What's under that?
Oh God. I've done it. I've done the thing I never wanted to do. I got engaged (that's not the thing) and moved into a house (that's not the thing, either) and then I stopped posting to LJ. (Psst. That's the thing.)
Okay. Well, admitting you fucked up is the first step, I think, so here it is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't read a goddamn thing on Livejournal in well over a month (and if there's something you think I should read, by all means, leave me a comment with a link). I'm sorry I stopped posting. I'm sorry I did what I always promised I wouldn't.
Luckily, that's all going to change, starting tonight. You'll be back to your regularly (or semi-regularly) scheduled blogging, in part because The Fiancé is right: I've been depressed because I haven't been doing things I love, including writing.
To get back on the horse, I'm going to tell you about my Wednesday, which is also The Fiancé's Wednesday. And it goes a little something like this.
I'm sitting in my office, enjoying the central air conditioning and the not-having-to-do-work thing. Michigan had a horrifying heat wave that lasted nearly two weeks, during which we caved and bought a window air conditioner. That little purchase alone resulted in The Eff (easier to type than Fiancé) having to climb out onto the overhang of the lower half of our roof to take off storm windows and me whimpering and holding on to him with a belt so that if he fell, I'd dislocate my shoulder and he'd incur the same injuries he would have without me hanging off of him.
I was halfway through a sudoku when my phone rang.
"Hey, were you serious about wanting those built-ins out of the bedroom?"
Our house (which is awesome, by the way) has just a few things that I don't like. One of those things was a set of built-in shelves in the master bedroom. There was one in each far corner of the room, each about a foot wide, with horrible, industrial-looking runners on either side to hold up shelves. The things looked better suited for an elementary school classroom (and a shitty classroom at that) than a master bedroom.
"Yes, absolutely, I hate them," I replied.
"Good, because I'm in the middle of taking them out."
"Hooray!" (I really said "hooray".)
After a few minutes of conversation, The Eff let me get back to work. Which meant finishing the Evil sudoku I'd been working on. I was down to ten empty squares when my phone rang again.
"How attached are you to the crown molding that's up right now?"
"Uh, not that much."
"Good, because I'm going to have to take it down to get the built-ins out."
"Okay." (Well, c'mon, why would I have said "hooray" to that?)
I came home that afternoon for dinner and found The Eff sweating and pounding on Built-In #1 with a hammer. "How's it going?"
That was when he ripped off the crown molding, in a shower of drywall dust, plaster pieces, and God knows what else, and I went downstairs to start dinner. I have made a lot of progress over the last month. I have touched, actually TOUCHED several spiders, I have fixed a vacuum cleaner (after The Eff broke it), I have done a lot of work, but I still can't abide seeing rooms covered in dirt. When The Eff came downstairs with a handful of things that had fallen behind Built-In #1 and showed me a card from 1956, all I said was, "Ew, it's filthy."
"Then you probably don't want to see the carpet."
Carpet?
"Apparently, those things were put in before they ripped out the carpet, because there's a disgusting square of old dirty carpet underneath the built-in, and probably under the other one, too. Also, there's a hole in the ceiling."
What??
"They put the drywall up after the built-ins were there, too. It's not open to the attic, but it's uh... it's a hole."
I decided not to go upstairs until after this whole process was done, finished dinner, and went back to work. The Eff went back upstairs to finish the job.
I taught my graduate class, again relishing the cold air in the classroom, and merrily skipped out to my car afterward. I finally didn't feel like throwing up (who gets the stomach flu in fucking June?!), we had an air conditioner, and this was the start of my weekend. When I walked in the house, however, I felt uneasy.
The Eff was sitting in the living room, not on the couch but on the floor in front of the coffee table, looking lost and sweaty, shaking his head a little bit. I sat down on the couch. "What's up?"
"I have a long story to tell you."
I nodded. "Okay."
"Well. It took me a very long time to get the first built-in out of the room. I had to take down a lot of the crown molding, and they used some kind of cement to seal the edges to the wall, but it's out. I took it downstairs."
The story didn't sound so bad to me, not bad enough to leave me in a heap on the living room floor.
"And up until this point, I had been really careful not to get anything on the bed."
My heart sank.
"I got it loose, but y'know, it's been there for sixty some years, so the top has all kinds of dirt and dust and shit on it. So I kept it far away from the bed. And I was taking it out of the room. And what's in our doorway?"
My heart sank further. The box fan. The box fan aimed directly at our bed to blow the air-conditioned air from the air conditioner in the game room (our windows were too small for it) into our bedroom.
"It went everywhere. I had to wash my eyes out for a long time."
Okay, well, it just meant we had to wash the bedding. Big deal.
"Oh. And the TV doesn't work anymore. Again. [We have had problems with that TV ever since having cable installed.] So then I went to take the other one out. I don't know if they used silver for screws back then, but, oh, did I tell you they screwed the damn things into the window frames? They did. So I went to unscrew one, and totally stripped it. So then I had to go to Meijer and get a vice grip."
Well, that might be enough to send me over the edge. Filth and a trip to the local equivalent of Wal-Mart.
"I got that screw out, but then there was another one. But this one wasn't even out far enough to grab with the vice grip. So I had to scrape out all the plaster cement stuff to get the vice grip in between the edge of the built in and the window frame to grab the middle of the fucking screw to get it out. But I finally got it out."
So far, so good.
"And, okay, y'know how not everything in our house is level because it's so old?"
Yeah.
"All right. Okay. You can tell me it's ugly. You can tell me I did a horrible job. You can tell me you hate it. Just please don't cry. You can cry about anything else tonight, but not that. Okay. Well, the ceiling isn't the same height on the left. I finally got the left side free, and when I tried to pull it out to take it out of the room, I got it wedged into the ceiling. Every time I tried to push it back, it just moved further away from the wall and got even more stuck."
I was horrified, imagining going upstairs and seeing an ugly, white, wooden rectangle wedged firmly (probably permanently) between the floor and ceiling.
"Then I just stood there and stared at it and I really wanted to cry. But then I got a hammer and just kind of knocked the whole thing apart. But now there's kind of a big scratch in the ceiling. And the holes. And the dirt and dust everywhere, and all over the bed. We can't sleep up there tonight, so I dunno where we'll sleep. But it's done. You want to go see it?"
I sat there, trying to process all of this, thinking no, not at all. All of this that had happened in the mere three and a half hours I'd been at work that night. Suddenly, I understood why he was just sitting there on the floor, rocking a little bit, looking glassy-eyed. I tried very hard not to cry and not to imagine what the bedroom looked like.
There was a lengthy pause, and then he looked up at me with his big, brown eyes, hair covered with dust, hands scratched, shirt damp with sweat. "And for some reason tonight, my feet really stink."
This is what he ended his story with, and this is when I lost it. I cried. I cried because I was laughing so goddamn hard.
But just between you and me, I'm kind of afraid to go back to work.
Okay. Well, admitting you fucked up is the first step, I think, so here it is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't read a goddamn thing on Livejournal in well over a month (and if there's something you think I should read, by all means, leave me a comment with a link). I'm sorry I stopped posting. I'm sorry I did what I always promised I wouldn't.
Luckily, that's all going to change, starting tonight. You'll be back to your regularly (or semi-regularly) scheduled blogging, in part because The Fiancé is right: I've been depressed because I haven't been doing things I love, including writing.
To get back on the horse, I'm going to tell you about my Wednesday, which is also The Fiancé's Wednesday. And it goes a little something like this.
I'm sitting in my office, enjoying the central air conditioning and the not-having-to-do-work thing. Michigan had a horrifying heat wave that lasted nearly two weeks, during which we caved and bought a window air conditioner. That little purchase alone resulted in The Eff (easier to type than Fiancé) having to climb out onto the overhang of the lower half of our roof to take off storm windows and me whimpering and holding on to him with a belt so that if he fell, I'd dislocate my shoulder and he'd incur the same injuries he would have without me hanging off of him.
I was halfway through a sudoku when my phone rang.
"Hey, were you serious about wanting those built-ins out of the bedroom?"
Our house (which is awesome, by the way) has just a few things that I don't like. One of those things was a set of built-in shelves in the master bedroom. There was one in each far corner of the room, each about a foot wide, with horrible, industrial-looking runners on either side to hold up shelves. The things looked better suited for an elementary school classroom (and a shitty classroom at that) than a master bedroom.
"Yes, absolutely, I hate them," I replied.
"Good, because I'm in the middle of taking them out."
"Hooray!" (I really said "hooray".)
After a few minutes of conversation, The Eff let me get back to work. Which meant finishing the Evil sudoku I'd been working on. I was down to ten empty squares when my phone rang again.
"How attached are you to the crown molding that's up right now?"
"Uh, not that much."
"Good, because I'm going to have to take it down to get the built-ins out."
"Okay." (Well, c'mon, why would I have said "hooray" to that?)
I came home that afternoon for dinner and found The Eff sweating and pounding on Built-In #1 with a hammer. "How's it going?"
That was when he ripped off the crown molding, in a shower of drywall dust, plaster pieces, and God knows what else, and I went downstairs to start dinner. I have made a lot of progress over the last month. I have touched, actually TOUCHED several spiders, I have fixed a vacuum cleaner (after The Eff broke it), I have done a lot of work, but I still can't abide seeing rooms covered in dirt. When The Eff came downstairs with a handful of things that had fallen behind Built-In #1 and showed me a card from 1956, all I said was, "Ew, it's filthy."
"Then you probably don't want to see the carpet."
Carpet?
"Apparently, those things were put in before they ripped out the carpet, because there's a disgusting square of old dirty carpet underneath the built-in, and probably under the other one, too. Also, there's a hole in the ceiling."
What??
"They put the drywall up after the built-ins were there, too. It's not open to the attic, but it's uh... it's a hole."
I decided not to go upstairs until after this whole process was done, finished dinner, and went back to work. The Eff went back upstairs to finish the job.
I taught my graduate class, again relishing the cold air in the classroom, and merrily skipped out to my car afterward. I finally didn't feel like throwing up (who gets the stomach flu in fucking June?!), we had an air conditioner, and this was the start of my weekend. When I walked in the house, however, I felt uneasy.
The Eff was sitting in the living room, not on the couch but on the floor in front of the coffee table, looking lost and sweaty, shaking his head a little bit. I sat down on the couch. "What's up?"
"I have a long story to tell you."
I nodded. "Okay."
"Well. It took me a very long time to get the first built-in out of the room. I had to take down a lot of the crown molding, and they used some kind of cement to seal the edges to the wall, but it's out. I took it downstairs."
The story didn't sound so bad to me, not bad enough to leave me in a heap on the living room floor.
"And up until this point, I had been really careful not to get anything on the bed."
My heart sank.
"I got it loose, but y'know, it's been there for sixty some years, so the top has all kinds of dirt and dust and shit on it. So I kept it far away from the bed. And I was taking it out of the room. And what's in our doorway?"
My heart sank further. The box fan. The box fan aimed directly at our bed to blow the air-conditioned air from the air conditioner in the game room (our windows were too small for it) into our bedroom.
"It went everywhere. I had to wash my eyes out for a long time."
Okay, well, it just meant we had to wash the bedding. Big deal.
"Oh. And the TV doesn't work anymore. Again. [We have had problems with that TV ever since having cable installed.] So then I went to take the other one out. I don't know if they used silver for screws back then, but, oh, did I tell you they screwed the damn things into the window frames? They did. So I went to unscrew one, and totally stripped it. So then I had to go to Meijer and get a vice grip."
Well, that might be enough to send me over the edge. Filth and a trip to the local equivalent of Wal-Mart.
"I got that screw out, but then there was another one. But this one wasn't even out far enough to grab with the vice grip. So I had to scrape out all the plaster cement stuff to get the vice grip in between the edge of the built in and the window frame to grab the middle of the fucking screw to get it out. But I finally got it out."
So far, so good.
"And, okay, y'know how not everything in our house is level because it's so old?"
Yeah.
"All right. Okay. You can tell me it's ugly. You can tell me I did a horrible job. You can tell me you hate it. Just please don't cry. You can cry about anything else tonight, but not that. Okay. Well, the ceiling isn't the same height on the left. I finally got the left side free, and when I tried to pull it out to take it out of the room, I got it wedged into the ceiling. Every time I tried to push it back, it just moved further away from the wall and got even more stuck."
I was horrified, imagining going upstairs and seeing an ugly, white, wooden rectangle wedged firmly (probably permanently) between the floor and ceiling.
"Then I just stood there and stared at it and I really wanted to cry. But then I got a hammer and just kind of knocked the whole thing apart. But now there's kind of a big scratch in the ceiling. And the holes. And the dirt and dust everywhere, and all over the bed. We can't sleep up there tonight, so I dunno where we'll sleep. But it's done. You want to go see it?"
I sat there, trying to process all of this, thinking no, not at all. All of this that had happened in the mere three and a half hours I'd been at work that night. Suddenly, I understood why he was just sitting there on the floor, rocking a little bit, looking glassy-eyed. I tried very hard not to cry and not to imagine what the bedroom looked like.
There was a lengthy pause, and then he looked up at me with his big, brown eyes, hair covered with dust, hands scratched, shirt damp with sweat. "And for some reason tonight, my feet really stink."
This is what he ended his story with, and this is when I lost it. I cried. I cried because I was laughing so goddamn hard.
But just between you and me, I'm kind of afraid to go back to work.