A moving story

Not to toot my own horn (TOOT! TOOT!) but in the middle of all my don’t-get-my-wrist-mole-excision-sutures-wet bullshit (TOOT!) drama, the flapper in my toilet (WHERE I TOOT!) tank started leaking. LOUDLY. LIKE A BIG LOUD TOOT. I’M SURPRISED YOU ALL COULDN’T HEAR IT. And not only did I buy the right-size replacement flapper ON ONLY THE SECOND TRY, but I also managed to remove the old one, install the too-small replacement one, remove the too-small replacement one and finally install the right-size replacement one ALL WITH ONE HAND.

TOOOOOOOOOT! Flush.

SHIT!

I WAS GOING TO GET SO MUCH DONE THIS WEEKEND.

I was going to finish all the final details on my bedroom and finally be back in my own bed by tomorrow night. I was going to start and finish a little caulk-and-touch-up project in my bathroom while I had all my supplies out. I was going to get rid of the last of the little stuff in my storage unit so all I’d have left would be the big pieces of furniture. I was going to help a friend move some stuff.

But NOOOOO.

As the anesthesia wore off this afternoon I found myself getting nauseous and profoundly exhausted. So I left work early to crash for an alarming FIVE HOURS in not-my-bed and miss our office’s fun summer party tonight. And since I’m forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS—no hauling boxes, no helping friends move, no throat-punching Mitch McConnell, apparently no putting my pants back on after my nap—I’m left with no options but to stuff myself with pain meds and cookies and watch MSNBC. With no pants.

Don't walk on the grass

I can think of no better way to paint woodwork than to do it while warbling along with this richly orchestrated and gorgeously sung tongue-twister of a jewel of a song on infinite repeat:

So. Many. Clothes.

When the doors are off the closet and you can see in one glance how obscenely huge your collection of clothing is, it’s very easy to start purging. Those hangers on the left mark my progress before it occurred to me to take a picture to hold myself accountable. If I get the entire left half open, perhaps I could put some shoe cubbies there.

In celebration of Pride month, I have burst out of the closet!

And by “burst out of the closet” I mean “removed the floor guides, carefully lifted the closet doors from their roller tracks, carried them upstairs to the garage where I have drop cloths and rag-draped saw horses set up, given them two coats of bullshit-one-coat paint, let them become thoroughly dry, and brought them back downstairs to wait for the door frame to completely dry so I can re-install them.”

Whew. My bedroom project is ALL DONE.

I decided to paint a super-perfectly-awesomely-straight stripe along the floor blue instead of spreading blue all over those big walls.

Now that that’s all over: DAY DRINKING!

We have reached the moment in this evening’s activities where I post a photo of myself wielding my mighty caulk gun

I’m still pretending this is fun

Even though after three hours I’m still prepping the walls. And trying to figure out what the living hell to do with that breaker box and nest of cables in the corner—which is not as simple a challenge as it appears to be in this or any other photo. It’s a 4D puzzle and an M. C. Escher drawing cowering in the corner like an angry, vindictive spider plotting my emotional demise. BUT IT’S SO TERRIBLY FUN!

I painted my first dining room 25 years ago listening to Sunday in the Park with George on permanent repeat. I still think about that room and how cool it turned out every time I hear that score.

And this room already has Tootsie embedded deep in its sequined, fake-boobed DNA.

Shit’s gettin’ real, fam!

Real crowded in the center of the room, real dusty, and real HOLY SHIT WHAT GAPING MOUTH OF HELL HAVE I JUST JUMPED INTO?

Painting is stupid. Learn to livelaughlove with your beige.

I can go the distance

So I usually try to push myself to three miles on my first run of the season—both to set the standard that I can do it and to see what chronic running injuries are on the Season’s Stupid Summer FlareupsTM menu.

My body actually felt up to running three miles when I woke up. My head felt like it might explode before I got to the corner of our block. But it didn’t. And the weather was just the right amount of cool and just the right amount of humid ... AND I JUST RAN THREE FREAKING MILES WITHOUT STOPPING.

Granted, I ran it at the pace I ran the New York Marathon. So I have some speeding up to do to achieve any kind of 8K dignity. And my ears that were screaming EEEEEEE at me when I started are now death-shrieking E!E!E!E!E!E! at me as I sit on our front stoop trying to cool down. But my head doesn’t seem to hurt any worse than when I started. Though it most definitely still hurts. Because why get completely back to normal all at once? That would just be selfish.

Private message for Rob and Scott so don't you other bitches read it: The big orange DEAD END signs are gone at our three-mile turnaround and it looks like the trail keeps going off to parts unknown. We must explore this mysterious new frontier like the urban pioneers we are. And I spent my entire run fantasizing about caulking my baseboards and priming my walls—so PLEASE come talk show tunes with me on our runs again like real men.

Don’t scream words like UNIVERSAL, FITS ALL BRANDS and REPLACES ALL STYLES in huge bold type at the top of your damn packaging

and then all-but-literally whisper 2” in brown-on-fucking-gradient-brown-on-fucking-beige on the bottom corner under the fucking blister pack with no context that might alert me to the fact that 2” is FUCKING IMPORTANT PURCHASING INFORMATION TO KNOW and not expect me to yell FUCK at you on my blog after I’ve torn my toilet tank apart and gotten myself covered with toilet-tank slime and finally gotten your poorly labeled flapper installed and THEN discovered not only that it was the wrong size but even that there are multiple sizes you should have made me aware that I should consider so I wouldn’t have to make two trips to the hardware store when there is no earthly reason this repair project should warrant two trips to the hardware store, korky.

PS: Your company name is stupid. And fucking LEARN HOW ADULTS CAPITALIZE.

My family told me on no uncertain terms to NOT post these pictures, so challenge accepted!

The good news is I got our back deck and the grill and all the patio furniture (now christened Porch Song Trilogy) all scrubbed and cleaned and dried and set up for summer.

The bad news is the umbrella for the table didn’t get set up. It’s on a high shelf in the garage, see, so I set up our tall step stool in a place near one end of the umbrella. That place also happened to be directly under the surprisingly sharp and surprisingly hard end of the track for the garage door. Not noticing this troublesome placement, I bounded up the step stool at full force ... and hit my head so hard on the sharp, hard end of the track that I saw stars and all but collapsed to the floor where blood ran down my arm and the pain intensified so quickly that I actually started gasping and sobbing.

My poor dad—who is legally blind—ran to get our poor neighbor—who had to look at my bloody, swollen head without barfing—and together they decided to take me to the ER:

The other good news is I don’t need stitches, but I have an impressive lump and a possible concussion and a badass punk-rocker streak of blood in my hair:

The other bad news, though, is the stupid, mean, dumbass doctor won’t let me go to the gym for arm day. So I apologize in advance if you see me today with my lumpy red head and my saggy, deflated arms.

The other freaking awesome news is our freaking awesome neighbor climbed (carefully) up the (newly placed) step stool to get our umbrella down, and it was waiting next to the driveway for us when we got home.

New grey-blue countertops bring with them the responsibility to buy a handsomely coordinated enameled blue caulk gun

But let’s not kid ourselves: I’m telling you this only so I can say caulk gun on my blog.

Mom found shelf paper THAT! MATCHES! THE! NEW! COUNTERS!

Dad had a COPD episode this morning so I left work to take him to the hospital for X-rays and then back home to wait for the doctor to call with our next steps

He’s OK now, but he’s been coughing like he’s about to shoot a lung across the room.

Since I was home, I helped clean up and put stuff back in the cupboards under our AWESOME! NEW! COUNTERTOPS! Which look yellow here, but they’re actually a gray-side-of-white with gray-blue marbling—like an old-timey apothecary counter where our ancestors went to get refreshing lemon phosphates and creamy vanilla Cokes.

But I wasn’t the only one who’s been working. Miss Bridget has kept us attentive company the entire day:

Goodbye, dreary-pinky-orangey-beigey-ennuiy-mousy-blah-ugly-ass Formica kitchen counters!

I’m at work playing on my blog right now to pay for having you hauled away to your dreary-pinky-orangey-beigey-ennuiy-mousy-blah-ugly-ass Grave of Despair and Eternal-Cliché Irrelevance and be replaced with mega-awesome new countertops that you could never be. So good riddance. Go bore and appall some other kitchen to death.

When your ugly-dreary-pinky-orangey-mousy-blah Formica countertops are being ripped out and replaced in three days

and you’ve spent your evening excitedly tearing into Phase One: Taking everything out of the cabinets to make room for all the dust.

Well, shit.

Hiding the TV cables in the walls. It’s what separates us from the savages.

It also took WAAAAAY longer than I thought, but my super fix-anything owns-all-the-cool-tools neighbor came over and—even with a bad back—helped make my dreams of non-savagery come true:

Next up: Successfully program the universal remote. And figure out why MSNBC has no sound. Which is very weird. I’ve failed many times at both of these things, but I will not grow old and die until I get them accomplished.

Disney + memes + home projects + vile puns

My work here is complete.