I hate my car. I really hate it. I mean, the poltergeist was kind of the last straw. But even before that:
It gets terrible gas mileage.
I bought it because I thought keeping the dogs in the way back would help keep it clean, but it doesn’t.
I’ve spent a TON of money on repairs already. Plus, I have to get a new catalytic converter before my next inspection, and when I went to get the oil changed yesterday, “rear brakes blah, CV joint blah, struts blah blah”.
I’m done. I still owe $4,200 on it because I borrowed against it to do repairs and upgrades on my old house, but I don’t care. I want a different car.
I can’t afford a new one, naturally, but I want to get a one- to three-year old, manual transmission, smaller/less heavy, Japanese automobile. I probably can’t afford that either, but let’s say I could. What should or shouldn’t I get?
I made my entrance to this bright world in a little hospital in Blowing Rock and grew up listening to Cove Creek gurgle by.
I rode Old Highway 421 to Boone to take ballet, tap, and jazz weekly at the Dancer’s Corner and made out with Robbie in his Volvo in Foscoe every chance I could get.
I attended the University of National Champions in Chapel Hill, camping out on the hard sidewalk outside the Dean Dome for basketball tickets, ordering Greek grilled cheese at Hector’s at 2:00am, and sweating my way through eight shows in the Lab! Theatre.
I flew away to Italy, Mexico, and New York Fuckin City, but I kept finding my way back to the Tar Heel State.
For five years, I taught fourth graders how to lose at tetherball on Seawell School Road, then wended my way out to my little mill house in Hillsborough and ran my dogs all over Occoneechee Mountain.
These days, I work out, go out, and tell stories in Bull City. I drive up Roxboro, down Mangum, and across Club Boulevard.
I’ve been to Asheville and Kure Beach and a lot of places in between, and I love. This. State.
I love North Carolina.
But today my state government voted to put hate on the ballot and bigotry on the map on May 8, 2012, and I just couldn’t be more ashamed.
A couple weeks ago, I was complaining on Facebook that I was uninspired by my prospects for the day:
Of all the things on my to-do list today, let’s see…yep, I want to do not a damn one of them.
…at which point, friend Deborah listed the various and sundry things she and her wife had already accomplished that morning.
I felt compelled to respond that I hadn’t been sitting on my ass:
I cooked breakfast (eggs, sweet potato home fries, and garlic scapes), walked Redford 2 miles to the gym, did planks and ring dips and squat cleans, walked Redford 2 miles back from the gym, and tried to start my new mower. Stupid fucking thing! I’ma put my foot through somebody’s ribcage! I hate gas mowers! Now I’m going to Home Depot to buy some engine starting fluid. And some mulch. That means I’ll have to mulch. Dammit. In addition, there’s grocery shopping, paying bills, and doing laundry on the list. Who can’t my to-do list include eating ice cream and having sex?
Deborah, wise woman that she is, recommended putting those last two on the list and seeing what happened.
So I did.
Of the two, I managed only one.
But 50% success rate is not bad! If I can do half of whatever’s on my list, maybe I just need to make a better list!
What should I put on my to-do list for tomorrow, Avid Bruxistists?!
Maybe a robin. I’m not good at identifying birds. At identifying anything. Trees, flowers, feelings, appropriate mates.
Redford was barking at the ground. I thought, “That’s about right.” But when I went out into the yard, there lay a flickering, floppity robin, its mouth opening in quick, wide yawns. I shooed Redford away and ran inside to get some Saran wrap. I didn’t have any rubber gloves, and I had heard that birds carry disease. Did I hear that? Maybe. Maybe I made it up.
I covered my hand in the plastic and picked up the bird. Its body was warm and weighed nothing. Nothing. How does an animal survive when it weighs zero pounds, zero ounces?
Its bird friends shrieked at me as I took it out of the back yard and placed it on the mulch. “I have to get ready for work,” I thought, but I stood there in my bathrobe, in my driveway, watching its beak open and close.
When I was eight or nine, I watched my cat Scratch (sister of Patch, of course) do the same thing. A speedy CRX came around the blind curve in front of my house and tagged her. She sprinted out of the road, which made me think she was OK. But when I followed her, I found her lying behind a tree, mouth opening and closing.
What is that? Why do animals do that? Will I, when the time comes?
Previously, on the Avid Bruxist blog, our heroine had bought a new gas-powered motor because she had allegedly killed two electric mowers in five years (we’ll get back to that part). She had hesitated at buying a machine with a pull-cord because pull-cords that, when pulled, don’t result in engines starting make her throw a goddamn rod.
Her brand new mower had revved up like a dream the first time, and she mowed to her heart’s content….
Now it’s possible that my shed is a little cluttered. And, when putting away the mower, I may or may not have struggled to find room. So it could be that I sort of picked up the back wheels and set them on top of the broken electric mower. And if I did all that, perhaps I left it like that—slanty—for a week or more.
When I took it out to start it, not only would the motor not crank but some semi-viscous liquid began dripping out of a part that didn’t look like it should have any semi-viscous liquid dripping out of it.
I called my brother-in-law, who swooped in with a screwdriver and can of
Magic Lawn Mower Sauce.
What had happened was, when I supposedly left the mower tipped up like that, oil spilled into…I don’t know. Whatever. He got it started.
AND he picked up the carcasses of my electric mowers to see if he might tinker ’em back into shape. Turns out, the more recent one just had a whosie-whatsit popped off its anchor, making the ass end drag on the ground. No wonder it was so hard to push. E re-attached it, and it was good to go. The older mower, well, he took off the blade and it looked like
Jafar's teeth when he's disguised as the old guy in the dungeon.
Yeah, I may have hit a tree root. Once or twice. And a rock. Perhaps a coral reef.
And I guess I had taken the blade off at some point? Because it was installed upside-down. That’d make it run a little rough, I suppose.
One time I was visiting my dad at his office, and a colleague of his said, “When it comes to technology, your father has the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything he comes in contact with turns to shit.”
I’m feeling remarkably like the Scott paterfamilias right now.
Last Tuesday, I looked on the CrossFit Durham website and found that the owner had scheduled a Painstorm. I’d list the elements here, but suffice to say it was Lift a Bunch of Shit Over Your Head Until You Can’t Anymore Then Do Fifteen Rounds of Some Other Crap Then Lift the Same Shit Over Your Head Again.
I decided to mow my lawn instead. Little did I know I’d have a Painstorm, mostly psychological, of my own.
See, for years, I owned
an electric mower, yes indeedy. (With a cord and everything. You learn to do a little dance with the cord. It's fancy.)
I had two of these mowers, actually. Kilt ’em. Kilt ’em both dead.
The reason I had gotten electric instead of gas-powered was I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint.
Lies.
In truth, I got electric because yanking on the cord of a mower that won’t start makes me want to put a foot through somebody’s ribcage.
But after I broke two electric mowers in five years, I decided I would really be ecologically conscious.
Lies again.
In truth, I was just being cheap. I bought
this yeoman's tool.
Every blade of grass gets cut using only human energy! Problem is, human energy is crap. I mean, it would cut, but not very much and certainly not anything high. I have a special mixture of grass and weeds in my yard that proved too much for the Silent Scott. I’d go over a tall weed—it would flatten out under the blade and pop right back up to full salute.
Every time he saw me out there grunting behind my “mower”, my 70-year-old neighbor insisted on lending me his self-propelled beast of a gas-powered machine. But I was terrified I’d hit a rock or a stump and mess up his blade, or worse.
So Tuesday, after work, I put on my Big Girl Panties, stopped by Home Depot, and picked up
my very first gas-powered mower.
The cheapest one they had, natch. It came mostly assembled. All I had to do was attach the handle and the rear wheels and add some oil. I’m handy. I had no problem with the mower.
I did, however, have a problem with
the stupid fucking gas can.
“Just turn, and click—you’re ready to go.”
Lies.
In truth, turn, and click, and nothing comes out. Turn the other way, and click, and still nothing. Turn really forcefully, and curse at it, and click, and nothing. I must’ve messed with that thing for half an hour. And it was starting to get dark. If there had been a ribcage around that didn’t belong to my dogs, my foot would’ve been through it. I finally poured the gas into a glass measuring cup and transferred it to the tank.
I mooshed the little rubber button to get the gas to flow in, held my breath, and yanked on the cord. Raaarrrrrrr! It started up on the first pull! But it was cutting REALLY SHORT. I realized I needed to change the level of the wheels. Because I’d bought the Piece of Shit model, there was no lever to change the height. I had to take off every last wheel and reattach them in a different hole. Argh.
First wheel, done. Second and third, done and done. Fourth…fourth…fourth. Won’t. Come. Off. I was using the only tool I had: plier/wire snip combo thingy. I knew my neighbor would have a wrench or something, but I was afraid it was too late to knock on his door.
Lies.
In truth, my pride was saying, “You don’t deserve those Big Girl Panties! Turn the fucking bolt!”
After 20 minutes, I told my pride to shove it and tromped over to my neighbor’s house. Sure, he had an adjustable wrench. Even better,
he had the most important tool humankind has ever created: the vice grip.
That bolt came loose like nothing.
I’d like to say that I adjusted the wheels and mowed and everything was wine and roses. Truth is, two of the wheels kept falling off as I mowed. I had to keep stopping to reattach them, and one of the washers got lost in the process. At this point, it was 8:45 or 9:00, dark. My neighbors probably thought I was on meth.
But that grass got mowed! Those weeds got chopped! And I missed remarkably few spots considering that it was dark as pitch when I finished.
So what did I learn and gain from my Painstorm?
Adaptabililty…gas can nozzle doesn’t work? Use something else.
Humility…I should’ve asked my neighbor about 30 minutes earlier for the wrench.
Economics…spend the extra twenty bucks to get the adjustable mower.
Physics…I need to buy a pair of vice grips.
Wisdom…that sage of sages, Tim Allen, was right: sometimes you need more power.
I lived in a doorman building in Manhattan for two years. Before you get too impressed, I’ll clarify. My building was in Hell’s Kitchen, right at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. And I lived in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. For two years. In the living room.
That’s neither here nor there actually. I just sometimes marvel at that fact.
One Sunday evening, I stepped into the elevator on the way up to my apartment. I had spent the weekend in Boston with my sister, so I was carrying a backpack with my overnight items in it. The only other passenger was male, a little older than me, and cute. I gave him a half-smile and averted my eyes. (You may not be able to tell from this blog, but I can be quite shy.)
As I turned around to face the door, something behind me started buzzing. At first, I ignored it. I figured it was the elevator shifting gears or something. But the noise continued, so I turned around to take a look. As I moved, the sound moved with me. Bzzzzzzz. Cute Man looked meaningfully at my backpack, raised an eyebrow, and gave a slow blink.
My chest tightened as I realized my electric toothbrush must somehow have turned itself on. I threw the bag down, unzipping it furiously in the hopes that Cute Man could get a glimpse of it and we could have a little chuckle together.
I was still digging through my dirty clothes as the elevator bounced to a stand-still at his floor and he sauntered off. It was everything I could do not to shout, “It’s not a vibrator!”
Future elevator rides with Cute Man involved no eye contact. Or breathing.
That's right: I caulked my bathtub. I'm a caulker. I caulk things.
Speaking of which, it’s my experience that every bathtub has a quirk.
Maybe the hot and cold faucets are on the wrong sides or turn backwards. Those are the special ed bathtubs.
Perhaps the water pressure is comparable to an eye dropper. Alternately, in the case of my great uncle’s house, it’ll blast your sins away (my sister’s words). Those bathtubs have boundary issues.
I can’t remember where, but I once used a shower where the faucet-to-shower-head mechanism was not a stopper or a switch; it was a ring around the opening of the spigot. You know, where the water comes out? Well, to make the water go up through the shower, you reached down and yanked on this metal ring. That bathtub needed to be different. That was a non-conformist bathtub (but it struck me as a little desperate, you know?).
Anyway, my current bathtub quirk is that, approximately 90 seconds after you’ve pulled up the thingy to relay the water through the shower, the spigot starts to whine.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
I have to thwack down the stopper and yank it back up, and for the rest of the shower, we’re fine, the spigot and I. My bathtub likes to complain and get smacked around a little bit.
