kdiddy.org

As with most scenarios in life, I can compare this experience to an episode of Roseanne.

I don’t have what real estate listings refer to as a “chef’s kitchen.” It’s small and electrically challenged and downright ugly, but I’ve managed to outfit it as best I could. And I really grew as a cook and a baker in it, despite its severe limitations.

One of the “luxury” items that I have is a portable dishwasher that was handed down to us from the mother-in-law. It’s 20-some years old and not exactly attractive, but it did the job and saved me one bit of drudgery. And even though it tried to eat my toe, I loved the dishwasher for making it so that I had one less thing to do every day.

A few months ago, the dishwasher started leaking. We determined that while it was still washing dishes just fine, the door had started to disintegrate. I tried just stuffing towels underneath it, but the water was too much and would seep underneath our cheap plastic floor tiles, which started to disintegrate, too. I wanted to get another dishwasher, but new portable dishwashers are expensive and a few recent transaction failures on Craig’s List made me wary of going that route. So, I resigned myself to hand-washing the insane amount of dishes that three people accumulate every day.

It sucked, especially since I was the only one who actually did the dishes. (Yes, I know, I should be more forceful about making the husband and/or the baby help out and I am totally taken advantage of and a pushover and perpetuating bullshit gender roles of housework division. Thanks for lecturing patronizing reminding me.)

Finally, while having a particularly bad fit of, “This SUCKS! I’m not working all day AND cooking for everyone AND doing everyone’s dishes,” the other day, I gritted my teeth and got on Craig’s List again. And suddenly there it was: a practically new portable dishwasher for half the price of what they are in stores and being sold by a person right by our house. I sent an email to the seller to find out if it was still available, and when he responded that it was and did not ask to see my tits, like a previous Craig’s List user had, I thought that I just might have a good deal waiting for me.

Of course, there were ordeals to be had. Like trying to get money to pay for the thing. I went to my credit union yesterday to get money out of my savings, and then to the PNC on campus to deposit the check so that I could get cash out. This seemingly complicated process is why I have any savings whatsoever. It relies on my inherent laziness to keep my money in one place. Of course, the new-fangled ATMs wouldn’t accept the check and the old-fangled ATM on campus that still accepted deposits in envelopes just wasn’t turned on. I had to wait for the branch manager to return from lunch. When I told her my problem, she replied, “Oh, yeah, those credit union checks…the paper for those is too thin so the check feeder can’t read them.”

“Okay, so, can I give you this check and you can put my monies in my account?” I asked.

“No, you just have to wrinkle the check up first before putting it in the machine.”

“Well, obviously.” I replied.

I approached the ATM again and got to the prompt screen to insert the check. I looked at the bank lady and said, “Okay, so wrinkle it like this?” I asked, crumpling the check up in my fist, partially out of compliance, partially out of OMFG ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

“Ohh, no, not that much,” she replied. “Now you’re gonna need to flatten it out a bit.”

I glared at her and tried to come up with some burning remark about money changers and the Bible and damnation or something, before rubbing the check along the corner of the ATM. Finally, it accepted the check and I grabbed the wad of 20s in my sweaty fist.

The actual transaction went smoothly enough, with the only hiccups being getting the dishwasher down the seller’s immaculately landscaped front steps. Getting the old dishwasher out of our house was surprisingly emotional, especially since that thing tried to take off my other big toenail.

That night, there was one more obstacle: plugging the dishwasher in. The cord on the new machine was not long enough to reach behind the oven to the one outlet close enough to the sink. I began scrounging for an extension cord, only to discover that two of the three in our house are two-pronged. ARGH. I found another extension cord in some unused gardening equipment outside that was covered in mud. But finally finally got the damn thing up and running. After watching it closely, waiting for it to explode or eat my Fiestaware, I was elated to declare the dishwasher functional. Then I started dancing around my kitchen like in one of those 1950s appliance commercials.

With one batch of dishes successfully washed, I officially welcomed my new favorite family member:

(I officially have no shame with the IC Light Mango. I’ll just drink it and I don’t care how ridiculous it is.)

* * *The other big thing happening today is that it’s the baby’s last day of fourth grade.

While you’re processing that, and maybe you’ll have more success than I am, the new dishwasher and I are going to drink and cry together.

I’m short on time today, but I wanted to toss these two, unrelated bits at you.

Bit the First:

When we were leaving Wal-Mart on Sunday night, someone was standing by the door giving out free kittens. No lie. I heard “free kittens,” and my head snapped around and the guy doling the fuzzballs out locked eyes with me, pointed at me and then pointed at the kitten he was holding. NOT FAIR, MAN.

We seriously considered it. Or at least, I seriously considered it, if you are of the mind that, “KIIIIIIIITTENZ NOM!” qualifies as such. But, ultimately, we went home kitten-less, our reasoning being a) we don’t know where those kittens have been so they might be riddled with disease or zombies b) we really don’t need a kitten right now and c) our cat would hate us.

Bit the Second:

Another lovely feature of my awesome kitchen is our dishwasher. Now, I’m glad to have a dishwasher at all. And considering that the one we have is from the first Reagan administration or somewhere thereabouts, it’s in fantastic shape. It’s one of those “portable” dishwashers that isn’t hooked up hard to your plumbing, but is freestanding and can be wheeled over to the sink and run from there.

Because of the way our kitchen is laid out (stupidly), the dishwasher sits across the room, opposite from the sink. When I want to run it, I have to swing it around, hook it up to the sink, then thread the power cord behind the oven to the only nearby outlet.

Every time I swing the dishwasher around, I bump it into the oven. Every time. And the other night I was going through this ridiculous routine and sure enough, *smash.* Suddenly, I thought, “This is the one activity that I probably have in common with people who do lots of steroids or PCP. Somewhere, some asshole is throwing the dishwasher at the oven, just like me.”

Here’s the after to this before:

And, no, the books are not piled up out of frame, they are now stacked in the handy little nook of the nightstand.

I think the fact that the books are crooked bothers me only slightly is a sign of serenity. Go me.

I am (still) having a rough go of it, emotionally. Today, when my mom came to pick up my kid to take him to Oakmont’s light-up night, I was crying a little bit because it seems I have a daily quota these days. She told me to do something that made me happy while they were gone, like laundry.

On the surface, this might sound horribly condescending. “Buck up, wifey! You’re neglecting your womanly nature by pursuing a career and having thoughts and stuff. Take a valium and dust and you’ll feel right as rain!”

Unfortunately, there are no valium here. But it is true that in fits of rage or depression, I’ve pulled myself up slightly by taking action in the one area of life that I can control. So I decided to tackle the area by my bed.

I have, I think, an understandably shitty attitude toward cleaning my house. Its run-down and just dirty looking, no matter what, so even basic maintenance often seems pointless. Combine that with the fact that I’m naturally a messy person and things like this happen.

See if you can spot your favorite book! And I’m sure Tracey will be touched to see the pictures of M scattered in with the debris.

So, I’m about to go to town on this sucker and will be back in a few hours (hopefully) with an after picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have…finished a room in our house.

There are, of course, a few details remaining. We need a window treatment and that dresser is actually the baby’s changing table/chest of drawers from when he was but a wee thing and, well, he’s kind of outgrown it. But, yes, this is the first room that I really consider done. Our laundry room is mostly done, but it has an addition off of it that will need to go and I anticipate that causing a few new swear words to be invented.

You say you’d like another angle? Well, alright then.

Perhaps the coolest part is that we were finally able to import the ceiling fan that he had in his room at my mom’s house.

I know that that isn’t the greatest picture, but my cat was intent on photobombing. See:

As a sort of birthday-slash-I-know-your-life-is-semi-wack-at-the-moment-so-please-cheer-up present, my mom helped us with the financing of some new carpeting. I have never been so physically attracted to something that just lays on the floor and smells kind of weird.

We ripped out a bunch of carpeting when we first bought the house, mostly in the name of ridding ourselves of the dried cat pee smell. But new carpeting wasn’t really in the budget. So the areas of hardwood flooring that were still in decent shape got some area rugs and the areas that weren’t got a steam clean and the stinkeye. Particularly because the existing carpeting was U-G-L-Y.

I remember at the closing the previous owner boasting how nice the indoor/outdoor carpeting was and wanting to punch him because…no. It’s not nice. Ever. Unless you’re living in a college dorm at a state school and need something that can stand up to Pabst vomit. The portions of the house that didn’t have the dark blue indoor/outdoor crap had this burnt orange shaggy stuff that was just depressing. The pile on the stairs had long ago been mashed down so it held on to every mote of dust and fuzz in the air. Vacuuming it was a total waste of effort and I felt like a total idiot every time I wasted an afternoon on it.

I’ve been really bad about taking official before and after pictures of our very slow remodeling, but here’s what I can offer in terms of B&A of the stairs.

Orange stairs of doom, plus my cute kid.

And now?

Can you hear the chorus of angels?

I don’t have a before picture of the hallway, but here’s one of our bedroom:

That’s the same indoor/outdoor junk and unfortunately, due to budget constraints, we couldn’t put new carpeting in this room, but you get the idea.

Cue the chorus of angels, please:

Now, finally, here’s the biggest transformation. The smallest bedroom was a total wreck and was the first one that we really tackled with gusto. We ripped up the carpeting, tore down the walls, insulated it, put in some wiring (I think), put up new dry wall, installed new wood trim, painted, stained…and it only took us four years! I think we’re good candidates for Extreme(ly slow) Makeover: Home Edition.

So here’s the official before and the room is at a weird angle so it’s hard to get a full shot:

Here’s a during shot:

Angels, please!

Now all that’s left for this room is covering the vent and outlets, getting a window treatment, a light fixture, and moving the baby in there. It might actually happen this weekend.

Screw Mayan prophecy, this is truly the sign that the end times are upon us.

You know what you should definitely not do if you’re fighting some sadness? You should definitely not read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The husband saw me starting to read it the other night and said, “Uh, didn’t you say that you were feeling depressed? Then you really shouldn’t read that book.”

“Yeah, I know. I kind of feel like wallowing in it, though.”

“I’m just saying, I started reading that right around the same time that I started reading a book about the troubles in Belfast and I chose to stop reading The Road because it was so much more depressing than the Belfast book.”

I didn’t listen, though. It was a fairly quick read, but the past couple of nights, I would put the book down and try to go to sleep and think, “Well, yes, this may have been a terrible idea.”

I finished it last night and freaked the baby out a little by bursting into tears after closing it. Interestingly, I feel a little bit better today. Even if I could kind of relate to some of the panic that the father feels about taking care of a child in a broken world, I’m obviously not facing the horrific bleakness that they were.

* * *

I’m actually in between coats of polyurethaning the stain in the baby’s bedroom-to-be (which we’ve been working on, on and off, for four years). So, you know, I’m just sitting here, waiting for the pink elephants and the birdies and stars to dissipate. Fumes are fun!

I call this postpourri. Get it? Potpourri but in blog post form? And, yes, Tyler Durden, being clever is working out for me just fine.

Anyway, I wrote on MamaPop yesterday about the Sundance Channel’s mini-documentary-series Brick City. Part 3 of 5 aired last night. I think I’m a little too cynical to be really inspired by the efforts of Mayor Cory Booker. I mean, good on him for giving a shit and all. I think I’ve just lost faith in politicians having any higher callings than their own professional ambitions to propel them to action. And even then their “actions” are lukewarm and tentative and serve bullshit. *coughcoughObamacough* But I’m really, really drawn in by Jayda and Creep. I guess it’s the parenting aspect. Seeing those two just in it and trying so hard to be good people and struggling with the fact that they’re bringing new people into this questionable world hits me pretty hard.

Onto the lighter stuff. If you’ve spent any time around me, you’ve probably heard me whine about my kitchen. It’s small, though that’s not the main problem. There are three doorways, plus two covered-up doorway things. One was the servants’ entrance and the other I think might have housed shelves at one point. Plus, there’s a covered-up fireplace. The result is the most inefficient use of space ever. The previous owner’s home improvement skills were lacking at best and so his solution when it came time to update the kitchen back in nineteen-seventy-hell or whenever this perversion of home improvement went down was this crap:

That little slab on the right is the extent of my counter space. I do nearly all prep work on the stove and it’s only by sheer luck that I haven’t cut off a finger while chopping on a rickety cutting board perched on one of the burners. If you stop by for dinner, it’s likely that you’ll hear, “Just gonna chop this carrot. *chopchopchop* AUUGHHH OH JESUS. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Okay. Whew, they’re all still there. EVERYTHING’S FINE!”

Obviously, redoing the kitchen into something resembling reasonable, much less the gourmet pr0n version that I now want after working in this hell hole for 3 years, will require a LOT of money. And if there’s a perfect antonym to our personal finances, “a lot” would be it.

So, since I’m usually trying to make dinner here after a long work/school day, I’m often flustered and pissy and saying many disrespectful things about the kitchen’s mother. This results in some odd placements of items on my part and some questionable uses of space. Some are benign (“Why is the fucking muffin pan in the microwave?”) and some are more serious. The top of my stove houses the tea kettle, a lunch box or two, and my cast iron skillet and grill pan. (I was keeping those last two in the oven but always, without fail, forgot that they were in there and would preheat the motherfucker and in case you didn’t know, cast iron cookware gets hellaciously hot and even oven mitts are barely a match.)

Sometimes, the cast iron skillet becomes a temporary storage space. Like, for instance, about a month ago I needed some place to set a tomato and a new bag of brown sugar and a mixing bowl. Into the skillet went the tomato and the brown sugar and on top of them went the mixing bowl. And there they remained, forgotten, until last night.

I’m not sure what made me look in there, but I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I was confronted with rotten tomato ooze that was causing weird reactions in the skillet and coating the bag of brown sugar. And a smell that was somewhere between garbage juice and the Allegheny River that one time that my dad, the dog, and I went for an ill-advised swim and my mom wouldn’t let us near the house for the better part of a day.

I recoiled and in doing so knocked over a cup of chocolate milk and a cup of vegetable juice (that’s what goes for balanced nutrition in our house) that the baby had left on the stove. I then spent the next hour transferring the brown sugar to a new bag and attempting to rid the skillet of the smell so that we don’t have Cornbread with Garbage Juice the next time that we have chili. FML.

* * *

At the bus stop the other day, the baby hit me with yet another of his non-sequitur questions: “Are people in Antartica upside down?” Certainly, this a pretty typical question for someone his age and appropriately adorable. However, we sort of got into it.

“No. Well, there are only a few people in Antartica. They’re scientists doing research. But they’re not in Antartica hanging from the ceiling. They’re standing up just like we are. The earth is round and gravity keeps everything on the ground. There’s no real up or down or left or right in space, you know?”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, not really. Directions like up and down and left and right are things that people made up so that they can make sense of the world. But in space, where earth is, everything is going in every direction. Kind of.”

“What?”

“Well, scientists are pretty sure that that universe began because of a big bang, that there was this, like, ball of energy and matter and one day it exploded sending stuff in every possible direction and those bits and pieces sometimes bumped into each other and blended and became new planets and galaxies and stuff.”

“Like how Saturn’s moon exploded and formed its rings?”

“Yeah, kind of like that.”

“Do you think you could ice skate on Saturn’s rings?”

“Well, no. I mean, besides the fact that it’s, you know, Saturn, remember how on that show we watched they explained that even though Saturn’s rings look solid, they’re actually lots of bits and pieces of rock and dust?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“It’s like…there was this artist, Monet. And his paintings, if you’re far away, look like water lillies and people relaxing in the park. But if you get up close you can see all of the little dots and strokes and when you look at his paintings really closely they don’t make sense. And like the cells that make up your body, too.”

“Not my skin, though.”

“Your skin, too! Your skin is made up of tiny cells that clump together and cover your body. It’s called perspective.”

“I know about perspective!”

“You do?”

“Yeah!”

“Good.”

I swear to god we had this conversation and only stopped because the school bus came. It was especially timely because I really, really need some perspective right now. Not the “there are billions of people who have it way worse than me” kind. I have that in spades. I need the “I’m looking at my 30-year-old self from a few years in the future and laughing at her because why didn’t she realize that everything was going to be just fine?” I would like that perspective in bulk, please.

As of this morning, I am the mother of a second-grader. Excuse me while I gather my internal organs. They seem to have exited my body.

Part of this morning’s first day of school activities included the annual picture. Every year for the past four years, we’ve taken a picture of the baby on the front porch. And every year I screw up the perspective entirely so that it’s hard to look at the pictures from year to year and get a good sense of his growth. Case in point:

Top row: pre-K, kindergarten
Bottom row: 1st grade, 2nd grade

You have to adjust and notice that his legs are about 500 feet longer than they were last year. Other things of note are the brand new Chuck Taylors and the flat-brimmed hat. These were both very specific choices of his. The Chucks are low-tops because the high-tops were the shoes for first grade. The flat-brimmed hat indicates assimilation into the fashions of mainstream hip-hop. Whatever.

I, of course, had an annual first day of school picture growing up. My mom would cart me to my grandmother’s house and they would take my picture in front of this tree in my grandmother’s front yard. Nearly every picture has me squinting fiercely because those pro photographers had to have their backs to the sun. I think the last one would have been 10th grade because after that year I started my ballet program that had me at ballet class first thing and not going to school until later in the morning. Also, by that time I was far too sullen to bother with such nonsense.

And I’m pretty sure that tree is dead now.

We stopped by the baby’s school Tuesday night for their welcome-back event and got to check out his classroom and meet his teacher. I need to take a moment and gush about his school. It’s just wonderful and we’re so lucky to live some place where a progressive and outstanding public school exists. And the building itself is amazing. It is always spotless and it’s decorated so warmly, you can’t help but cheer up a little bit when walking through the halls.

The husband and I both went to struggling Catholic schools for elementary school and we both recall them as being very drab, which is weird since Catholic churches are always so campy and over-the-top with their decor. You would think that the decorating bug would carry over to the schools. But I guess the priests and nuns who didn’t have the gift of knowing which gold chalices would go best with stained glass window depicting some anguish and naked people are assigned to education detail.

Anyway, another awesome thing about the public schools here is that they do an excellent job of providing everyone with school supplies. The only downside to this is that it eliminates the need for the annual school supply shopping.

We decided to hit up Target that night anyway to get the baby a new backpack and a big thing of pencils for our house. While we were there I decided to poke around the bedding section to check out their duvet selection.

We have these comforters from Ikea that are about four years old. They’re still in good shape, but are rather dingy at the top where our greasy hands and faces come in regular contact with them. Despite my best bleaching efforts, the faint yellow remains as evidence of many good nights of sleep and drool.

All of the duvets that they had in stock were at least $70 so I decided to wait and order a cheapie version online and grabbed some new sheets while I was at it. I went with these two:

I’m going with the chocolate/blue combo because I totally have my finger on the pulse of the color scheme trends of 2003.

ANYWAY, all of this duvet talk kept making me think about Fight Club and how silly it is that I am even concerned about such things. And then I also started wondering if duvets were also mentioned in Raising Arizona when H.I. and Ed are giving Nathan Jr. the tour. But that was a divan.

With that sorted out, I think I can move on with life now.

Earlier this week, the husband worked some magic with the Allen wrenches and my house, formerly The Land of Flat Packs, now has some shelving and bins and stuff. When we saw the first patch of floor in my son’s room, we cautiously whispered, “What is that?” Then, when we realized that it was the hideous green speckled carpeting that we had first encountered three years ago before the toy layer was set in place like sediment, there was much rejoicing.

We still have a number of things to do before we can move him into the smaller bedroom that we’ve been remodeling off and on since we bought the place. For your reference, here is what we were faced with when we got here (you’ll have to supply the cat urine smell yourself):

I really wonder why this look was so popular. It’s like living under an oppressive burnt marmalade regime.

And here’s what it looked like when the walls met the business ends our sledgehammers and crowbars:

Work and school and money have slowed the process considerably, but the small room now has insulation and new walls and new trim. I’m really pushing (read: whining) to have this room done by the end of the summer. Then I’ll get to take “after” pictures!

We went to see the new Harry Potter movie last night. It was okay. I was mostly entertained by the previews for 2012, which looks god-awful. Plus, John Cusack is the heroic lead, which is just kind of funny to me, and I think they should have played up this unlikely casting in the script and previews more. “John Cusack saves the world…and mends his broken heart. Unlucky in love but ready to kick some apocalyptic ass!”

We finally joined everyone in 2007 and watched Tropic Thunder last night, which was also okay. It definitely had its moments of brilliance, but I think I was expecting it to be a little more skewering of the movie industry.

On a final, totally unrelated note, when do kids learn how to ask hypothetical questions that…like…make sense? I’m getting really frustrated with my son asking me stuff like, “What if our car was blue?” THEN IT WOULD BE BLUE, DUDE! GAH! I know that I should appreciate his childish wonderment before that fateful day when he first calls me a bitch (you know it’s coming). But how do you explain to someone that hypothetical questions need to pose serious, altering conditions to a situation? Is there some sort of Theory for Tots class I can send him to?