30 August 2002, 12:49

I have created a monster. And that's all I have to say about that.

In unrelated prattle, today is the Friday before Labor Day, which means you now only have three more days of wearing your white non-athletic shoes. I believe that it also means that next Sunday the Episcopalians come off their summer church-going hiatus.

We are having a little cold snap here in sunny Atlanta. Gadzooks! I'm afraid it's only going to get to 80 degrees here. The polar cap has slid southward and is probably in my front yard right now, growing my grass even faster than it normally grows.

Of course, I don't so much care how high my grass gets; for my part I could throw out wildflower seeds and return it to the wetlands, but the neighbors will tend to frown upon that. How they can frown on my grass with a straight face is beyond me, what with them dismantling two or three cars out in their front yards at a time. If I'm not careful I'm going to turn into one of those TIPS people, snooping around and ratting on people...I can hear me now you young people today with your long hair and your weird clothes and your bare feet, listening to your marijuana and smoking your rock and roll, acting like you've got good sense, well you listen here, mister, America wasn't built for such freedom and we don't have room here for your kind. I have no idea why I say this; I have fairly normal clothes and shortish hair (though it gets big when it's humid) and I don't listen to loud music or smoke marijuana.

Good grief. I am on a tear here. Suffice it to say that I don't want any part of that TIPS program.

In addendum to yesterday's news, Club LeXXus appears to be shut down. Yay.

Happy Labor Day. Travel safely. Be nice to your loved ones. Wear sunscreen.

29 August 2002, 4:06 peeyem

Something's going down on Columbia...

On Friday night, there was a bust of some sort at the crackhouse on my street. There were lots of police cars, one of which left carrying three handcuffed young men. There was also an officer on the scene who was wearing a ski mask, I assume because he's an undercover officer sometimes. More interestingly about that bust was that there were several animal control trucks and they just kept taking away dogs. Leanne and I have a theory that they got the gentleman running the operation on a charge of keeping too many domestic animals, thus gaining entrance to the home and establishing just cause for a search of the premises.

But really, they have an alarm at the end of the driveway to signal when someone pulls in. This, in combination with the round-the-clock traffic in and out of there and the repeat visitors makes it seem pretty clear to me that something ain't right down there. Sometimes I want to knock on the door and say "What you doing in there? What you doing that makes this house so interesting to so many people in the middle of the night when the rest of us are sleeping?'

Not to worry, I'm not going down there, not for love or money.

I digress.

This morning, I intended to go the back way to get to Columbia. As I was headed for my half-assed shortcut, I saw two police cars with their lights on, and one older American-made automobile. One of the officers had his gun out, so I'm guessing they weren't interested in seeing the driver's insurance card.

I pondered that for a moment as I went on my merry way, but when I got to the end of the shortcut, there was a motorcycle cop standing on the corner with some digital aparatus, and he didn't appear to be tracking speeds. The officer was located kind of kitty-cornered from the parking lot of a huge defunct shopping center which now contains Jazzy T's and Club LeXXus, neither of which appears to be the sort of place anybody ought to take my mama's baby.

But the exciting thing was the 20 or so civilian cars in the parking lot, all without drivers, and the 50 or so police cruisers and 20 or 30 police motorcycles. Oh, and the mile and a half of yellow crime scene tape. There were officers milling around down there, and there were a bunch of them with their lights on in the turn lane, perusing people as they passed (slowly) through the phalanx of blue-clad observation.

I think there was a raid. I hope there was. I want a Home Depot, a Target, and a Borders Books to go in there.

29 August 2002, 3:31 peeyem

Speaking of Mary...

This is us last Saturday night. I think this might be the first picture ever of us together, despite the fact that I've known Mary since she was shorter than I am. Now she's like a foot taller or something ridiculous like that.

29 August 2002, 11:21 ayem

Mary says...

Everything has to be so damn hard because I feel, even though I am a christian, that God just isn't as resposible as those darn Hebrews hype him up to be thus spawning an irresponsible race.

Mary's a lot like my sister, in that I sometimes have to tilt my head and squint, but they're both pretty much always right.

28 August 2002, 2:08 peeyem

Why does everything have to be so damn hard?

27 August 2002, 3:03 peeyem

Sheesh. 7 days with no update. Where have I been?

Well, let's see. On Tuesday night I commenced painting the living room (robin's egg blue, if you're innerested). I got up Wednesday morning and went for a haircut and then went back to paint some more. I finally finished at around 9 that night.

Thursday I reorganized the bookcases and put stuff up on the quasi-fabulous shelf I built around the top of the purple room.

Somewhere in all that I went to Target. And to Home Depot. About a million times.

I believe I might have given myself tennis elbow what with all the drilling and painting. It would be just like me to get tennis elbow that way, instead of playing tennis like normal people do.

I was off for three days to be productive, and I'm still not over being tired. Paint is the smell in my nightmares.

The good news is that Cynthia McKinney is out. Bob Barr is also out, but I'm not so sure that was a good thing, being as he was largely ineffective.

We finally had our first women's season practice last night, which is quite a relief, since we already have to do one makeup and it's only two weeks until the first match.

20 August 2002, 2:22 peeyem

Why I Vote

Because I can. Because if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Because one vote can make a difference. Because it's little-d democracy. Because even if you don't go to the polls, you still vote, just passively. Because it's my right. Because it's my responsibility.

Ellen Goodman did much better with this topic than I just did. If you'd like a copy of hers, send me an email and your mailing address and I'll send it to you.

19 August 2002, 10:52 ayem

It was a good day Saturday, up until the getting lost. I left home for a social function. I realized pretty soon that I had forgotten the phone, but I knew how to get there. Or so I thought. It's not like I haven't been there before, and generally I rely on my homing device to find these particular people. I drove around for a while, lost, with a couple of twenties and not even the phone number. Finally I was disgusted enough with myself to just go home and be disgusted in bed. There sure is some pretty countryside out near Snehv'l.

Feh.

16 August 2002, 9:53 ayem

What a long strange week it's been.

On Monday I went home, ready to work on putting the house back like it was. When I opened the front door, I was hit by a wall of hot air. I knew when I pulled into the driveway that something just wasn't right. I had been thinking for about a month and a half that I needed to crawl under the house and clean the filter, but I hate going under there because there might be a spider. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I changed into some ratty clothes and screwed up my courage and went out in the backyard to hannel it. The little midget door is on the back of the house in the foundation, and it is held shut by a strip of wood that spins around on a nail. I opened it and the doorway was filled with spiderwebs. I very nearly wet my pants. I got the broom and swept it all away and got in there pretty damn fast and pulled the filter. I took a long time to wash it because I was stalling about going back in there. But go back I did, fully expecting it to come on and cool my house in a jif.

As I passed the big square thing in the back of the house on my numerous journeys past it, I briefly wondered where the fuzz on the pipes had come from.

The house didn't get cool and I wondered if I should have thrown a switch or something down there. I would rather have had a soap suds enema than go under there again, but I was running out of daylight, so back under. I flipped the switch. I pulled the manual off it's nail on the joist and sat on the sill and read it. No cigar. Finally I went in and called Ace & A, who delightfully agreed to come the very next morning to take a look at it.

I figured as long as I was hot anyway, I'd just as well get up on the ladder and paint the bathroom. Of course, when I was done, I was so hot that I couldn't really tell if the house was getting cooler or not, so Leanne came down to feel of it for me. I opened the front door and she got an awful look on her face, "You can't sleep here tonight." I had already decided this (and when I called my father to ask him what he think the problem might be, he had advised me to go spend the night with one of my friends, lest I be ornery the next day). So I gathered my things up and went to Leanne's, where there is lots of air conditioning.

Remember that fuzz I mentioned earlier? Mario came and said, "well, there's your problem." Had I touched the fuzz, I would have known it was ice and the whole damn thing was frozen. Mario then proceeded to give me some song and dance about how since it's not a heat pump he couldn't reverse the flow and melt the ice; I was standing there thinking that while I'm no expert, I'd just turn on the heat...but like I say, I'm no expert. Without going under the house, he told me it was going to cost several hundred dollars to fix it.

Whatever.

He left, saying he'd be back that evening to look at it.

They sent me another man, Jay, to whom I told the Mario episode. He snorted and said, "Reverse the flow?! What the hell is that supposed to mean? All he had to do was turn on the heat." Anyway, by the time I got there, Jay had already been under the house and seen that Mario hadn't been under there and changed the filter and decided I needed a little freon.

So now it's cool again and I've been working. I have mismeasured something for my shelves, so I have stopped working on that.

I did finally get so disgusted with the bathroom that I dealt with that, and even drove myself to the outlets to get a black cabinet, which needs a little tiny piece of hardware to be complete.

In other exciting news this week, Leanne's car was still in the shop on Monday, so I picked her up and we rode over to Jim Ellis to get a jug of wiper fluid (because theirs is far superior to what you get anywhere else), which I got for free-for-nothing for being cute (or so I like to think). Wednesday Leanne called to see if I wanted to go get some Krispy Kremes in her new Jetta. Silly girl. I want to go get doughnuts regardless of the vehicle.

Now I should probably do some work.

14 August 2002, 10:39 ayem

On my way to work this morning, I saw Johnny Cash. Right in lovely downtown Decatur. He was wearing a cheapish navy suit with what appeared to be Sansabelt pants. And big aviator sunglasses. I don't know why he wasn't all in black; I figure it's because he was incognito.

12 August 2002, 3:00 peeyem

This weekend's home project lesson is that if you are putting shelves over the windows, you need to make your measurements around the ones that are over windows, otherwise you'll have two that meet up there and you can't put a bracket there because, well, because there's a window in the way.

So I hied myself back to the HD for some other means of supporting the ends. And some primer. And some more high-gloss white paint. And some robin's egg blue for the living room.

I spent yesterday up on the ladder, scraping and sanding the bathroom ceiling. I was only going to do the ceiling, but when I started scraping the ceiling, it started coming off the walls, too, so I ended up scraping and sanding that, too. And then washing it all down with TSP, which had the deleterious effect of unearthing another piece of wallpaper that had apparently been covered with paint before the braintrust who had my house before I did covered it with squares of lizard skin wallpaper.

Yoinks. Then I had to pick and peel that all off and wash it again. Finally I rinsed it, and then went and put up a few feet of the blue in the living room (so now I really have to paint it) while I waited for it to dry.

Then there was the priming. Primer, I am here to tell you, is not for sissies. Good grief. Air conditioning, as we all are abundantly aware, only cools so much. And hot air rises. Up on that ladder, it felt like about 85 degrees. My hair had ceiling dust all over it and my head was sweating, so it was starting to set up. And the fumes were strong.

I fell off the ladder into the tub. As I was falling, I was remembering Effie and hoping I wasn't going to die that way; mercifully I landed on my feet.

The upshot of all this is that the plaid is no more. I could do it again, but I only have so many more trips up that damn ladder in me, and pretty much no more measuring. I have give out of gas, as they say, for the bathroom. I'm going to paint it all white and hang a black cabinet in there and call it a day.

9 August 2002, 1:57 peeyem

9 August 2002, 1:26 peeyem

Slept funny. Do you know what that means? I think I must have done it last night, because my neck hurts and I haven't sustained any injuries. To further add to my joy, I am getting my weekly Friday headache, which, if things go as per usual, will last until Monday morning.

I wonder if I have reached that stage of my life where every day there will be some very minor body annoyance? Not anything big, you understand, just little things aggravating enough to get me out-of-whack. If you knew how important being in-whack is to me, you'd know just how horrifying I find the thought of this. Stop smirking, Small Bear.

The weekend promises to be full of fun and excitement as I embark on finishing the great shelving project and doing something about the bathroom. Not only is it incomplete plaid in there, but the paint on the ceiling bubbles like a loose headliner in twenty-year-old Grand Torino.

It's a pretty day out. I hope it stays that way.

This is my good friend Karen. Everyone should know her.

8 August 2002, 2:10 peeyem

I am tired, tired, tired.

One of the attorneys from down the hall is walking across the parking lot with one of the paralegals. I am aware that the attorney is tall and the paralegal is not, but somehow it's all very obvious when they are being viewed side-by-side from above.

Someone, or more than one someone, on my floor keeps peeing on the seats. It's not bad enough that they do it on the first one, but then they won't use that one again, and by two in the afternoon, there's not a dry seat in the house. This is the thing that drives me crazy. Every now and again I put up a sign in there that says something like stop peeing on the damn seat! This morning I called the leasing office. I have no idea what I expect them to do about it.

I am also the parking vigilante. If I see an SUV parked poorly (which is common here in the home of self-centered yups), I put a note on the windshield that says something to the effect that If you can't park your urban assault vehicle, leave it at home. One day I'm going to get shot for just this sort of behavior. But really, I don't understand why they're driving them. For the most part, I don't see them transporting people or things, so why wouldn't a normal car that fits in the lanes and in parking spaces and can be seen around do?

Feh. I need a nap. I am going to have to go to bed early tonight.

First, though, here is something for your amusement. I laughed so hard I cried.

7 August 2002, 11:07 ayem

Leanne: There's some lady that's been drifting up and down the street.
Me: Does she have frizzy gray hair and a big gap between her two front teeth?
L: I dunno. I didn't get that close to her.
M: Was she skinny?
L: Yeah.
M: Oh, that's crazy mumbling lady. She'll stand at the street and yell at you that she's not a murderer and ask if she can talk to you. She doesn't want to lead you to her own private Jesus.
L: What does she want?
M: Her car is broke down and she's trying to scrape up enough money to get her baby off that cone-er.
L: I didn't see any baby.
M: (snorting) She doesn't have a baby.
L: Oh.
M: That ain't all. She doesn't have a car, either.

Welcome to the nabe, Leanne. Now my crackheads are yours too.

6 August 2002, 3:41 peeyem

I feel like Sisyphus pushing that damned rock.

I did something in a past life that is causing me this grief.

I act like a fate worse than death has befallen me, and it has not. I'm just tired of being asked to explain over and over and over again, when the only answer that will suffice, even though I have given the correct answer, is one that comes from an "expert". This wouldn't especially bother me, if we could just cut to the chase and ask the expert before my nervous breakdown instead of after.

I should charge by the nanosecond for the agita.

6 August 2002, 10:30 ayem

Jesus hearts you, too, honey. Now get your Rascal off Ponce during morning rush hour. What are people thinking? Do you think she got up and wondered if this would finally get her a Darwin Award? I don't even especially want to be on Ponce in my car in traffic, let alone open to the world on a Rascal that travels something like 10 mph. Good grief.

Last night I actually painted my brackets. Tonight I'm going to measure the length of the walls and go buy the lumber that I need. Then I'm going to paint it, right in my living room floor. I'm going to hang them by the end of the week. I need some toggle bolts or something. I don't know what toggle bolts are, but somebody at the Home Depot will surely want to tell me. The shelf has to be sturdy enough to hold some pieces of Hull ware that I've picked up here and there, and some other pieces of breakable things, as well as a bunch of books, including my treasured first editions, and the Nancy Drews I am going to start acquiring.

I crack myself up. I love starting projects. I just don't really care for finishing them.

5 August 2002, 2:04 peeyem

Busy, busy weekend.

I took Friday off to do some more painting in the bathroom and started the day off with a jollywhopper headache that morped into a 3-day migraine. This, however, did not stop me from going to look for sconces that you can plug in. 1 Home Depot, 1 Home Expo, 1 Pottery Barn, 1 Rich's, 1 aborted trip to Restoration Hardware, 1 Pier One, and 1 Target later, still no sconces. However, I did learn how to convert one that has to be hardwired into one that can be plugged in.

When I got back home, I must have been smoking crack because it seemed like a good idea to pull everything out of the (springloaded) closet in the purple room and strew it about the house. I had no idea that one closet could hold so much. I found photos of my siblings when they were little (man, they were cute), tax papers from 1987 forward, crafts supplies (?), fabric, membership cards from as far back as West Laurens High School Athletic Boosters from 1981, some of my mother's copious china collection (how does she push this stuff off on me without me knowing it?), and countless other little things.

Now I have thrown away five lawn and leaf bags. Thrown away is perhaps the wrong term. I have placed it on the porch to put out for the garbage men.

How do people get so much stuff?

I finally turned the humidifier back on and dealt with the remaining items, and now on to the project of hanging shelves in there.

1 August 2002, 3:50 peeyem

One of my oldest and dearest friends is in the country for a little while. We were once in the car together for 40 hours and we didn't kill each other, so we know that we'll be friends forever. His name is Brantley, and he is hysterically funny. Here we are after lunch...

I have a really gummy smile. Gads. Oh, well, at least I still have all my teeth (and so does Brantley).

1 August 2002, 9:56 ayem

They are doing work on The Temple on Peachtree. I know this because I drive past it on my way to and from practically everything. I am led to wonder if there are, in fact, any Jewish carpenters these days? The men I see working are big hairy men, and of course I can't tell by looking at them what their religious predilections are. But I wonder...