Month: July 2010

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like These

Yesterday at 3:00pm I learned that I would not be closing on my new house at 4:00pm. My buyer’s bank had screwed the pooch on her paperwork, thus she had not yet bought my old house, therefore I did not have the 10% that I needed to put down on my new place.

Fantastic.

This, after I agreed to pay twenty-eight hundred bucks for her closing costs. This, after I replaced the water heater and the sub floor that the leak had rotted through for over a grand. Then the $985 termite treatment and the mold guy who came and said, “Well, I don’t see any mold, but I’ll spray the stuff they probably think is mold.” For $125. And after that, when I, like an asshole, put a kitchen chair cushion in my washing machine, and it shredded it to bits and blocked up the pump. That’ll be 80 bucks for a service call, thanks.

This, after packing up all my shit over the past month and renting a truck and getting my crew to schlep it out on a 100-degree day last weekend. This, after living out of a suitcase at my lovely friend Erika’s house for four days.

They think they’ve got her loan package redone, and they think we can close tomorrow.

They better think that shit into existence because I don’t know how much more I can take.

And as if I wasn’t stressed enough…Erika and her girlfriend left for the beach this afternoon, and when I came home, I accidentally set off their house alarm. Christ Almighty, it was like I was peeing on an electric fence while someone smashed wine bottles in my ear canals. Like, it actually physically hurt.

I called Erika in a panic and somehow finally got it shut off. Right then, E’s friend came to the front door with her dog. My dogs were going buck-wild so I stepped onto the stoop. And the door shut, thipp. Locked. My key—the spare key—was inside. My phone was inside. My wallet was inside. Most disturbingly, my dogs were inside…with all of Erika’s lovely things. Things they could shred in a hot second.

I fucking lost it. I sat on the steps and sobbed into my hands.

One of E’s neighbors was lovely enough to look up a locksmith’s number and let me use her phone. The dude said he’d be twenty minutes. I called my sister and asked if she’d come sit with me to wait, and she left her 8-year-old and her 5-year-old and her 9-month-old at 9:00 on a weeknight to come listen to me boo-hoo and rub my back and say Shhhh.

The lock man arrived. Sixty bucks and three minutes later—two of which I think he was just pantomiming so it didn’t look like he was getting paid sixty dollars a minute—I was back inside. And the only thing Redford had eaten was my sneaker.

Well, hell, what’s another fifty bucks on new Nikes?

No Wonder My House Was Filthy All the Time

A week ago, I flopped on the sofa, feeling melancholy about leaving the house. My house, my first house. The bead board, the crown molding, the 18-inch square tiles in the kitchen. The screened porch, the porch swing. The yard, my Amish-built shed, the fence, the butterfly bush, Boonie.

The heat recently—my god, the heat: unrelenting, punishing, angry. The air conditioning slowly evaporated beads of sweat off my upper lip. The sun slanted through the panes of the west-facing window in the living room. Violet lay frog-dog on the hard wood. Redford stood in front of the couch, jovially commanding affection. I patted his butt. The beam of late-afternoon sunlight suddenly became swirlingly opaque.

And I thought, “That’s a lot of dirt coming off my dog.”

Bovis

At 7:40 this morning, I walked the dogs up my country road, trying to get us all some exercise before it got too hot. Fail. We were all panting five minutes in. I blinked away sweat, and the dogs bulldozed their noses through the dewy, tall grass.

About a half-mile up, there’s a farm. Or a ranch. I’m not sure I know the difference, actually…OK, I just looked it up. Turns out, a ranch is a kind of farm that raises horses, cattle, or sheep. So this place is a ranch because it raises cows and horses.

I just love looking at cows. I love their soft eyes and their improbable shape—how do they carry that tank on four, spindly legs?!

One of the cows in the herd took a break from his munching and swung his head toward us. His eyes were hard. A companion stopped and looked as well. Within moments, two dozen cattle were staring, rigid, at me and my dogs. We walked a little faster.

I’m not sure which one moved first, but all of a sudden, the herd was shifting toward us. I looked at the three pathetic wires that separated little me and my two pit mixes from six tons of bovine heft. It was clearly electrified, but somehow I didn’t think that would matter in a stampede. We picked up the pace, and those beasts trotted after us.

I was just starting to worry in a serious way, when Redford turned around and barked. Miraculously, every cow paused. Then they lurched forward again. He shouted at them several times, and they slowed.

I couldn’t tell whether Redford was scared or happy because his tail was flopping madly the whole time. My question was answered when we passed the ranch’s property line, and Redford squatted immediately and crapped his pants.

Hey, little buddy, no worries. I almost did the same thing.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

P.S. Both a friend and my brother worried aloud to me today that I might get dooced.

Of course I might. I think about it all the time.

But what I told both of them is that I value my self-expression more than I value any job. This blog has been transformational for me over the last year. (By the way, my blogiversary is coming up! Gifts welcome! I’m registered at Lord & Taylor! No I’m not!) So if I get fired because of what I’ve written here, well, that will suck big hairy goat balls, but so be it.

Can You Use It in a Sentence, Please?

Having always been a champion speller*, I find kids who can’t spell fascinating.

Today we were discussing class jobs. I wrote them all on the board, and we talked about what each one entailed. Then I gave the kids index cards and told them to write down their top three job choices.

This is what I got (and remember, all the jobs were written on the board):

  • sweper
  • bord worsher, bored washer (Ha—what would that person do?)
  • pencil sharpiner, pensel sharpiner, pencil sarper, pencel shapener, peneil shanpener (That last one sounds like a burning sensation you should see your doctor about.)
  • libraren, liydeary (Oh dear, someone has dyslexia.)
  • resekliler (Can you guess what this one is?)

*Cove Creek School champion, 7th grade—beat out my eighth-grade brother and cried because I didn’t want him to lose. Went to the district spelling bee, and got out on the word ‘abstain’. I didn’t know what ‘abstain’ meant (go ahead—make your funny jokes), and the way the lady pronounced it, it sounded like ‘obtain’ to me.