Blown Fuse

Dear Mom:

I hate those people that never have a good idea of their own. Especially the ones that forget where they've stolen their ideas from and carelessly present one of your ideas as their own right in front of your face.

I think you're far too young to be senile. Are you intentionally zapping our creative energies and using them for your own sordid affairs? Oh, come on! You keep saying that me and Dee need prayer, but I don't know--God don't like ugly, true, but isn't there a commandment in there somewhere saying something about theft, too? Like, "Honor thy daughters ideas, bitch, and don't go sayin' they're yours"?

It was MY idea to open a bakery, remember? 'Cuz I can actually bake whereas you merely fake? How long do you think you can make people believe that ready-made cakes from Food Lion are baked by your own widdle hands? Don't make me tell on you. I'll tell your man. Yep. I'll blow up your spot reeeeeeeaaaalllll good.

Your man: Neesie, I thought you said you made these.
You: I did...why? What happened?
Your man: Why is there a piece of paper in my bread that says "You've been Punk'd! Your lady can't cook a damn thing!"?

What about Dee-Dee's unisex hair shack thingy? The one that you thought was a good idea only when you heard it coming out of your own mouth?

How you gonna lie and tell folks you taught me how to cook whenever people complement me on something? How the HELL did you teach me how to cook? For some reason, I remember Grandma raising me...perhaps that was a 15 year-long dream, but I dunno...

As soon as I find out who leaked my paint color ideas to you, heads will roll. And the family tree photo wall? Oh COME ON! That was MY idea! I don't even want to do it anymore >:(. I'mma keep my mouth shut from now on. Shit, if I said I wanted concrete walls to keep out the roaches like the folks in that commercial, would you go and try to do it first?

Hoes are expensive.

That wasn't a misspelling. I do mean "hoe" as in "spade." (I have no reason to pay for sex, even if I was a dude). I've been working on cleaning out the numerous flower beds around the house and decided that I was at least one tool short of completing a certain patch.

First, we bought a rake--plastic, green and courtesy of Martha Stewart Inc. as K-Mart doesn't sell a whole heap else.

Next came the shovel because we needed to dig trenches. The neighbor kids like to throw pine cones at us when we walk outside because they're ill-trained little brats who won't be getting candy this Halloween. We dug holes to hide in and launch water baloon missiles. No, I'm lying. We bought a shovel to dig drainage runs. We actually got it at the Home Depot, who honestly doesn't have that many more brands than the local K-Mart.

Digging up weeds and roots with the shovel became a pain in the back, so I just got over it and bought the hoe. I was going to wait until spring time when I would actually be planting something, but the yard looks so bad right now that I just had to do it.

I had to go to Home Depot...my paycheck hadn't cleared and all I had was three bucks (that I was willing to spend) and a $7 gift card. The whole place had two hoe choices: the premium "like hell if I'm spending that for something that reminds me of someone bending over cotton in Ol' Virginny" brand, and the cheap-ass, "I'll bet it'll break as soon as it encounters a worm it doesn't like" alternative.

I bought the cheap-ass alternative and so far it has served me well. I still use it with my head turned away in case the metal part goes flying off.

Next thing: buying a chainsaw to demolish the kid's playset the lazy p.ho's left in the back yard. They said they would come get it, but oh well. Someone better stake a claim on it before we start playing "Monster Garage" on it.

How come? (Or "why come?" for my 3-year-old niece)

How come I got to have the yard that everyone else's leaves blow into? How come? Why, damn it? Why doesn't the lady across the street have leaves? She has as many trees as we do. I see her go out there every now and then to pick up the one single, solitary leaf that dares to fall in her yard. I actually had to go to the home improvement store to get their very last pair of gardening gloves today because the leaves in my yard have piled up so high that the squirrels think the roof of my house is on the same level with the forest floor and I don't wanna be reaching into a pile a leaves to have some Cujo-squirrel gnaw the hell out of my arm.

No, seriously though--I think the guy next door has a leaf blower and he blows all his sh*@ over here on Saturday mornings when I'm too knocked out to hear him turn it on. See, we don't have a lawn mower yet (or even a darn mulcher for that matter), so I'm having to rake up the 1 foot plus layer of leaves manually every couple days until the trees get done pissing me off for the year. Do they make Rogaine for oak trees?

Oh, you don't believe I have that many leaves piled up like a layer of crispy frosting over my yard? Well, I'll take a picture of it tomorrow. It's kind of dark right now and I'm not going out there to expose myself to Bambi and his gang that like to triapse through my yard at full throttle. Mind you, we don't have a dog and wouldn't keep one in there if it had to drown in those leaves. For all I know, there could be pirhanas living in there *shudder* (or at least some Carolina snake that I haven't learned to identify).

The ground is soooooooooooooooo hard. Hard dirt means no aeration. No aeration means....c'mon, guess. No, guess! Fine, don't guess. It means NO grass! I don't know what those nimwits (the p.hos) were doing to the lawn, but other than a few patches of moss and 'shrooms, we aint got grass. Nuh uh. The thing is--it could have been completely preventable. If they had mosied a lawn mower over the grass every now and then to help shred up some of the leaves they never raked (allowing no sun to the green stuff beneath), everything would be dandy.

Paint stinks, but it does miraculous things.

Hmmmm.....nothing says nausea like the smell of mildew-combating paint--especially when there's no ventiallation. If that smell is that strong merely from painting one piddly little closet, then Lord help us when we start painting big rooms.

I swear I was having hallucenogenic dreams last night induced from the paint fumes...I think I was a mint green paint chip being drowned in bucket of white Kilz (the aforementioned mildew-killing paint).

Hubby started working on closet #1 last night, and meticulous as he is, it took several hours. The time spent cutting paint into corners and avoiding the floor was well worth it as it no longer looks like a kindergartener's green paint project gone awry.

Here is a "before" and "after" for your viewing pleasure. If you can't tell, that putrid color in the "before" is mint green. The shelves will be put back in as soon as they dry completely.

It'd better be laced with gold flecks for THAT price.

Um...yeah. I'm confused. See, I'm pretty smart--I know how to use a calculator, and often remember to change the empty toilet paper roll before I sit on the seat. So, can anybody explain to me how any gallon of paint should cost $30? I'm not going to mention any brands here, but lets call it, hmm, R.L. First of all, anyone who would spend $30 on designer white paint is a bit touched in the head. Second, anyone who can AFFORD to spend $30 on designer white paint should be able to afford to have someone paint FOR them. Third, do you think the professionals will actually BUY designer white paint when no-frills will suffice?

To me, buying a good brand of paint is like going to the dollar store and buying the off-brand dish detergent. It may be a weird color, and it may not smell as nice as your Palmolive, but damn it, you've used it before and it works exactly the same. Buying paint should be the same way. I'll buy the good, trusted $11 gallon of flat paint, know that it's reliable, and not kick myself for spending more than I can afford. I can use the $19 I saved to, hmm, BUY MORE DAMN PAINT!

Why would I do this to myself?

You take a lot of things for granted when you live in a 1-bedroom apartment, namely washing machines. I would let my dirty laundry stack up until they reached the bottom shelf of the closet and only then would I muster up the courage (and the quarters) to tote them to the laundromat. Fortunately, I purchase underwear in bulk quantities to cut down on my laundry expeditions.

But ah, to have a house. We're going to have a washer and dryer delivered soon (read: dropped off by Dad-in-Law) but first have to clean up the squalor in the laundry room left by the previous owners. Ewwww.

I can't really tell the difference between mold and mildew but there's a sufficient amount of either growing in there right now to require a mask, which I do not own. If I was smart, I'd throw a bucket of bleach water in there, close the door, and hope the magical scrubbing power of the chemicals do the work by themselves. We all know that aint going to happen, huh? Do they make "clean" bombs?

It's so cold in there :(. It's right against the garage and lacks central heat and air which makes it very uncomfortable, and unusually smelly. This place hasn't been properly ventilated since, oh, hmm...never?

What's with the ugly-a** wood paneling in here, anyway? I know the house was built in the 70s, but I find it hard to believe that something so lodge-y was so popular in so many homes.

Ha, and check out the floor. Mm hmm. Yeah, that'll be ripped up. I'm starting to wonder...you know how it is when you go to the laundromat and you're taking freshly cleaned clothes out of the dryer? Well, every now and then you drop a sock, or worse, your underwear and swear very loudly at the fact that the dirty floor constitutes you putting that item back in the dirty clothes pile? (Or not--you just blow it off saying "God made dirt and dirt don't hurt" and wear it anyway). Well, the floor in this room is so un-cared for that if I EVER dropped an item of clothing on it, it'd stay there until the floor is ripped out. It's like Chernobyl--everything left in there gets erradiated by some stranger's filth.

I think we'll bust down the wood paneled walls and put up some sheet rock. I'll paint a black and red bullseye on it for me to pound my head against for buying a house that needs so much damn TLC.

Sure, it looks pretty in a PICTURE.

When my husband and I set out on our househunting expedition several months ago, we have several things in mind that we definately needed to have in a home:

1. At least 2 bathrooms
2. At least 2 bedrooms with space for an office
3. A kitchen that we wouldn't be tripping over each other in
4. A large enough yard to entertain in or at least enough space for guests to park their cars on.

We wanted something in an established neighborhood at least 20 years ago--can't trust the quality of homes that are thrown up in two weeks.

We finally, after much looking, stumbled upon a gem of a house that had a few correctable quirks. Sure, the grass in the yard was unmowed and the plant life was untended, but not all sellers are master gardeners. I believe I called it "charming" when the realtor showed it to us. It has wood floors, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a family room AND living room, but currently it's lacking a few things, namely, oh...shall I say it? RELIABILITY?

When we were schlepping our stuff in on move-in day, wouldn't you know it problems surfaced--big, nasty, gnarly ugly ones that reared their atrocious heads AFTER we had the place inspected. Oh well, fix it and get over it? Sure, can do, but what's next?

Over the next several months I'll be posting my home renovation progress up here and otherwise griping about the new problems that surface. Wait and see, I bet next I'll fall through a hole in the floor. If you don't hear from me, call the paramedics and tell my grandma I love her.