Never Enough Time To Do All The Nothing You Want

No post without a picture. So, Percy.

This morning I asked Matt, "This weekend, what do you not want to do?" He said, "There is so much I don't want to do. Everything, actually."  So we have no real plans.

We're a family who needs regular downtime.

There was a fair amount of downtime for me today. In fact, one reason I started blogging again was because of days like this, days where nothing big happens and I know that in three weeks I will not remember it at all, and it's one more day of my precious life gone. Cheery, right? Teach me to know my days are numbered and all. That's what I'm trying for.

This morning I got up at 7:00 and got Hank up. That's too late for the bus but in plenty of time to drive him to school, which I did. But when I got there the car line was so long that I parked and circumvented the line by walking him to the door, walked him to the door wearing my literal pajama pants. I am not abashed.

Then I returned home where Laura had arisen and gotten dressed and was working on a model of a cell wall for science. The last I'd heard, this was going to involve shaving cream or something, but then I turned my back for five minutes and during that time she found an old Whitman's sampler box, punched holes in the sides to represent the plasmodesmata, put a piece of craft foam on the bottom, lined the perimeter with cotton balls, and then filled the box with a half inch of shampoo. Cytoplasm? Fruity, delicious-smelling cytoplasm. I pulled off the lid and was like, whoa...hmmm...okay, done!

I was troubled by the fact that the cell was rectangular and not some more organic shape, and she was all, "Mom, it's just like a schematic." And then she pointed to the holes in the side of the candy box and talked about ion transfer, and I was all, okay Marie Curie.

Later I told Matt that she had filled a cardboard box with shampoo, and he allowed as how that sounded like an absolutely terrible idea.

This all took until about 8:15.

Then I remembered that it is Staff Appreciation Day and I owed a cafeteria worker breakfast at 9:00. The room mom had sent me her breakfast order: Chicken biscuit and tea. I texted the room mom and said, "I'm gonna assume this is sweet tea," and she was like, "Uh, YEAH." 

So I got back in the car and went to Chick-fil-A for chicken biscuits and tea. Then I drove back to the school, this time wearing legit pants. Right in the foyer, they had a drop station set up to receive all the incoming meals, and I stayed to see the breakfast labeled with my lunchlady's name and then I was off again.

By now it was raining lightly and I texted my tennis friend. We agreed to push our singles match back a bit in hopes that it would dry up. Fabienne was coming to clean, so I decided to go home and clear away some clutter. I ran around like a dervish and put sheets out, etc. When she came in, I greeted her, but I don't really like to hang around while she works. I think everyone basically feels that way? Usually I either have something to do at the elementary school and then have lunch out, or I have tennis and then lunch out, and by the time I've done all that she's finished and gone.

So I cleared out of there again and my friend and I met at the tennis court. We played exactly one game--I'm talking maybe two minutes of tennis, and it started to rain in earnest. We surrendered and climbed back in our cars.

Let the record show that I won that one game.

I went to TJ Maxx and returned a pair of pants for Hank. I did not buy anything else, so that was a revenue-neutral situation. I tried on a few dresses though, and fingered lots of the merch, but I was kind of over all of it. It's good to go and remind myself of all the stuff I don't need though.

Then I went to Panera and sat by their little gas fireplace and ate lunch by myself. Matt is my preferred lunch partner, but he was busy today--his exact words were, "I have to get some work done before the company goes to play whirlyball," so I was on my own. Panera is the kind of place where you're quite comfortable being by yourself, so I eavesdropped a lot and I read Wolf Hall.

It's a lot better now, but I remember that Panera during the worst of the recession was a anxious place. Lots of tense, hopeful little meetings and interviews going on at all those little tables. Anyway.

Then I went to the store and bought apples. Then it was time to meet Hank's bus. Fabienne had gone, leaving a clean house, or, you know, clean enough. Hank brought his buddy home and they jumped on the wet leafy trampoline and whacked each other with nerf swords at the same time. When they wanted to come inside, I made them stand on a beach towel while I removed the leaf litter from their clothing.

There was a letter in Hank's folder that informed me he's going to be given a thirty-minute "creativity test" next week. I pondered that in my heart. I really have no idea what that would look like at all.

Then Laura came home, and her afternoon tennis was also rained out, so we found ourselves with hours of afternoon at home, and that almost never happens. Laura told me her box of shampoo went over just fine, and that there is a new girl in school and she's the prettiest girl she's ever seen and they are already friends. Then I made some beans and rice with andouille sausage and we piddled around. Then Matt came home. The End.

It's just a blog about nothing.

Thank you for reading; I hope your eyeballs still point the right way. xoxo

Of Unusual Size

My sister-in-law Kate, she of the forty acres in the country and the haunted church, posted this picture on facebook this morning. "This giant groundhog keeps trying to get into my house," she said. Adding, lest we thought she was kidding, "I'm not even kidding." She said he had tried the patio door, the garage, and the front door, and was just then staring at her from the backyard.

This led Amy to comment/wail, "Why are rodents attacking our family??"

WHY INDEED.

And speaking of which. The professional mouseketeers are coming tomorrow morning to begin mitigating our roof rat situation. 

When last we checked in on the delicate marital dance--the dance that ensues when a man and woman love each other very much and they buy a house together that some rats love to nest in--I had turned the decision-making process over to Matt and had given him the contact info for Tim the critter guy. I figured that he would talk to the guy and either negotiate some reduced level of service or just pick his brain or I didn't know what.

I had turned this issue over to Matt in a spirit of wifely submission. And here's what I've learned about wifely submission: For wifely submission to work, like, as a maneuver, it can't be a maneuver, it has to really be the authentic thing. I was all, "I surrender this issue to your judgment and if you want to make a hobby out of catching rats in your spare time, I will never issue the first peep of second-guessing you because we are one flesh and I don't think you are wrong and I don't even want to be right."

Or I didn't say all those words, but it was like, the gist.

What happened was that Matt decided he didn't even have the time and braincycles to spend on talking to the guy. Which was a good proof-of-concept of the truth that if he didn't have time to talk about some rats, he didn't have time to stalk, bait, trap, and dispose of rats.

And that is how that is turning out.

So tomorrow the professionals will be here. I will have smelling salts nearby in case I have to actually lay eyes on a rat.

If that groundhog had been laying siege to my house, I would have totally let him in and tried to figure out what he might like to eat. Then I would have made him a bed in a laundry basket and later, just maybe, put him in a bonnet. You?

Genus Rattus Species Rattus

You guys. So the other night I happened to be sleeping without the single earplug I usually wear. (I am a side-sleeper and I wear one earplug in my top ear, so I cannot hear the dog breathing and the music of the spheres and whatever, but so that I can hear it if someone speaks my name or if absolutely all hell breaks loose. Yes, I do move the earplug from ear to ear during the night.)

So there I was, having heedlessly fallen into slumber with my ear canal unplugged, when I was awakened by something. I lay there and tried to determine what had disturbed me. Then I heard it: a skittering in the ceiling above my bed. A skittering and a scuttling. It was quite loud, an almost urgent-sounding kind of skitter. In my sleep-fogged state, I tried to alert Matt. I remember tapping on his hip and trying to murmur, "Critters." But I can't be sure that my mouth was really working right and I might have just patted him and sussurated in his direction.

Later, awake and vertical, I remembered that when we bought this house, the attic was home to some number of flying squirrels. So when the exterminator guy happened to be here, I confided in him about the skittering. He went up into the attic. When he came down, I was sitting on the living-room couch. He said, "Well, I've got bad news. It's not flying squirrels, it's rats."

Reader, when he said that, I actually shushed him. Shushed him like you shush a child in church. Then I put my hands over my ears. He looked compassionately at me and waited.

He explained that there are these black rats, he called them roof rats, that live in trees and high places, and like to come sleep in our attic after they've been out foraging for food. They're using our insulation for nesting material. I wailed a bit and asked why we couldn't have something cute up there, like raccoons. His eyes grew big and he said, "Oh no. You don't want raccoons. They never leave."

Then he went outside and performed various calculations and observations. When he came back in, he said that for $1360, they would go over every bit of the roofline and seal it up, then set traps and come every couple of days to check them until the problem was solved. I agreed to this and established a day and time for the work to commence, then he went away.

Well, you can imagine what Matt's reaction to this was: We will trap them ourselves, he said.

Reader, I said nothing, said it in the most tolerant and understanding wifely way that you can imagine.

I did not wish to quash either his thrift or his can-do spirit, but I did quibble with his choice of pronoun. No, I demurred, there could be no "we" in the case, as I could neither trap a rat, look at a rat, think about a rat, or really even know about a rat.

Then I said, "Sweetie, do you have the time and energy to devote to this issue? Because I do think this could be the sort of thing where we either pay now or pay later, having thrown just enough money and time at it to decide that you don't want to tackle it, given the many and various demands on your time."

Then I postponed the attic work for a week to give him time to think about it. And I gave him the critter guy's business card and suggested he chat with him.

Then I discussed it with several girlfriends, both at home and abroad, who understand the delicate marital dynamics of having rats in one's attic.

Tonight I discussed it with our house guests. "I think I heard them," our friend said. In the kitchen, Matt announced, "I went up into the attic today and I have a plan. It seems very doable."

I listened to the plan and it may be doable, I don't know. I just asked that he call the critter guy and tell him not to come, because I am ready to remove myself from that loop, and that we do something fun with that amount of money. My tennis friend just got back from a trip to Dominica that she got with a Groupon, something like that would do okay.

I will keep you posted, trust.

A Nerd-Shaped Hole in My Heart

The game company boys flew the coop last Tuesday, Election Day. Matt wanted to commemorate the event, so I snapped this picture in front of one of their many acres of white boards.

Incidentally, it was for these white boards that Matt broke my perfect, decade-long record of never, never writing an Amazon review. Suddenly, in my name, there were these detailed, thoughtful comparisons of various white board surfaces being published. But he cannot comment on my blog. (I know, honey, now it's a thing.)

So today was the first day that we had no house guests around and Matt was off working in the new place. It was quiet.

I got up at 6:15, got Hank up and dressed, fed him breakfast, made his lunch, and got him on the bus.

From 7 to 8 I watched the Today Show, chatted with Laura, and made her breakfast.

From 8-10 I lay back down and went back to sleep.

From 10:30-12 I went to tennis practice.  There were only five of us, and the coach introduced us to a one-handed backhand volley.

I came home just after noon, and this was when I felt the lack of Matt in the house. Normally I would come in from my morning activities, and he would be bustling into the kitchen to get lunch, or having a chat with his partner Lincoln somewhere, and I would be all, "Hey, you won't believe what so and so said!" Or, "I just got my butt kicked/kicked some butt," etc. Instead, silence.

In place of that interaction, I stood at the sink and diligently, carefully dissected and ate half of a pomegranate. I looked out my windows at the falling leaves. You cannot eat a pomegranate except somewhat meditatively.

Then I tidied the things. Then I watched the end of Dial M for Murder and folded a lot of laundry. I never can exactly track all the business with the latchkey.

Then at 2:45 I met Hank at the bus stop, and he brought a little buddy home to play. I presided over that business and made a quiche. Hank talked to me about a food drive at his school, then climbed up into the pantry and loaded his backpack with non-perishables.

At 4:45, Laura walked in the door with many things stored up to say, having apparently not gotten the chance to talk enough during her school day. I absorbed her info and redirected her into homework and fed her an emergency cheese quesadilla.

At 5:45, I loaded both children into the car and delivered the quiche to my neighbor. Then I drove Laura to swimming. She has been absent from swimming so long, due to play practice, that she joked that she was going to ask a lifeguard to keep an eye on her.

At 6:15, Hank and I went into Publix for a few things. Then we went home and I made a soup out of some of the things. Hank is still processing the presidential election, and he had to tell me the results of his canvassing of the elementary school teachers. Only one vote for Obama in his exit polling.

At 7, I called Matt and asked him to swing by and pick up Laura when her practice was over, which he did. They got home just after 8. We all ate some more and he watched an Avatar with the kids. Then they read some Hobbit and got into bed, and that brings you almost up to the present moment.

All this is to say, my day was pretty much like it always is, except I never know where the time goes and I felt a little bit more lonely for parts of it, but not in a bad way.

I am sorry that this post is not more exciting. I hope that you too are bearing up under such trials as may come your way. xoxo

My Hungarian Wig-Loving Housecleaner is Back

Remember Fabienne? I first had her start coming to clean like three and a half years ago, and I last wrote about her when she broke up with me in a text. That was the summer of 2011. We parted as friends and life went on. Hank would ask about her every few months, possibly as a comment on my housekeeping.

Then a few weeks ago, I was sitting somewhere waiting for a kid to do something. I got a text and it was from Fabienne, after over a year of silence. It said, "Hello, I'm thinking of you. You're in my prayers."

Well, I was reminded of the joke about the psychoanalyst who passes an acquaintance on the street. His friend says, "Hello," and the shrink thinks, "I wonder what he meant by that." I read her text a few times and went, "Hmm, huh?"

Then I texted back something like, "Hi! Thank you, we're doing great, how are you?" But then I sat there and stewed, yes Reader, I stewed. You see, that day I was in a vulnerable frame of mind about my health and cancer and dread and mortality. I don't know, I mostly feel bulletproof but there are still bad moments. They get farther apart. But something had made me feel afraid, and then I got her text, and I was like, "Why am I in Fabienne's prayers? Does she know something I don't know? Does she sense, like, a disturbance in the Force?"

Yes, I can be this crazy, Reader. It's time you knew. (You already knew?) But I am also pretty good at recognizing when I need to be talked off the ledge, and I can sort of talk myself down from there. I spun my little hamster wheels. Then I realized, aha, it's early October and we have all been hit with a veritable air-drop of pink ribbons and of course she's thinking of me because everything is breast cancer breast cancer all the time. She sees that and is reminded of me. Okay. Yes, so that's how I convinced myself that Fabienne did not have supernatural/divine knowledge that I was sick again.

Writing it really makes it seem more ridiculous than it felt in the moment.

ANYWAY.

So we exchanged a few more textual pleasantries and then she says, "Can I come back and clean for you?" And I'm like, "So am I in your prayers really or was that just your opener?" Ha! No I didn't. I said, yes please, come on Friday. So she did.

She's come twice since then; she did a really good job the first day and a slightly-less good job the second day. So we're back to where we were.

Her telling me I am in her prayers reminded me of something my sister told me. When Christians want to say no without saying no, they say, "I need to pray about it." I love that so much. Because there is no rejoinder. You're being pressured to buy a car or sign up for a timeshare? I need to pray about it. Extra PTA responsibilites? Better pray about it.

Anyway, so Fabienne is back on the scene and I thought I'd bring you up to speed. I don't know why the story of her reentry has to be so tied up in the story of my ongoing mental adjustment to having had cancer but there it is.

xoxoxo

I Actually Think Mondays Are Fine

This morning, while Hank was in preschool, I was sitting on the couch in my sun room drinking coffee and watching Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open. Yes, I hear you saying, "Becky, you work too hard. You need to slow down and take some time for yourself. You can't do anything for your family if you don't take care of yourself first." I agree with you, I do. But all that tennis is not going to watch itself.

It was pouring rain. I had just spied Hank's fuzzy crocs lying outside by the trampoline, absorbing twenty times their weight in water. I thought about going to fetch them. Then I had some other idea--can't remember but it didn't involve going out in the rain so I pursued that train of thought.

The game company boys appeared one by one. I greeted them and they trouped downstairs to their basement lair.

Matt appeared and I made him an omelette. He took it downstairs.

It's just a blog about nothin'.

Then I cleaned the kitchen, all while squinting and peering across to the TV screen. Please someone get busy doing the academic work on the spectacle that is the male tennis player's body in current celebrity sports culture. The tension between their much-vaunted machismo and the dwelling upon their fragile, injury-prone physiques. Those accumulated minutes and even hours of extreme slow-motion close ups. I mean, I think we know what they all look like naked. Juan Martin del Potro, call me.

(OMG, I just looked him up and he's only 23. Sorry Juan, stay in school, sonny! But I also just learned that he is 6'6", holy cats. So many feelings!)

Then I did bring in Hank's crocs.

Then I laundered things, and folded the things, all while watching the playing of the tennis. Then my phone made its little twinkling noise and I saw this text from my mother, "ETA: 2:30, rain is terrible." I was like, "Huh?" Then I realized that despite knowing that my parents were passing through town and stopping by my house, despite having talked to them about it the night before and having reminded the kids about it, I managed to forget it entirely in the time it took to brew a pot of coffee.

Then Lleyton Hewitt managed to take Djokovic to a fourth set, and I was like, "Guys, I have to go get Hank." But Djokovic won just in time and I wheeled the minivan over there through the rain. Hank got into the car chattering to his teacher about his grandparents coming by. So he remembered.

Then, back at home, I hauled the vacuum cleaner up the stairs and hoovered around. Then I did the downstairs, while making Hank fully a dozen PB&J sandwiches. Laura came in complaining about my not having met her at the bus stop to drive her the fifty yards to our front door. I offered her a shot of Toughen-Up. It wasn't actually raining anymore, geez.

Then she brandished a speech she has written for an oratory contest. The mandated topic for everyone is How Optimism Helps Me Overcome Obstacles. Laura writing a speech about optimism is like hearing what a bird thinks about feathers. She read it to me in the kitchen. It had some good moments and was written in her natural voice. I was surprised, though, that among her anecdotes, she mentioned my treatment for breast cancer, and said that my hair fell out and that I "wore a wig for a few weeks." A few weeks! I wonder if that seven months seems like a few weeks to her.

Then Mom and Dad did appear, bringing a dining room chair of mine they'd fixed and a huge bag of broccoli from our friend's farm. They stayed for just a little while; I couldn't get them to spend the night, they wanted to get up to the mountains to pursue their own selfish desires. Plus they left with my boxed series of The Wire on DVD.

Oh! But they didn't leave without my extracting their promise to take the kids to North Carolina this weekend, while Matt and I stay home and pursue OUR selfish desires.

Then I ate some sardines and avocado, then parented a bit more, then I went and worked out with Pretty Neighbor, and then I came home and it was time for Taco Night. After the last of Matt's guys left, I opened the door to the basement stairs and hollered, "TACO TOWN!"

Then we ate a bunch of food and then Matt and I lovingly logged it in our calorie-counting website together. I mean, we're still fun, right?

Then Matt wrestled the kids and I lay down with Hank for a few minutes. Then I had a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder in it.

That is literally just what I did today. It was very ordinary, so what better place to relive it than here in my blog? It comprises my world. It was also a good day. As my sister would say, I didn't even have to use my AK.

Hey, look up at the top of my page on the left. Beth made me a couple of facebook/twitter buttons. So you can click on the facebook one and "like" SubMat on facebook! I mean, if you like me like that. Then you will never, ever miss any news of the tennis-watching, sardine-eating variety.

You have my love,
B

Leverage, Baby

Two days ago, the garbage disposal in my sink made a terrible noise and stopped working. It did the humming thing but nothing was moving. I figured something was stuck in it, so I did the thing they tell you not to do: I flipped off the switch, put on a rubber glove, and put my hand down in there. I did this quickly, before two things could happen: 1) Matt could come into the room and yell at me for doing it--I mean, he is really, really against putting your hand in the garbage disposal, I've seen homeboy turn it off at the circuit box; 2) Poltergeists could possess the electrical wires in our house and turn on the disposal with my hand in it like they did in that movie Amityville Horror 4: The Evil Escapes.


So neither of those things happened and I got my hand down there and fished up some glass beads, big ones, like the size of mini marshmallows. They were the remains of a little glass Santa bracelet Laura had. How they got down the drain, I don't know, except that I do know because we keep so much crap on the counter above the sink, naturally stuff gets knocked in. I try to tidy that area, but everything that comes into the house lands there. It is a very bad system.

So some of the beads were whole and some were broken, and I was not holding enough beads to reconstitute the bracelet, yet I couldn't feel any more down where the impellers are. I withdrew to think and study.

During this time of contemplation, I half-heartedly stuck a broom handle down there for some reason. And I complained to Matt a lot. He said that he would look at it later.

I decided to see what the internets knew. I found this beautifully simple and helpful walkthrough. With its help, I realized that the flywheel wasn't turning, though the motor was getting power, which must mean that it was still obstructed by a bead stuck somewhere. The guide instructed me to manually turn the flywheel to dislodge the obstruction, which can be done from above (the broom handle method) or by sticking a wrench in the little wrench hole on the bottom of the unit. What stopped me from carrying out this plan was that the guide says, "Use the wrench that came with your disposal." I was like, huh? We don't got that wrench. And I'm not wise enough in the ways of wrenches to know an alternative.

Some time later, I said to Matt, "Do you have an offset wrench? We need to, like, stick a wrench in this little hole down here." (By now I'm having flashbacks to our ball cock conversation. Why does this stuff always happen in the kitchen?) Matt's like, "Wrench?" And I'm like, uh huh, and he's like, figure out what kind of tool I need and I'll take care of it.

That had me stumped. I mean, I had just very clearly with my mouth formed the word "wrench." I don't really know where to go from there. He went downstairs to work and I continued to live with the nonfunctioning sink with the tiny puddle of muck in it. This went on for another full 24 hours.

But Reader, just like the young sapling in winter, during this period of latency, I was gathering strength and summoning my internal resources for the surge of power--the new world that was to be born.

Also during that time, I drank a cup of coffee with Kahlua in it at 11pm and slept like CRAP last night. Smart women, foolish choices. That threw off my whole morning and made me feel like butt and I didn't work out with my neighbor today, and it rained a bunch and I made two separate trips over to the pool/dojo, arriving home at 8pm to a sink with a tiny puddle of muck in it. Somehow that damn thing was not fixing itself.

Oh my God, there has never been a longer story of small appliance repair! I am proud.

While Matt was up starting the kid-bedtime process, I stood in the kitchen and made a small keening noise. I groped the disposal with the rubber glove some more and pulled out another half bead. Then my eyes alit on a plastic bag of odds and ends Matt had used to take apart a bed in Chattanooga. 'Nother story. I looked into the bag and there was a little pouch of something called "hex keys." Reader, here was something familiar! They looked like the little wrenches that come with Ikea products, ie, the only wrenches I've ever used. I wiggled my fingers into the pouch and picked out the chunkiest wrench.

Sitting on the floor in front of the sink, I tried the wrench in the little hole. It seemed to fit. The guide had said that the flywheel will be hard to turn but then, when the blockage is moved, it will turn freely. And that's what happened. First the thing wouldn't turn, and then it made a terrible noise, like two pieces of metal with bits of broken glass between them. I got it turning easily.

Then, checking to see that the little red reset button was pushed in, I stood up and turned on the switch. But I didn't just flip it on and leave it! No, you gotta pulse it like a blender. On and off, on and off, while water runs. At first the disposal was making the awful grinding noise, but it was turning. So I kept pulsing until I was brave enough to leave it running. And it cleared the junk away and sounded normal.

I whooped. Then I hollered, "Who just fixed the garbage disposal?  ME. WITH A WRENCH. I am TAKING BACK THE NIGHT!" And I wasn't sure Matt had heard me, so I went upstairs and found him to tell him face to face. Then I tweeted it and then I put it on facebook. I almost texted my parents. And now I have blogged it. Hear me roar.

But it's funny, seriously, I studied the little diagram of the parts of a garbage disposal, and now it is in my head and it is mine. What was an opaque black box to me is now part of the mapped territory, and it will not trouble me again. Knowledge TRULY IS POWER, they were not kidding. Imagine if you could come to grok the workings of your car that way! Or something else hard! And there is information out there to help us learn! We have only to seize it!

Seize it!

(Jiggle it.)

Teach a man to fish!

Peace out,
B

It's All Ball Bearings Now

Last weekend I mentioned that I had tried and failed to fix one of our toilets, and that Matt brought home a kit of new toilet tank parts. Actually, he brought home two because our downstairs toilet takes two hands to flush. He thought since we were fixin' toilets, we'd do that one too. So the bag containing the two toilet kits sat in my breakfast room all week. We find that these chores need time to season.

This afternoon, though, I said, "Honey, do you feel like poking around in the toilet?" I thought it would be relatively simple to swap the bad parts for good ones. But he was upstairs for a really long time, then came down and went straight out the door to the hardware store. He came back empty-handed and said they didn't have what he needed. Then he went down to research the problem on the internet. I guess he was watching YouTube videos? I stayed away because I didn't want any part of the job to adhere to me. Then there was some more toilet-study time in the bathroom and then a second trip to Home Depot. By now it was getting dark. I had folded laundry, watched both of the semifinal matches from the ATP Paris tournament, gone to the grocery store (taco night!), and read the entire September Elle, the one with Gwyneth on the cover, all while the toilet situation was unfolding. So we both had important jobs to do.

Taco Night was well underway when Matt returned from the store, but he had business with both toilets. Then he stepped into the kitchen to give me a status report. Because he is the way he is, the report started with a lesson in toilet anatomy. Apparently there's a flush valve and a fill valve, and each toilet had a different thing wrong, and replacing the relevant valves was made difficult by our toilets' antique status. It seems that in the fifteen years since this house was built, toilet technology has moved on, and the inside of a toilet tank looks very different.

I asked him what he meant, and he started explaining about how something called the "ball cock" was this and that and they don't do it that way anymore, and he just kept saying "ball cock" and I was tittering and saying, "Stop saying 'ball cock' hee hee!" and laughing like an eleven year-old Japanese girl. Ball cocks! And he went on because I think he was still honestly trying to get me to understand the technology. Then he reached an absolute crescendo that involved this actual sentence being said by him, "So, with the ball cock you really need to jiggle it, but the one with just the shaft and ring should take care of itself just fine."

!!!

I looked at him, looked deep into his soul to see if he was just messing with me, but he's a hard one to read.

Ball cock.

Sorry.

Jiggle it.

Okay, done.

So I think the toilet situation is resolved? The issue of my juvenile sense of humor is unresolved.

Did you have a good day? It was pretty low key here. I also took Hank to an early karate class--it was at 9 and I just never get out that early on a weekend morning, then I did some parental admonishing and adjudicating, cleaned the kitchen forever, straightened all the things, and ate a tablespoonful of Bonne Maman cherry preserves. Which is the best store-bought jelly. Listen to me, "store-bought." Like I am one of the freaking Waltons.

Good night, Johnboy!

Domestica

Today was a great Saturday spent in and around the house. I slept late and then spent the rest of the morning watching tennis, which made me feel, by afternoon, as though I needed to pay for this leisure with extra industry. And that my kids needed to help me pay.

We all trouped upstairs and I started hollering instructions. Hank put away a basket of his folded clothes while Laura and I started on the kids' bathroom. I left it in her capable hands and went into my bathroom to try to fix the toilet. It had been continuously running a couple weeks ago, so I'd jammed a wire coat hanger under the floaty ball arm thing. Apparently that isn't a permanent solution, so I sat astride the seat and went at it with a screwdriver. I tried tightening the screw holding on the floaty ball arm, which worked once before, but no. Finally I summoned Matt and asked him to go into the world and find one of those kit things that has all the toilet tank parts in it. He went and did that. So now we own a kit thing that contains a bunch of toilet parts. I'm not sure if the next step is my job or not.

Then Laura helped me change a lot of bedding (time for the PB Swedish House duvet set, yay!) Then I sent them down to the basement to bring up the bins for the Halloween decorations. Then we un-Halloweened ourselves, packing away the black feather wreath, the purple and orange tinsel garland, the stuffed pumpkins, black felt table runner, the string of spider lights, the black velvet pillow, the scarecrow boy and girl, the terra cotta jack o' lantern, and Hank's sign that says, "WELCOMEGREATPUMPKIN." I was sad to see them go.

But, my cleared-off table inspired me to go into my table linen archive and bring out these Orla Kiely for Target placemats, which I haven't used in a long while. I love the stuff from that line; I think it is maybe my favorite of the Target-designer special lines. That was like, three years ago? It is good quality, I use some piece of it every day, and I'm always glad to see it. I think the overall Winner of Winners was the canister set. It's the Missoni-for-Target of my heart.

Then it was late afternoon and I still hadn't gotten any real exercise, unless you count sweeping leaves off the trampoline and double-bouncing Hank. So Matt and I went up to the tennis courts to hit for a while. We left Laura in charge of Hank at the house. We've been experimenting with doing this--letting her watch him for short times while we're in the neighborhood, like at tennis practice. She has her phone, I have mine, and my instructions are, "Laura, your job is not to boss Hank, but to watch him and help him. Hank, mind Laura." So far it has worked out great. She has good instincts, and he is a pretty sensible kid anyway.

We went and played a set and darned if I lose to him every time. It is distressing to me, since I've played two seasons of ALTA now, and he's just picked up the game in the last couple of months. I won one game off of him and that was because I got him chatting about something. Wiles!

Then we came home and I said, "Do you want me to make that chili?" And Matt was all, "Wellll..." So I went in to the kids and he left and got Mexican takeout. Then we watched Gnomeo & Juliet. Then I vacuumed my rugs while Matt gave the kids their nightly wrestle. Now they are all three asleep. Matt will probably rouse himself in a minute here and lumber back downstairs to his lair.

Now you are fully up to speed. It is a thrill-a-minute, but daily blogging, you know?

What are y'all doing?

Our Daily Blog

BeckBloPoMo rolls on. (That's Beck's Blog Posting Month for those of you just joining us.) Let's do this blog post.

Last night Matt and I stayed up pretty late priming the main room in the basement. Until 4:00, I believe. We have a five-gallon bucket of primer and a lot of unpainted drywall. I got one of those little square pads that are good for edging, or "cutting in" as the pros insist on calling it even though nobody's dancing, and I edged/cut in everywhere. Then we both went to work with rollers. Turns out that using a long roller engages the muscle that I'd pulled a week ago, and which had slowly gotten better until I did a bunch of painting. Now there are certain positions that I can't get into and out of without making exaggerated grimaces. It's also a muscle that hurts when I sneeze or laugh. Or, I guess, sob, but nothing has gotten that bad yet.

Interlude: Before our painting work began, Matt came to where I was sitting on the couch, minding my own blogness. He said, "In a minute can you come down to the basement and hold the flashlight and not tell me that what I'm doing is crazy?"

While he said this, he was wearing knee pads.

Reader, I was intrigued. I told him I was fine with the first part, but that I wasn't sure what might come out of my mouth in the heat of the moment. It turns out that he was cutting more sheetrock but I can't talk about it.

Go now and get a drink from your fridge before Matt hangs sheetrock over it.

So, priming. Which is like painting only nothing is pretty afterwards. We got the main room finished and could have started the bathroom, but our trays were empty and it was late/early. You know, it was fine. I sound kind of negative right now, for no real reason. This morning I was rather draggy and tired. And all day I just felt a little, I don't know, flat.

It caused me to reflect on the fact that usually, I feel really, really good. Almost euphoric, even. I haven't talked about this. But I have wondered sometimes, especially in the last year or so, if I have some kind of mental issue or problem that causes me to feel better or happier than is strictly warranted. I think of it as my irrational exuberance. I do know to be grateful for this. It's odd, though. I always feel as though something wonderful is just around the corner, that something good is building. Somehow this coexists with, or is maybe sharpened by, the occasional dread and worry I feel about things. Is this a chemical thing? Is this just what we call being happy? Blogging-induced narcissism? (Prob-uh-blee.)

It's possible that I'm crazy from sleep-deprivation.

ANYHOO. So, we were up late priming, priming like crazy. We were prime as goats, hot as monkeys...ho ho! Shakespeare references are fun.

Sleep deprivation.

So all day I was a little flat and didn't want to do anything, and indeed not much got done. In the afternoon, Pretty Neighbor texted me and asked if we were going to get together for our workout. I had been hoping she would forget my phone number. But I could only say yes. So we did, even though I thought I was too tired and my muscle was too sore. I have an injury! But it was fine. And the workout made me feel good. And then we drank a beer.

And then I came home and Matt's mom was here, and we took Hank to the store and got him an icee, and I came home and made red beans and rice with sausage. And other stuff happened and it was all fine.

So this is a story of how I felt a little run down but basically fine. Brought to you in living color by daily blogging. See, this is the kind of stuff that winds up on the cutting room floor when I'm not blogging every damn day.

Now I really want to get horizontal but I'm actually going to go down and see if I can help Matt. Let's talk tomorrow.

Epic Basement Action

It took me all day yesterday to recover from what went on in the basement Thursday night. I've been too tired to even tell you, omg!!!!1!

Our builder dudes were finished with their work on Tuesday, a bit earlier than was expected. In accordance with his scheme, Matt then spent all day Wednesday and Thursday down there hanging drywall in three additional rooms. Since our marital discord around this plan the other day, I had kept my mouth shut and waited to see what would happen. I was busy with life on the main floor, but I thought maybe it would work out or maybe he would change his mind once he got into the project, and then we would move ahead with our floor staining and painting.

Matt did tell me that he had done drywall before. I was like, "Really? When in our sixteen years of marriage, a time in which I've been pretty closely observing you, did you manage to get around and hang some drywall?" (That's me keeping my mouth shut.) He reminded me that he did construction one summer in college. Ah. I hadn't remembered that. I just remembered how tan and muscly he was when he got back to school. So yes, drywall. Drywall is hot!

And then, lo, he got it done, he got all the drywall in place. One thing I forgot in this situation is that Matt is like a force of nature. Once he decides to do something, something that is important to him, he will not stop. Honey badger don't care.

So it got to be Thursday evening and Matt had not surfaced from his basement activities. I knew that according to the timeline he had in his head, he wanted to have the first coat of stain on the concrete floor by bedtime. That meant that the drywall needed to be taped and have the first round of mudding done. Then the storage area--a  room we call the bomb shelter--needed to be cleared out because we're staining the whole floor, even in the unfinished areas. Then the bare floor needed to be cleaned, and cleaned well. Then the stain needed to be put on.

I decided that I better step in and help, and that this situation was covered in some portion of our marriage vows. I can't remember which part but I know I promised a buncha things. So I put the kids to bed Thursday night and went down into the depths about ten o'clock. Our bud (and Matt's coworker) Lincoln showed up to help.

Reader, we worked until 6:30 Friday morning. OMG. Yes, to the break of dawn!

It was not the all-nighter that dreams are made of.

First I got a crash course in taping drywall. It involved getting up and down off a stepladder a lot. Then I got to apply the joint compound. That was kind of fun--the joint compound is the consistency of heavy-duty frosting, and it was like decorating a fugly cake. When that was done I was kind of tired.

But nobody showed any sign of slowing down. The whole time Matt and I had been working on the drywall, Lincoln was emptying the bomb shelter. He picked things up and carried them out the back door for two hours. We chatted. They talked about work a lot. I frosted the walls.

Then that was done and the entire 1500 square feet of basement floor was cleared off. We swept. Then I vacuumed, and then Matt vacuumed. That white dust that sheetrock produces...oh man, we sucked so much of that off the floor and out of the crevices. At one point the vacuum cleaner gave signs of walking off the job, and Matt took it out into the backyard and gave it a talking to. Or cleaned the filter. Then Lincoln and I mopped, the old-fashioned way, with two buckets of water, one for clean water and soap, and the other to rinse.

Have you ever mopped a concrete slab? It does not make you feel like the smiling housewife in a 1950's commercial. More that the water disappears before your very eyes, soaked into the concrete, and you hardly feel like you're doing anything, except the mop and then the water and then you get filthy. And this feels like progress. Also, mopping is hard. It wasn't like schmooping or schmopping or whatever my hardwoods, with the cute microfiber mop head and the darling spray bottle. This mopping made my back sore. And it was a lot of floor and it's not smooth, frictionless floor.

Even so, morale was high. There was a definite esprit de corps, and many hands make light work and all. It just got later and later. And Matt showed no signs of stopping. Like the Oompa Loompas in that one part of that movie. Or like Kurtz. Dude was determined. Did I totally get the timeline and the urgency? Do I now? Not really, but I didn't want to be the weakest link.

Somehow in typing all this it doesn't seem like that much work. But at the time, I swear, I thought, "We few, we happy few! The bards will sing of what we have done this night!"

We got the floor clean, and it was dry almost immediately. Matt rigged up the sprayer with the concrete stain and put the first coat down. We sprayed our way out of the basement and up the stairs. I staggered into the dawn and realized that Laura was getting up for school. I got her on her way, showered, and fell asleep. And Hank, bless his sweet heart, slept until after ten o'clock.

Not much was accomplished on Friday. I was too tired to work out with my neighbor. But not too tired to roll over there and eat birthday cake with her family. I figure I burned a lot of calories mopping that concrete slab.

So the floor is coming along. Matt put a second coat of sealer on it this afternoon. I'll do a post with all the floor details, it might be edutaining for someone. Here's what it looked like after the first coat of sealant.

Shiny!

So that is what is going on below decks. And the whole night, Matt and I got along beautifully and never squabbled. Until today when he started talking about something crazy and I was all, uh, not on my watch beeyotch, and he was all ??? and I said, um, I didn't mean for that to sound as negative as it did and he said, yeah, you couldn't have meant for that to sound as negative as it did.

I'm paraphrasing.

Longest post ever.

Happy Saturday, my dears!

So Harmonious Already, Like Oxen Sharing A Yoke

Well, that didn't take long. Matt and I have already enjoyed our first home improvement argument. Or it wasn't a full-blown argument as neither of us would show steel over something like this. It was more that we sketched out the contours of a possible argument that we could have and then I left the field, perhaps saying something like, "Well obviously you have no need of my opinion," like one says, and then Matt called foul on me for saying that and criticized the approach I was taking to the argument. It was like a meta-argument except that the idea of a meta-argument makes me so exhausted I would never admit to beginning or engaging in one.

Aren't you so glad I'm blogging every day?

The scene was set by a long trip we made to the home improvement store tonight. Matt was going and for some reason I wanted us all to go. I am still giddy with the notion of paint cards and floor finishing and things that are fun, you know? So the idea of going seemed exciting. It wasn't as exciting after I remembered I don't really like those places and then I wound up holding Hank in my arms due to an invisible, minor, and possibly illusory scratch he suffered on his arm. Before that, I did manage to have a long conversation with the flooring associate about carpet for the basement stairs. I found out that installing carpet on stairs costs $13 per stair, and that all carpet is scandalously ugly. It just is. I have carpet all over my second floor, and I've never really felt one way or the other about it. But I realized I've never bought carpet, and it isn't fun to pick out. Especially on those disembodied sample sheets. Seriously, there were some Berber samples she showed me that made me feel like I would never be joyful again. That wasn't Matt's fault.

The whole point of the trip was so that Matt could do some reconnaissance on what would be involved in going further than the basement guys are going, and sheetrocking a couple more rooms himself after they finish what they're doing. When he told me this plan, he prefaced it by saying, "Free your mind." Which is our throat-clearing utterance that we use when we want to propose something that may be met with resistance. I promised that my mind was free, and then when it turned out that his plan was something to do with building materials, I was like, "Fine, if you want to do that, go for it." And on the way to the store, I was supportive. I let him know this by saying, "I'm supportive of your plan."

But once we got home, the kids were in bed, and we were standing down in the basement, I just felt that he was being a scoosh unrealistic about how much can be accomplished before next Monday, which is when he wants all his guys to move down there and work. He says Monday is "not negotiable." Keeping in mind that Larry and Darryl the basement guys will not be gone until Wednesday. And we then need to clean and prep the floor, stain and seal it, and paint the walls. I can't see a major construction project happening if Monday is the goal. That was my position, and to strengthen it I cited Matt's well-documented and not-always-warranted optimism about how much can be done in a limited amount of time. I could give you chapter and verse, but it will all be in the biography I will write about him so I will spare you here. His optimism and self-belief are among his most appealing traits, they are. Anyway.

So I was like, "It will take us all four days to do this floor and paint. There is no time for anything else." And he was all, "Yes there is. I will do it." And then I realized that there was no need for me to draw that line in the sand. What was I arguing for? If the man wants to hang some sheetrock, why not? He wasn't asking me to stand there and hold his nail apron.

Then I gestured to a wire rack hanging on the wall, where I used to store gift wrap. I told him that I looked forward to having a little gift wrap station down there again, maybe with a little table under it. He said, "Hmm, maybe in the far future, but there won't be anything in these rooms that isn't office-related." And then I was like, you're kind of being a butt, and killing my joy. And he said he didn't want to kill my joy.

But it was too late. The joy was dead. Then I stood up and brushed off the seat of my shorts and came up here to tell you about it. He followed me to admonish me for beginning to argue about the basement. That's also what we call being a butt.

Possibly I was also being a butt, due to some submerged and obscure issues of my own. I don't know.

So that is what's going on in basement today.

I'm glad we had this talk. I'm sure in a little while we'll be lapping out of the same dish again.

I love you guys and I know you would never tell me I can't have a gift wrap station in your new home office.

B

Sunday Science

Are you curious about what happens when you drop a smoke bomb into a glass of water? The SubMat family bravely carried out that very experiment last week and I give you the results here. Please forgive the odd moment when I turned my iphone sideways while recording.

Does this count as a vlog? Am I a vlogger?

What are y'all up to? Except for our trip to the hardware store yesterday, I have not left the house. Last night the Hamiltons came over, and we had Mexican takeout and played a card game Matt made. Speaking of science, today I taught Laura how to clean a toilet. Then I showed her how to use Spotify. (Guess which one she liked better?) Actually, an old post of mine about the proper way to clean a toilet still gets Google traffic every day. Yet Klout continues to say that I'm influential on "parenting, Manhattan, photography, and shoes." What the hecks, Klout? Why are you so blind to my toilet influence? I've now blogged about toilets like three days in a row. (Sorry.) I mean, Manhattan? I did go there one time.

So Laura and I tackled the bathrooms today, then I vacuumed the downstairs, getting the baseboards and all the corners where it turns out Fabienne had been kinda half-assing it. Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as vacuuming under a couch. Then I cooked a chicken. Then I jumped on the trampoline with Hank and pulled a muscle. Now I'm reading a library book. I know it is boring, but I said I would blog every day and this is what happens.

Shall we reconvene tomorrow?
Love,
Me

We Are Flushed with Excitement

This is Laura exulting in the fact that there's now a working toilet in our basement. That's the bathroom-in-progress behind her. As soon as the kids saw that potty, they both wanted to use it. Something about the novelty of peeing in a room in your house you could never pee in before? I will admit that I felt it too, the desire to give the toilet its maiden flush.

It is exciting though, just the idea of having more usable space in the house. The basement guys were down there all week, working on a couple of rooms for Matt and the four (!) other guys who are now in my guest room. (They hired another guy last week and things officially went from crowded to some kind of reality-show dare.) The basement space is going to be very basic--no granite wet bar--but it will give us all some much-needed wiggle room. Like I will get to wiggle back into what used to be my office.

In a spasm of frugality, Matt told the basement guys that we would do the floor and the painting ourselves. Because we are so, so handy. No, we are not. But we are game. And I have always liked the look of a concrete floor that has been stained and buffed, so we decided that's what we'd do. I researched it this morning. Most DIY websites make it seem super-duper complicated, like, compose your mind, then put on rubber waders and etch/clean the floor with acid, and then neutralize the acid with baking soda, and then pour out libations to the gods, then clean up the libations with a shop-vac, and so on.

Then I read a bunch of old Apartment Therapy posts and people were like, "Oh yeah, just throw some stain on that shit! Put a bird on it!" So I thought that if the actual task were somewhere in between those two scenarios, we could handle it.

We loaded up the whole family and went to the big box home improvement store. Matt and I talked to a fairly knowledgeable dude in the paint department, and he made it seem pretty simple. He told us that with an untreated slab, like we have in the basement, there is no need to etch it or clean it with acid, it is rough enough. We can just clean it, clean it again, apply the stain with a sprayer, and then decide if we want to put a glossy sealer on it (I do). So we left there with the tools we need to do the job, we think. I'm sure you will hear more about this.

The basement guys should be finished in the middle of the week. I will not miss the pounding. Oh my God, the pounding. When I returned from the mountains late last Sunday night, Matt warned me that they would be starting work at 7:30 the next morning. I thought, "It will be in the basement, I sleep on the second floor, how loud could it be?" Oh ha. Ha ha. It turns out that when someone is doing framing work at the bottom of your house, they are banging on the bones of your whole house. It is loud, best believe.

So, to recap: if you come to my house, we can offer you an additional place to potty. And Matt and I are going to stain the floor. I know it will be really good for our relationship, because they always say that trying new things keeps your marriage fresh. Onward.

Cue The World's Tiniest Violin, Again

Last week, while I was in North Carolina, my house cleaner Fabienne broke up with me in a text. I'd been expecting to hear from her about which day she was coming to clean, but what I heard instead was that she's taken a full-time job and won't be cleaning anymore. Her text also said that her stepmother could take me on.

I read this text and my mouth fell open, just like a comic strip character's. I felt happy for her but also sad for me. And confused about what stepmother and who is this stepmother? I felt this needed to be a phone conversation, so I called her and left her a voice mail saying how happy I was for her and that I wanted to hear about the job, etc.

The next morning she called me back and apologized for having texted me. She went on at such length that I realized she felt my phone call to her had been some kind of admonishment for texting. Anyway, Fabienne has been hired as an administrative assistant at a non-profit, with hopes that the job will convert to something more down the road. She is a single mom of two kids and this is a good move for her. I told her how glad I was and she said, "I'm ecstatic not to be cleaning houses anymore!"

Then I was felt like I needed to say, "Yes, that must have sucked!" or something but it also didn't seem quite right. So I jumped in with, "But I will miss you!" and she was like, yeah, miss you too, whatevs, hasta ya later, gator.

I also thanked her for the offer of her stepmother's services, but told her that this was probably a good time for us to take a break from having a house cleaner and to use that money to beef up our emergency fund. As I heard myself saying these words, I was like, "What the HELL am I saying? This sounds like some adult has seized control of my body! GET OUT." But it is the truth, and spending two grand on our cars in a single day the other week made this crystal clear to me.

So I came home from the mountains and stood in the kitchen with Matt. It was a solemn moment. "Listen," I said. "We're on our own now." I pointed to the downstairs bathroom that he and his coworkers use all day. "Nobody is coming to clean that bathroom anymore." He said, "You mean, Larry Bird is not going to walk through that door?" And then he laughed and laughed. I looked quizzical and he explained that this was a reference to the world of sports and that it was hilarious. Yes, so no Fabienne and no Larry Bird and no Big Bird. This seemed like a good time to tell Matt that I would not be cleaning the new Blue Mammoth Games bathroom being installed in our basement. So I did tell him that.

Funny, one of my very first blog posts was about getting rid of our old cleaning lady, back when I had only four readers and not the dozen(s?) I have today. It's all about fat years and lean years, I guess.

So I am still a little shaken at the prospect of losing Fabienne, but I will rally. It is some comfort to look back over the highs and lows of our relationship.

A low point: when she broke my Red Wing bowl and also when she wasn't dusting in my bedroom.

A significant point that I don't know how to categorize as high or low: when she was standing there at ground zero of my getting diagnosed with breast cancer.

A high point: when she gave me all those wigs. 

I mean, I knew this day would come, that either she would break it off or I would. But I wasn't quite ready. What various permutations of this sitch have you experienced?

So, that's another feature of my mental topography this week. And hey, I have an idea that I'm going to blog every day in August. I'm two for two already! This will result in my telling you some really boring stories about stuff like getting new tires and not being well-dressed enough to enter Walmart. See you!

Snackable

Look at this baby guy! His name is Gabriel Wayne, and he was born one week ago today to my brother and sister-in-law. He weighed 8lbs, 5ozs, and has already gained back his birth weight, as he is a chow hound like his Aunties.

Y'all, I was in such suspense waiting for this baby. I was glued to my phone all last Sunday night as Katie labored and labored. And labored. It is hard not to get a little worried as the hours roll by, even though we know these things most always turn out just fine. Finally, at two-thirty in the morning, I texted my sister and said, "I don't think I can stay up anymore." She took that to mean, "Call me!" Which she did, an hour later, after I'd fallen asleep. I couldn't summon the wits to answer the phone, but I rested easier knowing that she was on the daylight side of the world and would handle the worrying and waiting for a while. He finally came in the wee hours, and everyone was fine. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to that picture up there. Such relief! I fell in love with that little doll face.

Look at this smooshy thing. Just look at it. I know, let's all go get pregnant RIGHT NOW.

So that was the big news of the last week. The other thing that happened was that I ate a fried Oreo. And the other news is that there are fried Oreos in this world.

I was in the mountains all week, first with Matt and the kids and Matt's mom and brother, and then Matt came back home to work and we stayed on with my parents. I came back last night and Matt kept me up 'til the wee hours. Cleaning out the basement, awww yeah. Today there are two dudes down there banging around and building some kind of Bat Cave for Matt and his coworkers to move into. This means I'm getting my guest room/office back in the near future. I'm high-fiving you right now.

HOA Has Their Dang Panties in A Bunch

One day a couple of weeks ago we were delighted to receive not one but two letters from our Homeowners Association. Two on the same day. They were writing just to say hi, lookin' good.

Not really.

They were writing because in one of their panoptical surveillance drive-bys of the subdivision, they decided that our house and yard were failing to meet the design standards put in place to beautify our neighborhood and protect all of our property values. And they knew we would want to be informed of this breach in our covenant with them as soon as possible.

One of the letters directed us to, "Please trim back shrubs/bushes in front of house." Fair enough. We have this giant snowball verbena bush that blooms in early spring, and then goes totally bananas foster with the leafing out. Going crazy and reaching for the sky. Huge bush. I have actually blogged about this thing before, and the difficulties of grooming it due to its position at the edge of a little cliff on the side of our house. I've blogged about it multiple times. It is probably the most blogged-about bush in the county. Except for the Real Housewives of Atlanta. badum-CHING!

Yeah, so the second letter said, in bold type, "Please pressure and/or paint the rusted chimney." I am sure they meant "pressure wash," as that rust stain has ignored my pressure for five years. Our chimney cap had rusted and stained the siding on the chimney underneath it. We had the chimney cap repainted when our roof was replaced this winter, but the stain remained. It's not that we liked the stain, but we have been living with it because one time Matt climbed up on the roof with a bottle of CLR and it was nearly the last thing he did on this earth. Our roof is too steep and the chimney, we decided, was accessible only to God.

So when Matt saw that letter, he had some really heartfelt things to say in response. Very heartfelt and colorful. I listened to him and validated his frustration because it's important to do that in a marriage. Then I went about trying to find someone crazy enough to get up on that roof. And Reader, I found him.

In your neighborhood, do you get handymen and other entrepreneurial types taping flyers to your mailbox to advertise their services? We do, and I think those flyers are a nuisance. They blow everywhere and make litter. But I called one of those guys. His name is John and he came on the double. He seemed undaunted by the immense precariousness involved in the job and quoted me a very reasonable price. Friday morning, bright and early, he set to work pressure washing our entire house and cleaning the chimney.

He was here for twelve hours.

Over the course of the afternoon I progressed from offering him cold drinks to wanting to fix him a hearty meal and tuck him in bed. Dude was working. I was afraid we would break him. I was afraid he would fall to his death. I was afraid he would run out of daylight before he got the chimney cleaned, but as twilight deepened, he was packing up his ladders and the house looked great. The pressure washing is totally one of those things where you don't realize how dirty it was until it's clean. Anyway, this John has gumption and he does everything. I feel that I have found a treasure beyond rubies.

Meanwhile, inside where it's air conditioned, an electrician spent a few hours hanging a chandelier and fixing our smoke detectors and left with twice what I paid John. Message: Kids, learn a trade.

On Friday while this was happening I was like, "Oh, it is so exhausting supervising tradesmen! Swoon!" And Matt was like, "How exactly did they change how you spent your day in any way?" And I had no great answer but men don't really understand these things.

Between my pressure-washed exterior and my new chandelier, I feel like I have a new house. The old house was soiled, but now I have a fresh one! It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Plus, the HOA will be off our backs, because weekend before last, I also purchased a motorized hedge trimmer and made the effort of personally asking Matt to work on the verbena while I was in the mountains. Which he did. And when I got back, we walked outside and I said, "Okay honey, let's talk about your work on the shrubbery. Walk me through your vision." Because there was a big notch cut out of the verbena, like it's missing a tooth, and Matt explained that no human could have reached that spot so he just held the hedge trimmer above his head and cut whatever he could reach. Like a bad haircut, I guess it will grow out. Also his work was free.

Believe it or not, this story could have branched out in several more directions but I know that you are wishing you could throw yourself off my roof right now, so I will close. I hope you had a good weekend and that all of your labors are bearing fruit.

The Dog Picked Today

To pee on the dining room rug. A lot. Tonight my friend Erika, my pedicure pal and partner in numerous capers, arrives from California with her husband and baby. So I am tidying and swishing things up. And I got back from taking the kids out to breakfast to find a big puddle of dogwhiz in my entryway. She went on the wood floor in the entryway and it spread to the dining room rug.

Matt had helpfully marked the spot with a pile of paper towels. (Let us not dwell on the question of why he didn't clean up the pee. I'm going to assume that at the precise moment he noticed the dog's mess, an angel straight from heaven was ringing the doorbell with a telegram from Jesus. Or, maybe he spied a 1930's silent film baby crawling along the ledge of a half-built skyscraper, wearing an adorable bonnet and an impish expression, oblivious to its immediate peril. Whatever, I'm sure he meant to return to the dog pee, so I will harbor no grudge.)

Where was I? So, questions:

1) You know what happens to a jute rug when you get it wet?

It puckers. And even after it dries, it will never quite be flat and smooth again.

2) Do you know what that means for cleaning such a rug?

It means you can't clean it with water.

3) So why did I put the one rug in the house that can't be cleaned in the dining room of all places, where spills and such are inevitable?

I don't know. If you figure that one out, tell me.

We've been in this house with that rug for four years. Maybe that's how long a jute rug lasts? But I don't know if I can find another one I like that much--it's an adorable striped one from Pottery Barn. But don't be all picturing a striped rug just because I said it's striped. It's a subtle stripe. You got that? SUBTLE.

So what I did do was to spray a bunch of that enzymatic pet mess cleaner on the affected areas and rotate the rug 180 degrees so that the stain is hidden in the corner. What would you have done?

What have y'all got going on? Tomorrow we'll go up to the North Carolina with our buds for some more tubing and mountain activities. Then back to ATL, then I'll drive the kids to Florida before I head to BlogHer in NYC. This all happens in the next week somehow. I'm not sure how but it will be a mysterious process.

Pretty Much Making This Up As I Go

On Friday the weather was totally gorgeous here, and I sat out in the backyard and read my Country Living while Laura worked on her clubhouse. The clubhouse is slowly being painted with craft paint, and is having inspirational slogans Sharpie'd on its walls. Slogans like, "Save the pandas!" It also has a chandelier made of camellia branches.

So I hadn't yet told Laura about all this breast cancer stuff, but I thought it was time to fill her in. I have a surgery date now (March 30) and I hadn't wanted to bring it up before there was a definite plan to tell her. I had seen a book at the bookstore on "how to talk to your kids about your illness," but I thought, "I don't have time to read a book about this. I know this girl and I'm going to wing it." Which is pretty much what I've been doing all nine years of her life.

I knew that I didn't want to do it as a big family meeting scene. I wanted it to be more casual, just a normal, low-key mother-daughter thing. So I called her over from her clubhouse and she sat on my lap. Which is funny because she is huge.

I told her that I'd been to the doctor a couple of times lately and that I had a tumor in my breast that had to be taken out. I didn't use the 'c' word, she has no experience with that term. I told her that if it weren't taken out, it would just keep growing and make me sick. She said, "Is that serious or is it just a normal thing?" I told her that it definitely wasn't normal and that it had to be fixed. Then I told her pretty much exactly what the surgery was and the reconstruction and everything. She said that it was like when you have your leg amputated and get an artificial leg, and I said yes.

It was hard to steer a course between not scaring her and misleading her into thinking it was trivial. I told her that I hoped the surgery would completely fix the problem and that I wouldn't have to do anything else afterwards, like get more medicine, but that I didn't know, and sometimes people had to do that.

Her only frame of reference for surgery is an emergency bowel resection her grandma had, so she said, "Remember Grandma's surgery, that was way more serious, right?" I said yes, in a way, because that had been an emergency and Grandma had been in the hospital for a week, and that operation was much harder to recover from than this one would be. I didn't know how to go into Grandma's surgery being a total fix, versus the uncertainty of my situation, so I just left it where it was.

I told her that the hardest part for her and Hank might be when I was home and not feeling good after the operation, but I laid it on thick with reassurances that lots of people would be around helping us with everything. She did not seem overly troubled or upset.

She asked me, "Are you going to tell Hank about this?" I said, "What do you think I should tell him?" She said that telling him about it would "make him freak out" and that I shouldn't tell him about it until I was home and the surgery was over. I said I didn't think that would work, but that I would wait until the night before and then tell him I'd be at the doctor's the next day, and that Grandma and Papa would take care of him until I got back. We agreed that three year-olds don't have enough grasp of time for me to bring it up way in advance.

Then Matt stepped out on the back porch and Laura said to him, "I know." So she did get that what I was telling her was important, and I think she even felt privileged to be in on the information. I think the whole talk went great, and she hasn't seemed at all worried since then.

Other stuff about this weekend: shortly after that scene in the backyard, I got a text from Normal Neighbor that said, "I'm having drinks on my back deck with Kathy and Cathy, do you want to come over?" I was like, oh honey I am so on my way. It was just such a mild, sunny day that everyone wanted to be outside. I walked around the corner carrying my phone and four Corona lights in my hands. It was a parade of class. Then I just walked around her house and went up to the back. Back door friends are special and all. Kathy and Cathy are two other neighbors I know slightly. After they got filled in on my boob situation, the K(C)athies dished up some tennis league gossip, including stories of all the girls they knew who had left their husbands for other women. Good happy hour.

Yesterday, Matt and I took the kids up to the tennis courts and hit balls for an hour or so. Then I took Laura to see Alice in Wonderland, which I thought was just okay. I don't know if it was boring or if I was just really tired, but I fell asleep for part of it. Definitely the only time in my life I've fallen asleep while wearing 3D glasses.

Today it is raining, and Matt cleaned out the fridge and washed all the shelves. He is my white knight. I swept and mopped the wood floors, because Fabienne just does this "squirt Murphy's Oil soap and then damp mop" thing and my needs for shiny floors are not being met. I mean, that's fine for a routine mopping, but at a certain point, there is dirt on the floor that is just being pushed around by that half-assery. Something needs to be done to transfer the dirt from the floor to another receptacle. Something involving a real mop and a bucket of hot water.

My mom and dad are arriving tonight to help with the kids tomorrow, and I have a meeting with a plastic surgeon. Matt has met all of my tentative murmurings about also having a chin tuck or other cosmetic improvements with stony silence. Men.

Personal Organizer Secrets Revealed

Yesterday my interest was greatly piqued to find out that one of my acquaintances apparently has a personal organizer. Well, when she came to bring Laura back home, I would not let her go until she told me everything. The real picture is not as flossy as I was envisioning. I was thinking--and her little girl had made it sound like--she had a regular engagement with an organizer, and like you guys were saying, "Don't you need to fly on your own at some point?"

So this girl--who I've never blogged about before, but if I did I would call her Mary Poppins because she is Practically Perfect in Every Way, and I say that in love--told me about this website that has daily deals on different stuff, including lots of services like cleaning, massages, etc, geared towards whatever city you're in. Just glancing over it, it looks like a lot of restaurant discounts, but there are also some interesting housecleaning and spa things too. Anyway, she said that a deal popped up for three hours of organizing for $30, and she booked two sessions. Dang! I wish I'd seen that offer. I would have been like, honey, meet my garage. Usually this service costs $40 an hour, she said. The lady came and organized her junk drawers, her kids' art room, and her master bathroom.

So I asked what to me is the key question: was it worth it, or was it stuff you could have done for yourself? She said that it was a job she definitely could have done herself, and that she was a little disappointed because she thought that the organizer would bring more of a vision and a system that she could implement. I know what she means: I would love to have someone who is, like, a Theoretician of Organization come and help me set up a system for the paperwork, mail, and administrative tasks in this house. I need vision. I need strategy. I need strategery. Sounds like that's what my friend thought she was getting, but the person just neatened up. Still, she felt like a lot of the value was that getting this organizer person made her deal with these issues in her house that she wouldn't have made a priority on her own.

We talked about the fact that so many magazines and websites (not to mention The Container Store) have organizing as their focus, it's really something where the ideas are out there for anyone to grab and make use of, it's just a matter of having the gumption. I'm sure there are people who have some kind of genius for it though. Anymahoodle, if I had the disposable income, I could see having a one-time gig with a person to help, um, straighten me out. Someone who specialized in my special tastes and requirements. Because there are some things you can't ask your cleaning lady to do, right?