Archive for December, 2011

December 18, 2011

Every Now And Then, You Just Have to Get Dirty

by Katie

Yesterday, Justin slit open the belly of our living room carpet like a surgeon cracking the chest of a heart patient, exposing all of the bloody, oozing innards of our home’s structure.

Except there weren’t any bloody, oozing innards.  Thank God.

I imagine an FBI investigation would be a major setback when it comes to finishing these floors.  Selfish bastards.

However, as you so faithfully expressed in yesterday’s Facebook poll, it would make you accurate when it comes to what the majority of you believe to be the expected completion date — sometime in mid-to-late 2012.

At first, I thought surely you would be wrong.  I mean, even though our past procrastination would suggest otherwise (a fact that Justin and I apparently forgot, but not you — not you), I thought these would be complete before my sister arrives with her 2 dogs late Tuesday evening, for sure.  That is, until today.

We spent this morning painting baseboards and pulling staples from the sub-floor.

Some of our family members were less than enthused.

 

Others were downright bored.

Then we discovered some problems.  Problems like one piece of sub-floor sitting nearly 1/4″ higher than another piece of sub-floor.  Two trips to Lowe’s and a smelly cement-like concoction later, good things are happening.

Really good things.

And Tuesday might be a day for celebrating, after all.

December 16, 2011

Some Things You Don’t Want to Learn the Hard Way. Like How to Aptly Perform a Dismount.

by Katie

Listen.  The lack of daylight hours in my life does not have positive effects on my psyche.

And for someone with an already questionable psyche, this is a dismal turn of events.

I get plenty of sleep, but I’m always tired.

My normal, chipper, morning self has been missing for days.

And trippy things have been happening.  Things that feel like they should be dreams, but they’re not.  And dreams that feel like they should be real, but no.  They never happened.  And sometimes it takes me entire days to figure out what’s a part of reality and what was made up, in my sleep, by my demented little mind.

It’s like I really have fallen down the rabbit hole, except so far no one’s handed me fun little flavored hash cakes or a hookah or some “herbal” tea that would explain this fishbowl feeling that’s been taking over, like I’m watching my life happen from outside of my head.

For example, last night I went grocery shopping.  Dream, or reality?

If you answered “reality,” you are WRONG.  That was a dream.  I dreamt about grocery shopping.  Because my life is that exciting.

Another example:  Last night, I pulled into my driveway after a long-ish commute home from work.  I noticed that 2 couples from across the street were gathered outside, and there was some kind of commotion.  As I emerged from my garage to check it out, a huge black dog with ice blue eyes trotted up to me, sat at my feet, and licked my hand.  Huh.  When I got to the bottom of the drive, I saw what my neighbors were staring at — 2 other dogs, standing butt-to-butt.

“What’s going on?” I asked, shifting my armload of jacket, purse, phone, and water bottle so I could pat the big, black dog, who seemed slightly concerned about her companions across the street.

“These dogs are stuck together,” laughed Brad.  ”Like… stuck together.”

How horrible!  I thought.  Did some cruel kids experiment with super glue?  What would drive someone to do something so awful?

Kasey added, “I mean… the yellow dog’s balls are actually on top, now.  He’s so twisted around.”

Ohhhhh.

I stared for another minute.  Really, it was all I could do.

Clearly, he forgot to pull out before the dismount.  Crucial mistake.

“So… are we just going to leave them like that?”  I asked.  Somehow, pulling them apart didn’t seem like a wise idea.

“Google says it should take about 20 minutes, but it’ll eventually pop out,” Kasey informed me.

Thank God for Google.

“Oh.”

Is this really happening?  “How long has it been?”

“Twenty minutes,” she laughed.

Then, pop!

Right on time.

“Ewww, it’s purple!  Poor guy!”  I did not step closer to verify whether it was, in fact, purple.  But I’m guessing she wasn’t lying.  Both dogs licked their wounds for a minute, oblivious to passing vehicles and the 5 gawkers who really could do nothing helpful except wave traffic safely past the pups on the side of the road.

Move along, folks.  Nothing to see here.  Show’s over.

Then, just as suddenly as they’d arrived in our lives, the 3 dogs took off together, as though answering some silent whistle call beyond the limits of our human hearing, and then they were gone.

“Welp, I have to go make dinner,” I heard myself say.

“Yeah, us too,” said Kasey.

“See you guys,” said Brad.

I went inside.

Dream, or reality?

If you answered “dream” because the story involved public sex in a suburban neighborhood, you would be WRONG.

That most definitely happened, I’m pretty sure.  Maybe.  Though I will probably ask my neighbors tonight to verify.  I just hope I ask them while I’m awake, or we really could have problems.  And the good news is that I didn’t try to make a dish with food I’d dreamt I’d bought.  Because that would be cracking the thin ice of “crazy,” and I’m not quite ready to go swimming.

Also, do you ever feel like you maybe have a ghost?  A ghost who messes with your things just to f*ck with your head?  I have a winter ghost.  He likes to take advantage of my SAD.  So far he’s busted 2 computers and stolen my reusable gold coffee filter from the coffee machine.  It’s just gone.  And it probably won’t reappear until I order a new one.  He’s been stealing socks for years.

He tries to bust that crazy ice — to push me over the edge — but I won’t let him win.  He can have that filter.  I don’t need it.

What I do need is some coffee.  And maybe to avoid writing blog posts before I’ve had any.  Because this is what you get, and I apologize for that.

On a positive note, guess what’s arrived?

I’ll give you a hint:  It’s not boxes of brochures about practicing safe public suburban dog sex.

Although maybe I should get some of those, too.  It seems we have a need.

Anyway.

Big changes are coming for this Domestiphobic house.  Stay tuned.

*Some of you asked that I keep you notified when I publish House Tours on Re-Nest.com.  I haven’t.  Here are the 3 I’ve done so far, if you want to check them out!

Matthew’s Eclectic Park Avenue Pad
John and Jaime’s Contemporary Woodland Escape
BJ & Megan’s Traveling Farmhouse Homestead

If you know of anyone within a few hour drive of Fayetteville, NC who’d be interested in having their house photographed for the site, let me know. :)

December 14, 2011

O Alcohol, I Still Drink to Your Health

by Katie

Last night I announced to Justin that I hadn’t had any wine — or any alcohol at all, for that matter — since Saturday.

He made me hold out my hand to determine whether I had the withdrawal shakes.

As I held my hand out, palm-down, and feigned an exaggerated shake accompanied by an even more exaggerated eye twitch, I realized that sometimes it’s good to listen to your body.  And, after Saturday’s night out for my boss’s birthday following Friday night at Justin’s work Christmas party with an open bar, my body was telling me that it’s time for a detox.

Since my drinking habits normally don’t involve more than a glass (or two) of wine in the evenings, a binger I am not.  With the exception of this past weekend, obviously.

But I recently noticed something… something disturbing.  It no longer seemed as though, when I poured a glass, that I was taking the time to enjoy it.  To notice its color.  Its scent.  The way its legs coated the sides of the glass and the flavor as it rolled over my tongue.

It was just a drink.

Something to wash down my food.

And if that’s going to be the case, I may as well drink water.  Or tea.

Fewer calories, you see.

So, my body will remain vino-free until it tells me its ready to enjoy it again.  Which I expect will be Friday, when I take a girlfriend out to a new wine bar in town for a much-needed drink.  On her part, not mine.

The Christmas party was at the fancy, dancy Pinehurst Club once again this year, and this year I actually managed to don a dress.  Although no Kindles were won on my part, I did manage to make tipsy best friends with a Colonel’s wife before we (Justin, me, and some other enlisted stragglers, that is – not the Colonel’s wife) worked our way over to a low-key pub (much more my style) for a nightcap.  All-in-all, I paced myself well, drank plenty of water, and managed to feel decent enough to help a friend move on Saturday morning.

Then Saturday night happened.

It was my boss’s birthday party.  Food was ordered.  Bottles of wine were bought.  And somehow — somehow – my glass stayed full, no matter how much I drank.  For dessert, someone handed me a vodka tonic.

Then we went dancing.  I can’t dance to save my life.  I’m pretty sure I probably looked like a pug trying to swim — all wiggly and uncoordinated and ultimately spinning in circles when I knew more should be happening, if I could only just get all of my parts to cooperate.

Don’t think about it so much!” yelled my dance partner for the evening over the blaring music.  ”Just let it happen!

Sarah, who was my boss’s business partner’s stunningly adorable fiancée (picture a young Jenna Elfman and just as cool), had professional dancing experience, it turns out, which allowed her to describe dancing like it can just happen, like an orgasm, and managed to make me look even more doofy than normal standing all gangly and awkward next to the petit blonde with the pixie cut and flying feather earrings who was trying her damnedest to teach me how to Dougie but it just. wasn’t. happening.

(Cali Swag District – Teach Me How to Dougie)

So I took another slug of my frozen chocolaty concoction, and while it certainly didn’t improve my dancing, it somewhat took away the fact that I cared.

And this is why, on Sunday morning, I felt like maybe someone let a donkey into our bedroom in the middle of the night.  A donkey that proceeded to kick me in the head.

Repeatedly.

And by Sunday afternoon, when my body felt like that of a withered 90-year-old man, I thought that maybe it was time to reevaluate this whole drinking-to-get drunk concept.  At 22?  Sure, it was no problem.  I could bounce back and rally with the rest of ‘em.  But at 29?  Not so much.  It doesn’t help that my boss is 2 years younger than me.

Have I mentioned that?

It doesn’t really bother me.

Much.

So.  I’m making a declaration — it’s only like the 56th or 57th time I’ve done this — to not bother with drunkenness anymore.  A glass of wine?  Sure thing.  A healthy writer’s buzz?  Yessiree.  Attempting to dance with someone who knows how to dance and happens to be the only other white chick in the club?

No, thank you.

But that’s the thing about excessive alcohol.  Like a love-worn frenemy or a toxic relationship, you don’t even realize the bad stuff is happening until it feels too late to turn back.

Post title from the song Alcohol, by the Barenaked Ladies.  It’s surprisingly poignant.

Barenaked Ladies – Alcohol

I thought that Alcohol was just for those with nothing else to do
I thought that drinking just to get drunk was a waste of precious booze
But now I know that there’s a time and there’s a place where I can choose
To walk the fine line between self control… and self abuse

December 12, 2011

I’ve Got That Midas Touch

by Katie

I’m pretty sure I have a curse.

Not that I’m personally afflicted by a curse, per se, but I carry a curse which affects things around me.

Electronic things, specifically.

Now.  I’m not one of those completely obtuse people when it comes to all things electronic.  The fact that there are wires connected to other wires connected to various pieces of equipment doesn’t scare me.  I know word processing and spreadsheets and file types and images and even a bit o’ HTML for you webpage tinkering types.  So.  While I’m no computer genius, I’m not completely oblivious, either.

They’re just machines, right?

There is no logical reason for them to succumb to my curse — to know that it’s me, not Justin, tapping away at their keyboards.

Yet somehow, they do.

It’s like I’m King Midas.  Except instead of everything I touch turning to gold (which, let’s face it, wouldn’t be all bad), every computer I touch turns to shit.  And I’m sorry I’m so addicted to swearing Mom, but there is no nicer way to put this.

Two — count ‘em, two computers have turned to steaming coils of doodoo just at the touch of my hands in the past week.

Thankfully I live with an un-cursed person who’s managed to save all of my data thus far, but the computers?  They’re dropping like flies on a bug zapper.  Minus the smoke and the funky smell.  Which, frankly, wouldn’t surprise me at this point.

And this little phenomenon isn’t exactly convenient for my job – my job which involves writing and photo editing and submitting to people who run a gigantic website and simply don’t have time to listen to my sob story about fried hard drives and cold, lifeless motherboards and how I would have my piece done except I’m waiting for a full version of PhotoShop to install on a dinosaur of a laptop — a laptop which, hopefully, doesn’t yet understand that it’s doomed at my hands and will hold out long enough for me to finish my latest submission to Re-Nest.

That is, if it doesn’t crash while I’m writing this post.

And it’s things like these that make me long for the days of the simple machines — of typewriters and corded phones cassette tapes and VHS — things that didn’t scratch or crack or short a fuse when you tossed ‘em around.  Back in the day, technology could take a beating.

It wasn’t all prissy and didn’t ask to be handled with silk-effing-gloves.

I know old technology had its own set of frustrations, but sometimes I just miss wrapping a coiled phone cord around my waist while standing in the kitchen talking to my friends.

So.  I have to buy a new computer now.  Preferably one that can stand up to my particular brand of curse.

Any suggestions?