kdiddy.org

I realize that it’s been over a week since I posted here. That’s mostly because things have been pretty uneventful. The picture above is from last Friday morning/afternoon. Faced with a day off for the holiday, I drank just a few beers (honest!) while we were out on Thursday night and woke up the next morning surprised to find myself feeling rather crap-like. Luckily, my cat provided the necessary head-to-head services that I didn’t even know I needed.

Other than that, I got nothing. We got W. from Netflix and I’ve been trying to watch for, literally, weeks and I keep falling asleep. It’s not a particularly bad movie, per se. There are some funny moments. And Josh Brolin’s performance is actually kind of creepily accurate (though the parts of him as young W. are just laughable). I just kinda…don’t care.

We’ve also been watching Arrested Development upon several emphatic suggestions from friends. I was skeptical because we had watched one episode while at the beach with Tracey and Co. a few years ago, but I think it was some random episode and was out of context and I couldn’t figure out why the Bluths were so fucking odd. Seeing it from the beginning though has really made me appreciate it. I’ve been in tears laughing several times and have gone to bed extremely late every night this week because of that fateful, “Let’s just watch one more…” declaration that has got to be close to being a psychological disorder in the DSM, afflicting adults in the era of DVDs.

Also, this:

That is Honey Bourbon Caramel Peach pie and it’s pretty much an orgasm in a dish. I was excited about this pie, not only because it promised to be amazing, but also because I thought I would be able to keep it in a cake stand that I bought a few months ago. For some reason, I keep thinking cake stands are bell jars, even though I know that’s not the case. However, the handles on the pie dish prevented the dome of the bell jar/cake stand from fitting properly…so I stuck my head in the oven.

Also this week we spent a small fortune at Ikea on shelving and other bins and crap in the name of organizing our house and now our house is cluttered with not-yet-assembled flat packs and Allen wrenches. I can’t win.

Today we’re going to a wedding of some friends of ours, so I think I’m going to go and, like, shower or something.

The beds at the motel that we stay at in Detroit are very old and become instantly U-shaped when you lie down on them. My back and legs have been stiff ever since we came back and it’s making me feel really old.

Also, I’m watching this home improvement show, Moving Up, and losing my shit at this one couple who bought this GORGEOUS old Craftsman house with all of these pristine original fixtures and are like, “This wood is too dark. We’re going to paint it white like a bunch of wack ass landlords so that it can look like we’re renting.”

It’s hitting a sensitive spot because we have a big old Victorian Pittsburgh house with a lot of original wood and while the previous owners were good about keeping the first floor wood fixtures, they painted the second and third floor fixtures when they turned it into an apartment. When we bought the house, we ran out of money for home improvements pretty quickly and have just been making do for the past few years, biding our time until the husband was done with school and able to get a decent job. We’re finally able to do a little bit of finishing work to the third bedroom and in the course of discussing that we were thinking about what we would need to do to get the hideous matte paint off of the trim. Seriously, if you own an old house and the wood is in good condition, LEAVE IT ALONE.

There was nothing on TV this morning so I started watching I Love Lucy and while I was watching it, I was looking at Google Reader and there were TWO Lucy-related secrets today. Weird, no?

A friend of the husband’s was in town last night to play records at AVA and he was supposed to stay the night at our house. So, I spent pretty much all day cleaning. Our house is always pretty messy and dusty since we never really have time or energy to clean. The husband is, of course, out of commission with his hand so I was on my own and had a pretty sobering moment when I realized that I couldn’t possibly clean the whole house myself and had to determine which parts were the nastiest/most potentially embarrassing.

About 15 minutes after I finished cleaning the bathrooms and was sprawled out on the bed panting, the husband came home from work and announced that he had to poop. After he emerged, I whined, “I don’t know why you always do that right after I do the toilets.”

“That’s why I don’t like cleaning,” he replied. “It’s a Sisyphean effort. You’re Sisyphus.”

“Yes, and you’re this huge rock that shits all over my squeaky clean toilets.”

And then…THEN. The husband’s friend called and said that he was meeting up with “a friend” in town and would be staying at a hotel, after all.

GAHHHH

Well, at least the house is clean. I guess. Whatever.

In continuing in my Suzy Homemaker routine, I’m baking some homemade Nilla Wafers. They’re my dad’s favorite cookie and his birthday was Friday, so I’m making some for him. I hope they don’t suck.

I really like reading the cooking portion of Pioneer Woman’s blog, since I feel she and I share similar culinary challenges: picky eaters and a lack of “fancy” ingredients.

The similarities end there. PW takes very pretty pictures as she cooks and in the background, you can see her gorgeous kitchen, complete with big fancy appliances and stainless steel and, holy shit, counter space.

For serious, every time she posts a new recipe it looks like she’s on the set of a Food Network show.

On the contrary, here’s how I throw down.

Let’s see, we have Wal-Mart rice, some of which has spilled on the cookie tray, peanut butter, salt, salt…a waffle iron.

Of course, there’s a decent amount of evidence as to what I last cooked sprinkled on the stove top. You know, in case I want to recreate something and want to know what the ingredients were.

Ahh, my favorite. The knobs on my stove are organized in such a way that I don’t think is very intuitive. As I alluded before, I don’t have any counters, so one day while I was cooking, I set a Rubbermaid bowl on the stove and then turned what I thought was the front burner on to cook something. Yeah, it wasn’t. So, some of the bowl is still there. Coincidentally, that night was also the night we came to the dramatic realization that the baby had a tree nut allergy. It sucked, too, since I made this really yummy green curry with ground cashews. Not only were the leftovers cold and worthless when we got back from the hospital hours later, they were also deadly. Yay!

Also, this guy comes in and judges me.

For the record, I’m making apple butter pork tonight. Yum.

I have homework that I’m avoiding, so I’ve been incredibly domestic the past two days. The baby had to go to a classmate’s birthday party yesterday afternoon, but after that was over, we came back home and casually started decorating the outside of the house for Halloween.

There’s no real “theme” here obviously, unless you count, “I had a bunch of stuff in the basement that my grandmother bequeathed to me in one of those ‘I may not be around much longer’ purges so I just used most of it,” as a theme. But to spice it up, I purchased some new lights at CVS.

Tacky Fancy, no? Also, the baby was in charge of window displays.

This required me to do some actual cleaning, with Windex and paper towels and squeegees. It was pretty exciting.

I’m cleaning off and on today. I also baked some banana bread (sans walnuts and raisins) so I wouldn’t have to throw away some abandoned bananas that were attracting fruit flies and being all brown and mushy and gross.

The baby kept taking bites of my slice so I finally gave him his own. He ate about four bites and then about 3 seconds after I took that picture he told me he didn’t like the banana bread. Whatever, dude.

This guy was just thrilled with my cleaning, as he gets to coat everything anew in grey fur. I also unearthed some tiny green fuzzy ball which he has been attacking all afternoon. I’m glad I made him happy. It’s the least I can do to thank him for standing on my neck around 4:00 this morning. That was my favorite thing ever.

I did nothing exciting this weekend, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I did get my hair cut on Saturday, so maybe I’ll grace this space with a picture later.

I did have some handy types come over on Saturday to do some work in the small bedroom. It’s possible that that room will finally be finished in October. And it only took two years! At this rate, the house will be where we want it just in time for us to die. Can’t wait.

Another handy type came by yesterday to look at our dining room and give us a price on finishing and painting it. I guess I had never really looked at how jacked the walls are, but I’m really going to have to have a plasterer come in and smooth them out. The previous owner did all the repairs himself on the house and really it would have been better off if he had just let it be. For instance, here is the awesome addition he put on the back of the house, presumably while mainlining Jack Daniels:

Sigh.

In other news, the baby missed the bus for the first time this morning. Aw, yeah. Third day of school. In our defense, the bus was easily five minutes early. So we had to drive him to school, obviously, but once we were there I had no idea what to do with him. I took him into the building but a woman informed me that that was not the thing to do and that he had to wait on the playground until the teachers collected him. So I took him back outside and was like, “Uh, okay, I guess I’m going to leave you here now. But you recognize some of these kids, right?” Of course, he didn’t. But his bus pulled up right as I was getting ready to leave so I’m assuming he was in the right spot. Don’t you love my crossed-fingers method of parenting?

We watched Stranger than Fiction on Saturday, which was pretty good but not as awesome as I had been anticipating. I think Will Ferrell just doesn’t do it for me. But I would watch Maggie Gyllenhaal read the phone book. Love her. Dustin Hoffman was also really funny, but I felt like he just put a professorial spin on his character from I Heart Huckabee’s. But I did love his freakish coffee consumption and the fact that he taught a course on “Little did he know.” And I need more Emma Thompson in my life.

I watched that new HBO show Tell Me You Love Me last night. I’m going to write a recap for MamaPop but I left my notes at home. It’s much starker than any previous HBO series. Very serious. In all of their other dramas there’s always been at least a sprinkle of humor. There’s practically none in this one. We’ll see. It is pretty good, though…which means it will most certainly be canceled after its first season.

I’m so angry. For over two months, I’ve been trying to get a contractor/handyman to come to my house. The drywall that the husband and his dad started needs to be finished/sanded and I also wanted to see if that person would be willing to paint the small front room and the dining room. It’s a small job but it requires some skill and precision and would probably only take a few hours of a pro’s time. I’ve talked to four different guys and each one has flaked out. They have all agreed to meet me at my house and then just stood me up and not returned my phone calls. One guy did come out here and gave me a price and then never showed up to do the work and never returned my phone calls.

This last guy rescheduled the initial appraisal/assessment and right then I had a bad feeling. But I kept in touch with him and the husband even told him about our troubles. He was supposed to be here at noon today. Noon came and went and no sign of him. I called his cell phone and left a message. Then I called his house hoping that I might get his wife so I could ask her what the fuck is up with her man. I got voicemail there as well and left a snotty message saying, “You never showed up. I am displeased. I sincerely hope nothing catastrophic happened to you.” I’m certainly past being mature about this because I am very pissed. Like I mentioned the other day, my emotions are constantly on 11 so I’m ready to have a cage match with this turd.

I realize that these small jobs do not equal big money, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard to say, “I’m not going to be able to do the job,” or “I don’t want the job,” or even just, “I hate you, never call me.” Instead, I sit around for WEEKS waiting on these assholes during which time I could have become a drywall apprentice and done the shit myself. The rooms have been sitting half-finished for a year and a half because I can not get anyone to give a shit enough to finish them.

My house is a total dump. But all anyone has to do is spare a few hours of their time (with pay!) to help me and it could be a little bit better. I can’t even find that and that is just so depressing.