over my head it looked smaller, and my house isn't going to get any bigger. I'm expecting a little hooha over that, but I'm also expecting to prevail.
13 April 2004, 2:15 peeyem
I think it is time for us to be out of Iraq.
More than I think we should have never been there in the first place, I think it's time to bring our soldiers and our civilians home and let God sort it out.
We are dying in droves there, day by day, more and more. Hostages are being taken, and this isn't about freeing the downtrodden anymore. It's not about deposing Sadaam Hussein and it's not about thinking Osama bin Laden is there.
Now it is about foolish pride and arrogance. And what a price to pay. Every day, more American dead on the covers of the papers. More hostages who are more than likely being brutalized. More mothers and fathers and brother and sisters and husbands and wives and children waiting for the bad news they dream in their nightmares.
I can't see where staying is helpful. I can't see where leaving would make it any worse.
Someday, in some history class, some history professor is going to have to hold up this war before his students. I'm glad that I won't have to be in either category.
6 April 2004, 2:47 peeyem
This really happened...
Last night I took myself over to the local Barnes & Noble to see what I could find out about replacing windows in a house, since I'm going to be doing that shortly here.
I was sitting on the floor with a stack of books when two rather loud women came down the steps. I don't know how old they were, but they were adult-sized and whatever they were saying wasn't very interesting, aside from it didn't make any kind of good sense.
After the first two books I decided that a trip to the ladies room was in order, so I made my way through the children's department and went in. In that particular Barnes & Noble, there are only two stalls in the ladies room: 1 normal sized stall and 1 GIANT HANDICAPPED STALL that would have easily accomodated two more stalls within.
But that's not important. What's important is that there was a good deal of conversation going on in the bathroom, but only the big stall was closed. I looked down and saw that there were, indeed, four feet in the big stall. By their voices, I knew they were the women from earlier.
I went in the little stall and was quite taken aback by the conversation. The one woman was giving the other woman instructions for something that involved the, er, micturating woman to un-uh, spread your legs further apart. I was, to say the least, morbidly fascinated. What had I walked in on, and would I have time to get out before they saw me and could identify me?
Lacking a better idea, I lifted my feet up so my shoes couldn't be identified and stayed there, quiet like a mouse.
I have no idea where the micturating woman has been all her life, but it clearly wasn't out in public, although I didn't detect a foreign accent of any sort.
When they left the stall, much conversation ensued about the dispenser on the wall near the sink and what it dispensed for a quarter. One of them determined it must be birth control, and the other proclaimed that that was a rip because on way could you get a birth control pill that worked for only a dime.
See how fun it is when you're always paying attention?
5 April 2004, 2:54 peeyem
I
saw him yesterday at the IHOP in Birmingham.
Trace and I were having lunch there, seated in one of the booths snugged
up to the smoking section, separated only by a plate glass divider etched
with The World.
They were, at first glance, an unremarkable threesome – a boy of
perhaps 7, and two grownups I took to be his grandmother and his daddy.
She was seated closer to me than he was, and she had a fan of not-so-fine
lines coming off her eyes and the soft saggy cheeks of a woman who has
more behind her than in front of her. On her wedding finger was a wedding
ring, gold, with many little stones, not a solitaire like is fashionable
now, but a cluster, like mama had when she and daddy got married in the
early 60s. Her hotpink nail polish was chipped, but her nails were short
and neat, and when she exhaled her cigarette smoke, she didn't twist her
mouth up to direct it elsewhere.
The man appeared to be a good bit younger than she was, and he was whip-skinny.
He kept his cowboy hat on, and his eyes were bright blue pinpricks in
a tan face. He had a mustache that came down past his chin on either side
of his mouth and he was wearing a shirt with cactuses and sunset and a
lone horsefigure on it, buttoned up with mother-of-pearl buttons, cowboy
cut, and neatly tucked. He was smoking, too, unapologetic in his exhaling.
The three of them had all ordered big breakfasts and were very involved
with each other. I couldn't stop looking at them.
Then she put her hand around his neck and he leaned over and kissed her,
just the sweetest kiss on the mouth.
He got up to go to the bathroom and I could see that he was wearing scuffed
shitkickers and narrow Wrangler jeans, dark and ironed with a crease in
them. When he came back from the men's room, I saw that he had a belt
buckle as big as a dessert plate, and it was silver and gold and chased
with some sort of engraving. It was shiny and new and affixed to a belt
that wasn't new but had clearly been taken care of.
He laid his cash on the table, and they left, the three of them, holding
hands, him on the right side, tipping his hat to every waitress or woman
he walked past.
Living
in the
Past?
2004
2003
2002
