You Decide!

Does standing on an aluminum ladder outside today in a cold drizzle in between thunderstorms hacking a quick fix for my loose downspout with-- wait for it-- duct tape-- qualify me for:

1.) A Special Homeowners' Quick Fix Badge

or

2.) A Darwin Award

?

Answer in comments.

One of the Things I Like Least About Being Sick

Is how dirty and neglected my house gets while I'm ailing.

I was sick with the flu and then a post-flu sinus infection (I think that's what it was-- I didn't bother to get it officially diagnosed) for almost the entire month of February. And then, after about a week and a half of relative wellness during which I made several relatively futile attempts to catch up on the housework while also catching up on freelance work and blogging, I find myself sick AGAIN with some new virus, not to mention exhausted after three straight nights of spending half the night awake comforting my sick child (who was up half the night for three straight nights with a vicious hacking cough), and the other half of each of those nights trying vainly to snatch some sleep while listening to my poor congested husband, who doesn't normally snore, buzz like an angry army of chainsaws.

There is currently an obstacle course made out of toy blocks and cars completely covering my noticeably un-vacuumed living room floor. My dining table is covered with un-sorted mail. A pile of dirty dishes languishes in my un-shined kitchen sink, and that pile is beginning to overflow onto my un-wiped counter. My office is stacked with un-filed papers. My bedroom floor is strewn with un-washed clothes.

And it's all I can do to keep up with throwing out the tissues my kid keeps using and dropping on the floor.

I'd post pictures, but, really, I don't want to be that cruel to a sick woman.

To top it all off, we have water seeping in the basement from the torrential rains, and yesterday for reasons unfathomable the toilet in the bathroom we just remodeled just started leaking water into the basement. And not clean water from the tank, either-- it leaks right over the stack when you flush it. Which must mean the brand new wax seal we fitted the toilet with just a couple of months ago must be faulty. Which means we have to take the whole toilet apart again, and replace the wax seal again. Like, immediately, if we want to be able to use it. (We do have another bathroom, thankfully, but still.)

I feel like my house is falling down around my stuffed up ears. I feel totally overwhelmed today.

Luckily, I can push all thoughts of the state of my house right out of my head just by thinking about how my already underweight kid has lost like half a pound this week from throwing up / not eating because he's so sick, and now the size 2T pants that my almost four-year-old JUST started being able to wear without a belt about a month ago are now falling off of him again!

Yeah, I might be in sort of a whiny mood today . . .

Finished! (Well, Mostly.)

After:

The Sink That Started It All:

Finished:

• New tile floor installed, grouted, and caulked to tub and wall
• Water-damaged wall repaired
• All walls painted
• New baseboard installed and painted
• New wax seal installed in toilet
• Tub re-caulked
• New sink installed

Still To Do at a Later Date:

• Replace vent fan
• Replace toilet seat
• Replace bath enclosure
• Replace bath faucet and drain

You might ask why we didn't just replace the bath enclosure and bath faucet while we were painting so we wouldn't have to do touch-up paint later. Well, partly because we just didn't want to spend any more money on home improvement this week.

(Or rather, we really didn't HAVE any more money to spend on home improvement this week. I mean, other than that imaginary money on our Home Depot credit card, which, luckily, lives in my husband's wallet and not mine. Because if the Home Depot credit card lived in my wallet, it would be maxed out all the time. Forget shoes. Momma needs a new pair of POWER SAWS! *Drool*

The same thing happens to my husband at Radio Shack, but, thankfully, we do not have a Radio Shack credit card.)

And we also didn't replace the bath enclosure because when we replace the bath enclosure, I plan to actually tear out the wall behind the enclosure and replace that too. Because someone who owned the house before us installed the current enclosure directly over greenboard (which is mildew-resistant gypsum board/drywall, for the uninitiated). The trouble is, that sort of installation is no longer up to most local construction codes, which now recommend using cement backer board behind all tub and shower enclosures. Cement backer board is much more resilient to water exposure and is much less susceptible to mold issues.

We don't currently have any serious water or mold issues with the greenboard that is behind the enclosure now, but, it's almost certain to happen at some point down the line if we don't tear it out and replace it with cement board, and, being my husband suffers from severe nasal allergies to EVERYTHING, I want our bathroom to be as mold-resistant as possible.

However tearing out the greenboard and replacing it with cement board will probably be a days-long project, and considering that when this whole New Sink Installation project started it was supposed to take two hours, we decided we really needed to limit the current Bathroom Construction Chaos to one week.

So, expect another Before and After in a month or two.

(And DON'T get me started on what needs to happen in my kitchen.)

Progress

Let's review:

This is what happens when I pay a "professional" hundreds of dollars to fix my floor:

Rustic Scratch Finish in my living room courtesy of Extreme Hardwoods

This is what happens when my husband and I fix our own damn floor ourselves:

Grouting IS kind of hard on the manicure. But, what is art without sacrifice?

Not bad for total amateurs, eh? Extra kudos to my husband, who, for the purposes of this project, taught himself how to cut tile with nothing but cheap-ass generic brand tools and sheer willpower.

Next, we'll see whether my newly patched piece of wall looks like a piece of wall once all the painting is finished, instead of some strange alien spackle creature threatening to take over the room (which is what it looked like before). I figure I can't mess it up much worse than it already was.

No, the Bathroom is Not Done Yet

But this post from Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored yesterday inspired me to show you all the No Solicitors sign you will see in my window, should you ever come to visit my house. I put it up several months ago when I finally got tired of tree trimmers, siding vendors and Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door:



A closer view:




In case you can't decipher the text in my crappy, hastily-taken-between-bouts-of-spackling photos, it reads:

NO SOLICITORS*

*Excepting Gypsies, Fairy Godmothers, or those bearing million dollar checks for the occupants. Girl Scouts also permitted if selling cookies.

Whenever someone trying to sell me something deliberately ignores my sign and knocks anyway, I say, "Are you a Gypsy, a Fairy Godmother, or a Girl Scout?"

That one really tends to befuddle the tree trimmers.

Feature Creep

That's what my husband calls it when someone at work tells him they want him to design a simple project, and then they ask him for just one more feature, and just one more feature, and just one more feature, until, suddenly, what was once a "simple project" is now a huge and complicated mess: Feature Creep.

Ever since we moved into our house a year ago, I have wanted to make some serious upgrades to one of the bathrooms. For starters, the housing inspector told us right away that the grout in the tiled floor was no good, and we'd have to regrout pretty soon or risk water damage to the subfloor.

Then there was the uneven baseboard to contend with. That poorly repaired water damage to the wall surface near the bathtub. The generally crappy paint job. The vintage 1950s medicine cabinet-- creaky, dirty, tiny, and losing silver from the mirror. The leaky 1970s faucet. The ugly, rusting vintage 1980s light fixture. The beat-up, particleboard Walmart sink cabinet, so big for the space you could barely open the bathroom door past it, let alone find room for a step stool so a three-year-old could wash his hands without help.

But, there have been so many other things to fix in the rest of the house during the past year that all we'd gotten to replacing so far in that bathroom was the faucet, the medicine cabinet, and the light fixture. I'd touched up the paint a bit, put in a towel bar where the sellers had illegally ripped one out after closing, and tried vainly to re-repair the poor water damage repair job without ripping out large chunks of wall.

But past weekend, while walking through a Lowes just to kill some time while my husband waited to meet someone nearby, I saw a nicely priced, nicely made sink cabinet, with an included porcelain basin. It was just the sort of wood finish my husband likes. It was just the right size to fit into our little bathroom, leaving just enough room for a small step-stool so my son could finally reach the sink on his own.

It was the only one left in the store.

So of course, we bought it.

I had measured and checked our existing sink cabinet carefully while thinking about a replacement, and I knew that the tile floor continued under the cabinet. I knew the pipes and the faucet we already had in place would almost certainly fit the new sink. Installing the new sink cabinet and basin, then, really, should only take an hour or two at most. Should pretty much be a cinch. Right?




Wrong.

Some previous owner of this property HAD tiled under the sink cabinet, but only partway. This unknown not-so-handyperson had tiled partway under the front and sides and then just used broken bits of tile to shim up the back of the cabinet, to make it sort-of level.

The New Cabinet does not appreciate being put on this dirty Old Floor.

At least I knew now why water tended to pool on the back of the sink counter.

Well, we thought, so what? The tile in our bathroom is a plain, cheap textured white style. How hard could matching it be? We figured we'd buy a few tiles at Home Depot, tile over the empty space, put in the new sink, and voila! I could even regrout the rest of the floor, while we were at it. It would be a one-day job. It would be a cinch! Right?

Um . . .

We went to all of the hardware stores in our area. No white textured tile AT ALL. No eight inch tiles, AT ALL. We went to a specialty tile store. It was there that we learned that eight-inch tiles are out of fashion. White floor tiles are hopelessly out of fashion. And the specific style of tile we were looking for? Had been discontinued, several years ago.

If we wanted a complete, finished, matching tiled floor, we would have to retile. The whole floor.

Which meant of course that we would also have to remove the baseboard, and the toilet.

At this point, I decided, what the hell? Let's fix the wall and paint, too!

And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!

And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?*

So if I'm not around much this week, YOU KNOW WHY.

And yes, of course I'll post an after.


(Soon. Did I mention that's our only bathtub, there? Yeah. )

*Quoted from the Talking Heads

Fixer-Upper

The best thing about your circa 1962 bathroom faucet kicking the bucket,



forcing you to the realization that you HAVE to buy yourself a new bathroom faucet, whether or not you just spent the annual GDP of some smaller third world country, or, to put it another way, your entire income tax return, getting a dangerous tree removed from your backyard,



is that if you're going to buy a new faucet you can't afford, damn it, then you might as well buy a SEXY new faucet. Maybe even one that, despite LOOKING circa 1940, actually ACTS like it was made in the 21st century.

So there.

(It helps if the new faucet is on sale.)

Blah

I haven't disappeared.

I was in the hospital over the weekend with a sudden, serious infection.

I am not dying, so don't get your knickers in a knot. And I am feeling much better now.

However, hospitals suck.

I intend to write about just how much my latest visit sucked, later, when it doesn't pain me to relive the experience.

My bathroom faucet broke. Now the old faucet and a new faucet are both in pieces in my bathroom, but there is still no faucet attached to my sink, because apparently we need some obscure sort of nut type thing to connect the new faucet to our decidedly not-new pipes.



Isaac ate a whole banana last week. A whole, fresh banana. He wouldn't touch the edible part of the banana directly with his fingers, but he ate the whole thing. With a smile on his face.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

I Think I Watched Too Many Bad Trading Spaces Episodes When I Was Pregnant

"Isaac, are you happy that we will be painting your room tomorrow?"

"No!"

"But isn't this such a pretty color blue? Don't you like it? Don't you remember when we picked it out at the store?"

"I not like blue. I want to paint my room ORANGE!"



(Not. Bloody. Likely.)

Criminal Intent

Things I thought of saying to the young man next door, who, for the third day in a row, is out washing one of the family's five (billion) cars (which they can never seem to park in front of their own house, but frequently tend to park in front of mine) with the car stereo turned up so loud that the base from his bad pop music is shaking glassware in my kitchen:

1.) "Turn off that goddamn noise this minute! And stay the hell off my lawn! Oh, and, it's Monday! Why aren't you in school?"

2.) "Naw, I didn't call the cops on you, for disturbing the peace, dude. Are you kidding? Look at me. I'm 26. Must have been the old guy across the street."

3.) "Take this, Philistine!" (Shouted while blasting Mozart out of an open window loudly enough to shake HIS house).

4.) "Oops. Did I just smash your car window with a hammer? And did I accidentally beat your stereo to tiny bits, just after that? Well, I'm sorry. I'm so clumsy! I really meant to hit you instead of the car. You spent so much time washing those windows, after all."

What I have actually said so far:

Nothing.

(Yet.)

Because I am trying to tell myself that a teenager who has spent the better part of the last three days washing his entire family's set of cars must either be an exceptionally helpful sort of kid, or he must be under some sort of extreme punishment, and either way, the music is probably helping him get the job done . . .

But if he hasn't finished cleaning out that trunk an hour from now, when my son should be going down for his nap, I am totally cranking up my Mozart, bitches.


Now, as requested, an update on the floor (or, why Jaelithe has once again temporarily become a misanthropist):

Extreme Hardwoods sent over a supposedly "impartial third-party observer" from another company to look at the damage to the floor, walls, and window treatments, and the shoddy polyurethane job. As noted before, we were told that apparently this "impartial third-party observer" was only available to come at 7:30 in the morning, because, of course, Jeff at Extreme Hardwoods actually would prefer that we drop the little matter of this amazingly botched rush job altogether, but still, for some reason I can't quite grasp, wants to pretend to us that he is an honest, honorable business owner and we are just horrible, picky, petty, selfish, vicious, evil customers, so, he is pretending to negotiate with us, and then making the negotiations as difficult as possible, so that, if we refuse to cooperate with his bizarre requests, he can try to blame us for this entire situation.

(Recall his earlier "offer" to pull out of the half-finished job and refund my deposit-- an offer he knew I was likely to refuse since it would leave me stranded with a basically un-useable floor in half of my house. Recall also his statement that WE were somehow responsible for the further delay caused by the issues with the contract, even though he was the one who failed to provide us with the contract on two separate occasions).

Suffice to say that the "impartial third-party observer" was neither impartial, nor observant. He repeated to us Jeff's story that the long scratch in the floor must have been there before the work began. When I confronted him with the fact that I had taken photos of the floor, just before the crew's arrival, after we had removed our furniture, that prove there was no such scratch in the floor, he launched into a convoluted explanation about how sometimes "invisible bruises" appear in hardwood floors, dents created by people moving furniture over the floor, that cannot be seen until after the floor is refinished. When I told him that Jeff had, on numerous occasions, described the blemish as "a cut in the floor," the observer informed me that I knew too little about wood to understand his explanation.

Whatever. To me, that "bruise" sure looks an awful lot like the type of scratch shown on this professional floor refinishing company's page, caused by grit caught in a sander. This can happen when the person sanding the floor fails to clean the floor thoroughly between sanding passes.

He also told me that the swirl marks left by the sander in my floor, which he outright refused to take a close look at, were "perfectly normal" and happen "every time" a floor is sanded.

The site above, as well as these sites, which I looked up while researching how to do the work myself, before deciding to hire a professional, all beg to differ. They actually warn against such marks as a potential problem to watch out for as an amateur, and explain how to avoid making them.

Anyway, the guy left that he would contact us later in the afternoon to let us know Jeff's response to our observations.

And then, surprise! He didn't.

And he didn't call the next day, either.

So, my husband called Jeff at the end of the day on Friday, to ask why the "impartial third-party observer" (whose phone number we were never offered) had not called, and Jeff told my husband he had told the "impartial third-party observer" not to call us.

My husband then informed Jeff that we had made a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

And then Jeff proceeded to blast an incoherent tirade in my husband's general direction, ranting about how we wanted to run his business into the ground, ruin an honest man, and destroy his ability to feed his children, etcetera, and threatening to call an attorney. During this, conversation, if it can be called such, Jeff made, and then invariably almost immediately retracted, various offers, including giving us $80 to purchase curtains, but only if we allowed him to come to our house immediately and take the damaged curtains off the window himself; letting the "impartial third-party observer," whom he had suddenly, inexplicably started referring to as "my friend" (thanks, we figured that out, actually) fix the polyurethane puddles for free, but only at his leisure (i.e., whenever he got around to it), etcetera . . .

Finally Jeff ended the conversation by saying that he was not going to give us any refunds, but, if we wanted to put a stop on the second check we had given him, we could "go right ahead."

Of course, when my husband returned home, I advised him not to do so, as I am fairly certain that:

1.) Given Jeff's previous actions, that we are dealing with a lunatic who will probably try to sue us if we take any action to get our money back that has not been officially sanctioned by some sort of governing agency, and,

2.) That check has almost surely been cashed, and the money is probably already spent.

For now, I am just waiting to hear back from a Better Business Bureau arbitrator, and living with my poor, repeatedly abused floor as-is.

I made a nifty temporary runner for the hallway by tying together five cheap chindi throw rugs from Target. Take that, polyurethane puddles and undisguised urine stains!

(Hey, that boy finally turned off his music. The day is looking up.)

Extreme Pain in the Ass, Part II

Start with Part I below if you haven't already.

******

I called the Extreme Hardwoods business phone early the next morning from my sister's house-- too early to expect Jeff to be in the office to answer, but the men were supposedly scheduled to return to my house at 8:00 in the morning (which at this point I was pretty much taking to mean noon, but one couldn't be sure). I left a message on the voicemail which went pretty much like this (I am paraphrasing, of course, because I don't record my phone calls, though after all of the problems I've had lately with deceptive business people, I'm beginning to think I always should):

"After showing up several hours late yesterday without proper notice, your crew did not finish sanding the floor. There are still several areas near doorways that have not been sanded. They also did not clean up after themselves. They did not vacuum up the sawdust left from sanding, and they did not put dust cloths in the doorways, even though during my previous conversations with you, you insisted your company would make every effort to contain the dust. I specifically hired a professional to do a job I could have done myself in part because I have a small child and a husband with severe allergies in my home, and I did not want them to be exposed to the dust from the floor sanding. There is now dust on every single flat surface in my kitchen and dining room. None of the finish swatches you put down on the floor are dark enough to cover the stains that remain there after sanding, and there are still several dark stains on the floor, despite the fact that you insisted you were certain that most of the stains would sand up.

I am extremely dissatisfied with your service at this point in time. I understand the bad weather contributed to the delay in starting the job, but it does not excuse poor workmanship after your crew arrived. I hope we can come to an amiable solution in this situation, but if you do not make an immediate effort to increase my level of satisfaction with your service, I will do my very best to make certain that every man, woman and child in the St. Louis metropolitan area has the opportunity to know just how dissatisfied I am."

What can I say? I get really wordy when people piss me off.

Jeff called me back almost immediately to tell me that he was already awake because he had just found out his aunt died.

I have no idea whether this story was actually true. On Wednesday, when I asked him why the crew had showed up so late and no one had called me, he had told me, over the phone, variously:

1.) That the reason the crew showed up so late on Wednesday was because they were stuck in traffic the likes of which he had never seen in the St. Louis area in his entire life,
2.) That the reason the crew showed up so late on Wednesday was because one of the crew members had been in a car accident on the way to work,
3.) That the reason the crew showed up so late on Wednesday was because the occupants of the house they had been working at before mine had thrown away some of the crew's sanding equipment, and the crew had to go dig the sanding equipment out of the trash.

Then there was also the bit, previously mentioned, where he told me over the phone the crew was already on my street when, in fact, I could see my entire street from my front window and there was no floor sanding crew on it, and then he told me they must be mysteriously lost. On my street. Which I could see from my window.


Seems like an awful lot of calamities to happen to one business in one week, I thought.

Then again, I can personally attest to the fact that when Calamity rains on a person, it generally pours. And, where dead relatives are concerned, I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

So, I offered my condolences, and apologized for calling at such an early hour, explaining that I would shortly be on my way to meeting the men at the house, and I wanted to discuss the fact that they had not finished the sanding and had not brought the right color finish before they arrived, so that they would not show up without the proper equipment.

And then he started YELLING at me that he thought it was absurd that we had already had six phone conversations about a "small three-day job," and said, "If I had known the deal would go south like this, I would have backed out right at the beginning." He then proceeded to tell me that the men had "worked late" (I suppose working for two entire hours, and then cutting out of work before 4 p.m., is working late?!?!?) because "You and your husband had a problem with the contract." By which he meant our refusal to let two men we had never met before start major construction work alone in our house without finding out when we could actually read and sign a supposedly required contract for the work-- the contract that Jeff failed, on two separate scheduled occasions, to provide. Nevermind the fact that the contract issue added a whole other half hour or so on to the nearly FIVE HOUR delay before the crew EVEN SHOWED UP to my house.

Then he told me that he was of a mind to pull out of the contract entirely, and he would send his men to pick up their equipment from my house and then tell them to leave. He claimed that after they got the equipment back, he would send back the 50% deposit we had given him in the mail.

Now, at this point, I probably should have taken him up on the offer, despite the fact that I was pretty sure I'd never see that check again without taking him to small claims court.

Problem was, at this point, I had AN ENTIRELY BARE, incompletely sanded wooden floor in HALF OF MY HOUSE. Including in the hallway you have to walk down to get to the bedrooms and bathrooms, and right in front of the front door. In the middle of winter, with snow on the ground, so that no one could walk into my house without tracking water in. Bare, unprotected wood boards, that any sort of spill of liquid could possibly ruin. And I had possibly toxic wood-and-floor-finish dust everywhere. I still had a small child, with no relatives nearby who had time to watch him while I worked, a husband who is allergic to everything in the air anyone could possibly be allergic to, and a big from-home project to finish, the combination of which would pretty much prohibit my finishing the job myself in any sort of timely fashion. And if I hired another contractor to finish the job-- if I could even find one who would be willing to finish a half-done job-- and if I could afford to pay them on top of what I had already paid -- who knew WHEN they could come? I might unable to use my living room or hallway for weeks!

Plus, there was the dead aunt story. If it was true, it could sort of explain why he was being an such an asshat on the phone.

So, I told Jeff from Extreme Hardwoods that he was most certainly not going to pull out of the job-- he was going to finish the job, in a timely fashion, to my satisfaction. His crew was going to use proper dust containment procedures from that point out, and they would make every effort to clean up the mess they had already made. And if he fixed all the problems, and finished the job quickly, I would pay him in full, and we would be square.

Well, so, that was a really dumb idea on my part.

This story is already getting really long, so I'll try to list the ways Extreme Hardwoods screwed up their job in a short a way as possible:

1.) They used a wood stain that was too light to conceal the pet stains, even after I told them AGAIN that I wanted a darker finish.

2.) They scratched a very long scratch in the floor, across nine floor boards, which was too deep to sand out, and is now very visible due to the fact that they used a penetrating wood stain on a fresh cut. When we asked them about it, they tried to blame the scratch on us, claiming it was a knife cut we had made when we tore up the carpet. When I told them I had taken extensive photographs of the floor before they started their work, in case of just such a scenario, that proved the scratch was not there beforehand (entirely true), THEY STILL STUCK TO THE SAME STORY that the scratch had been there before.




3.) They did not buff/screen/finely sand/whatever it is you're supposed to do to the floor properly after the initial sanding, and therefore they left spiral marks from the sander all over the floor. Marks which are now quite visible, because, again, the penetrating stain settled into the scratches. Marks which I am not sure I will ever be able to get removed, because I am not sure I can ever get my floor sanded again, because they sanded the floor quite deeply, I suppose because they were trying to sand out the cat piss stains, and you can only sand a wood floor so many times before there is no wood left to sand.



4.) They left pools of polyurethane in multiple spots on the floor that left visible ridges and ripples as they dried.



5.) They left wood stain handprints on my walls.




(And no, that's not right next to the floor-- that's halfway up the wall. Good thing I have yet to paint that wall the color I want to paint it. But they didn't know that).

6.) They splashed wood stain all over my MONTH-OLD CURTAINS, THE CURTAINS THAT MATCH MY SOFA ACCENT PILLOWS PERFECTLY THAT I HAD TO GO TO THREE DIFFERENT STORES TO FIND, which, by the way, it would have taken them approximately TEN SECONDS to pull up over the rod so they would not be in the way (they did this on the first day, but not on subsequent days).




7.) They did not clean up any of the dust in the rooms outside the living room, and they did not bother to use dust cloths on the second day despite my complaint (although I am not sure how much sanding they actually even did on the second day-- see sander marks above).

It took two people cleaning for six hours, an entire roll of paper towels, an entire canister of Clorox wipes, and lots and lots of dish soap and special floor cleaner to clean up the mess, and I STILL smell burning dust when I turn on my toaster.


Thus far, all Extreme Hardwoods has offered us is a $50 refund toward the dust cleanup, and a free spot-refinishing of the areas of the floor that have polyurethane ripples on them, the latter of which we have yet to take them up on, BECAUSE OH MY GOD WE DO NOT WANT THESE PEOPLE TO COME BACK INTO OUR HOUSE.

Forget the fact that they might damage something.

I might damage THEM.

I don't know how this is the same company that came with such a glowing recommendation from my husband's coworker. I guess she got lucky. Really, really lucky. In the sort of way I never seem to get lucky, ever. Well, except for that one time I met my (then) future husband in the food court at the Galleria.

Now, Extreme Hardwoods apparently needs to send an "impartial third party" (i.e., as far as I can tell, some buddy of Jeff's) out to look at the damage tomorrow.

At 7:30 in the morning.

*roll*

Not like it matters, since I'm sure they won't be here until 10:00.

Extreme Pain in the Ass, Part I

After discussing the issue with various intelligent people (including some of my readers), and researching various options thoroughly on the internet, I finally came to a decision about what to do the damaged hardwood floors I uncovered when my husband and I pulled up the dirty, worn carpet in the living room and hallway of our recently purchased home.

Carefully considering that:

1.) Rental drum sanders are heavy and difficult for a novice to operate,

2.) Being that my husband is allergic to EVERY airborne particle known to humanity, including wood dust, the main person in charge of any DIY sanding project would probably be little ol' (I swear I'm still, really) 130 (give or take) pound me,

3.) Floor finish in homes built before the 1960s, like mine, often contain toxic materials, including lead, that can be harmful to small children if inhaled in dust form,

4.) Dana from Mamalogues was going to spank me or something if I covered the hardwood with laminate,

5.) Painting a hardwood floor would just be dumb,

I decided it would be well worth the money to hire a professional to sand and refinish my hardwood floors; if the extensive animal urine stains could not be removed by sanding, I thought, I would ask the professional floor refinisher to put a dark stain on the floor that would mostly conceal them.

I didn't want to let just anyone into my home; I've heard so many stories about shady contractors that I certainly wasn't about to pick the first name I found searching for local floor refinishers on Google. Aside from the obvious worries every homeowner has about whether a hired contractor will treat the homeowner's living space with respect and provide quality work for fair prices, the fact that I have a small child in the house, and the fact that I work from home both made it especially important in my mind to find someone who would give me a realistic estimate of how long the project would take, would show up on time, and would stick to whatever schedule we worked out.

Because of my son's age, and my husband's allergy issues, it was also extremely important to me to find someone who would be meticulous about containing the dust from the sander and cleaning up properly afterward.

My husband asked his friends at work if any of them had hired a floor refinishing company in the recent past. One coworker recommended a company called Extreme Hardwoods, a small business, based St. Louis, with its office in North County, not far from my house. She said they had refinished the hardwood floor in her daughter's bedroom not long ago, and they had done an excellent job. And, apparently, she herself had been referred to Extreme Hardwoods by friends of hers who had hired them to refinish floors at their house, where they had done a great job.

So, I called the company to schedule an estimate. I gave the business owner, Jeff, the square footage and a brief description of the extent of the damage over the phone, and he told me that, assuming none of the floor boards needed replacement, we would most likely qualify for their minimum job fee, which is $500. We scheduled an estimate for later that week.

He showed up on time, and seemed knowledgeable about the wood.

But when I asked him about the possibility of using a very dark finish, expressing my worry that the stains would not come out. He insisted he'd seen much worse stains, and that he was fairly certain the majority of the stains, would sand out. He said he thought that many of the stains I thought were urine stains were merely water stains caused by frequent foot traffic from the front door and the bathroom off the hallway.

I disagreed with that assessment, explaining that when I had pulled back the carpet myself earlier in the month, the stench alone was enough to convince me that animals had been, ahem, marking that section of the floor repeatedly for a very long time.

He blew me off.

(I probably should have recognized this as a red flag. However, during my several-year career as a young blonde woman I have become quite accustomed to men who work in professions such as construction, landscaping, car repair, car sales, clothing sales, grocery sales, science, medicine, and politics responding to my concerns and opinions on anything remotely related to their chosen field of work by completely blowing them off.

If I made a regular practice of excluding hired professionals on the basis of sexism, ageism, or blonde-ism, I'd pretty much have to do everything myself.)

I repeated myself until he finally agreed that, in the event the stains did not sand out even under the force of his amazing "super-powered" sander, he would be happy to stain the floor a dark enough color that whatever remained of the stains would mostly blend right in.

I asked him about dust containment, and he assured me that they would use a high-quality dustless sander that sucked up dust as it sanded the floor, that they would hang plastic tarps across every doorway to every area of the house that was not being sanded, and that they would use a heavy-duty shop vac to thoroughly clean all of the dust off of the sanded floors.

He said he could come to do the floors the very next week if I liked, and then he left. And I thought about it over the weekend. I checked around for price estimates at a few other places. I called my stepfather, who owns a saw mill, and asked his advice. I called my sister to see whether I could scare up a place to stay for a couple of days while possibly-toxic dust swirled through my home. I considered how I might rearrange my work schedule, and whether I would be able to do some work at my sister's house.

Finally, I called Extreme Hardwoods on Monday and scheduled the floor refinishing to start on Wednesday. Jeff told me that he would send a crew out at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. I would move all of my furniture out of the way before the came, and the crew would start sanding the floors immediately. They would rough-sand a few patches in some of the worst stained areas right away to see whether the stains were coming up or not, and then they would paint three different finish swatches on the sanded spot of floor so that my husband and I could decide which finish to use. Then, we would leave. The crew would finish the sanding completely and put a coat of finish on the floor that day; then, if the finish had time to dry, they would come back in the early evening and apply one coat of polyurethane. In the morning, they would come back and apply a second coat of polyurethane. If everything went as planned, my floors would be completely finished in two days, and on the third day, after the top poly coat cured, I could move my furniture back into the room.

Jeff also said he would send someone over to my house with a contract on Tuesday, describing the work to be done, explaining liability policies, and confirming the $500 price. He said he would call me first thing in the morning on Tuesday to tell me when someone would be coming by with the paperwork.

During this scheduling call, we discussed the fact that snow was predicted in the area for Monday night and Tuesday morning. I worried that perhaps if too much ice fell, my electricity would go out, as it did in the last two major ice storms. He assured me that if the storm caused any delays on his end, he would call me as soon as possible to draw up a new schedule.

Snow came Tuesday morning, without ice, and my electricity stayed on. The roads in my neighborhood were plowed quickly. Relieved, I waited for someone from Extreme Hardwoods to call and tell me when they might be by with the contract. I imagined they would still be able to drop it by despite the storm, considering that their business address was so close to my house.

I waited for the call, and waited, and waited, until 3:00 in the afternoon, when Jeff called and said that because of the weather, no one would be able to come by with a contract on Tuesday.

In addition, he said, the weather had delayed work on another job, so the crew would no longer be able to come to my house at 8:30 as scheduled. They would now have to go back to the house they were currently working on first thing in the morning to put the final coat on the floor, and then come to my house at 10:30, but, he told me, he was certain they would still be able to finish the sanding and finishing part of the job by the end of the day; with luck, they might even still be able to apply the first polyurethane coat, as long as I did not mind them working late in my house. He would send the contract over with the crew.

I was a bit worried about not seeing the contract I was supposed to sign until the work crew was actually at my house for the job, but, I certainly understood that the weather might have caused delays. After all, my neighborhood hadn't been too badly hit by the storm, but I was sure the crew did work all over town, and they may have been working in an area where the roads were quite dangerous. I agreed to this new schedule, and rearranged the plans I'd made with my sister to meet her at her house after the crew set up. My husband arranged to work from home for the first half of day so that he could be around to look at the contract and help make a decision about the finish.

Early the next morning, we got up and moved all of our living room furniture into the dining room and our bedroom. We thoroughly swept the living room floor. Then we sat in the empty room, and waited for the crew to arrive. My husband fielded IM questions from work on his laptop. My son paced around nervously, asking whether we were moving again, but we assured him we were not. I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean the emptied shelves of my entertainment center.

At 9:30 a.m., Jeff called to say the men had been delayed by heavy traffic, and were only just now arriving at the house they had to finish up at before mine. However, he insisted they would arrive at my house by 11:30.

My husband told his supervisor he'd be later than he had expected. I tried to call my sister, but could not get in touch with her.

By 12:30, the crew was still not at my house.

I called Jeff on his business cell phone. Someone picked up the phone, and then it clicked off. I couldn't tell whether I'd just been hung up on, or the cell phone had lost the connection. Thinking that he might be driving through an area with poor reception, I decided to wait ten minutes to see whether Jeff would call me back.

He didn't.

So I called again.

This time he answered the phone, and before I could say much of anything at all, he said, "They're on your street."

"Really?" I asked. I happened at the time to be looking out of my front window. From which I can see pretty much all of my very short street. There was no one driving on the street. There were no commercial trucks or vans parked anywhere. "I can see my entire street right now," I said, "And I don't see your crew anywhere."

"Oh, well, maybe they're lost," he said.

Finally, at 1:15 p.m.-- that's one hour and forty-five minutes past 11:30, two hours and forty-five minutes past 10:30, and a full four hours and forty-five minutes past the originally scheduled time of 8:30 in the morning, a man carrying a beat-up, dusty old drum sander knocked on my door. The crew of two came in and started setting up their equipment. Slightly miffed that they were so late, but relieved they had finally shown, I asked them whether they had brought the contract Jeff had told me we needed to sign before the work began.

They had not.

I asked if someone could be sent over from the office with it.

One of the men called Jeff on his cell phone. After they talked for a while, Jeff asked to talk to me. He told me the men could go ahead and start the job without the contract. I told him I didn't want to start the job without seeing what was in the contract first. I asked if my husband could go pick up a copy of the contract, but Jeff said he had the only copy in the car with him on the road. He told me that if I let the men start working, he would come by the house as soon as he was finished with some business downtown to give us the contract.

I explained that once the men started working, we had had to leave. My husband had already spent half a day working from home and needed to go in to the office right away, and I needed to take my son to my sister's house; I couldn't have him in the house once the sanders were going full blast, because the dust would be everywhere, and anyway (given his medical condition, which I did not take the time to explain) he would be terrified by the noise. I asked if he could bring the contract by my husband's office instead. He didn't answer. Then the phone cut out. When I tried to call him back, it said the number was unavailable.

The crew and I waited for several more minutes before finally receiving a call from Jeff saying he would bring the contract to my husband's office.

It was now almost two in the afternoon. As reluctant as I was to start work without a contract in hand, we had already moved all of our furniture and made arrangements to stay at my sister's house; my husband had already spent half the day out of his office, and I had spent half the day NOT working on a major work project of my own. Not to mention the fact that I was already tired of trying to protect a wood floor missing half of its finish from a two-year-old for the past couple of weeks.

So, I let them finish setting up their equipment. I was worried about my curtains, which I had left hanging so no one would see that the house was unoccupied and under construction and decide to waltz in and take a few things, but the crew just flipped the curtains up over the curtain rod. I asked them to put down the finish swatches Jeff had described to me during the scheduling phone call.

The men looked confused. "We have to sand the entire floor before we put down any finish," they said.

"The entire reason my husband stayed home from work today was so he could read over the contract, and help pick out the finish. And now you are telling me we can't do either one of those things?"

They shook their heads. "No, ma'am, but we can't put the finish down today anyway. It's already two in the afternoon. It won't have time to dry before you come home tonight. We'll have to do it in the morning. So why don't we just put the swatches down after we finish sanding tonight, and then you can tell us in the morning which one you want?"

At this point, I was pretty much furious.

But the men who had shown up to do the work seemed nice enough. They were truly apologetic about the delays. Had it all really been a case of miscommunication between Jeff and the crew, exacerbated by the weather? I didn't know.

All I knew was that I had planned my entire week around getting this work done, and if it didn't get done that day, I might not be able to arrange for it to happen for another month.

So, I went to my sister's house. My husband went to work.

Jeff called my husband at the office and said that he couldn't bring the contract by when we'd planned because instead of coming straight up from downtown, as he'd told us he would, he had driven to O'Fallon.

He finally sent an associate by with a contract a 4:00 p.m.

When my husband called Jeff back with a question about the contract shortly after receiving it, Jeff mentioned that the crew had already finished the sanding and left our house.

Which means they were working at the house for less than two hours.

When we went by the house, I discovered that the crew hadn't even finished the edge sanding around the doorways. There was a clear demarcation between the areas of the floor that had been edge sanded, and the area of the floor that had been sanded with the drum sander, indicating that they had not done the final buffing job on the floor.

The swatches were on the floor, but none of the three colors shown there were dark enough to cover the stains. Which had not sanded out.

And there were piles of wood shavings on the floor, and there was dust EVERYWHERE. They hadn't vacuumed it all up.

And they hadn't hung plastic in the doorways.

Every piece of furniture in my dining room, and every appliance and every flat surface in my kitchen, was covered in 1/16th of an inch to 1/8th of an inch of wood and finish dust.

***Continued next post***

What Lies Beneath

Most of the (fifty-year-old!) hardwood floors in my new house look like this:




(Cue choir of angels).

(Yes, that is a Queen-Anne-style bookcase and a floral rug. No, I am not somebody's grandma. I am just . . . sophisticated . . . for my age. Shut up).

So, though I expected that the hardwood floor beneath the ugly, cheap, smelly carpet in my living room and hallway would probably have a few scuffs and stains, as hardwood floors trapped under cheap carpet generally tend to, given the condition of the floors in the rest of the house, I had hope that the floor beneath the carpet might be, well, passable.





I was wrong.

That is what the hallway looked like AFTER I swept it twice.

That's not glue you're seeing there on the floor. Oh, no.

That's about seven years of dust.

Seven-year-old dust congeals into quite a tenacious sort of paste when mixed with seven years of cat urine.

Oh yes, yes it does.

So, this is what the hallway looked like after I removed the urine-and-dust paste:



And this is what the living room floor looks like, everywhere the previous occupants didn't have furniture:




As you can see, before they put the carpet down, they apparently thought it would be fun to test some white wall paint out on the floor. On the fifty-year-old, still-in-pretty-good-condition, genuine-hardwood-of-a-quality-that-would-cost-a-
frillion-dollars-to-install-throughout-a-house-these-days floor.

Look, even the two-year-old thinks this is such a tragedy he wants to help:



So, I figure I have four options:

1.) Pay someone several hundred dollars to sand the floor and refinish it. In a dark, dried cat urine color to cover up the stains. Only we won't call the color dried cat urine. We'll call it Rich Espresso.

2.) Attempt to sand and refinish the floor myself. With expensive rental equipment that I have never used before. Using chemicals that require ventilation-- i.e., open windows. In the dead of winter.

3.) Cover the hardwood with laminate (sacrilege). Because (see above) I cannot afford to replace the hardwood with hardwood.

4.) Run over it a couple of times with my hand sander, paint the whole floor some unobtrusive color with porch paint (SACRILEGE!), toss around some really big area rugs, and wait five years until I CAN afford to replace the hardwood with hardwood.



Opinions? Suggestions, Internets?



(I know I've been doin' you wrong lately, Internets, by rushing past you with little more than a tip of my hat when I see you on the street, not even bothering to say hello, or ask you how your day has been.

But I know you still love me, Internets.

Right?

Don't you?)

Oh My Goodness Gracious,

I feel better after letting that rant out. (See immediately previous post). I really do.

I didn't even tell y'all everything, and I still feel better.

However, thinking about it today, I realized that I totally gypped my readers by not providing photographic evidence!

So, without further ado:

This is a photo of the tree that was damaged during the December 1st ice storm that I took during the walkthough just a few days before closing:



Click on it to see the bigger version to get a detailed view of some of the damage.

This photo here, also taken during the walkthrough, shows a wider view of the extensive damage, and also shows how close the tree is to the power lines:



This is a picture of part of the tree lying in my yard after the January ice storm, on top of my phone and cable line, taken the day the branch fell:



Yes, I know my fence is rusty. Thank you. We'll be replacing it eventually. Sometime after we get around to fixing this:



Which is the nice hole the cable line left when it was yanked out of the house.

Thank you, real estate agent who refused to negotiate with the sellers over trimming the tree that was damaged while the house was under contract. Thank you very, very much. I've always wanted to learn how to hang new siding!


Ah, now, moving right along, let's check out my bathroom! (It's a tradition here, after all).



Come on, click! This really has to be viewed full-size to get the full effect. Here you see the remains of the ancient towel rack the sellers oh-so-skillfully re-replaced the nice one we'd seen during the house showing with. The one that fell down the very first time we tried to hang a towel on it. If you look not-too-carefully, you can see the poor spackling job they did to attempt to hide the holes where the nice towel rack had been.

And this would be why the re-hung old towel rack would not stay up:



See that gaping hole in the wall there behind the towel rack hardware? Uh huh. This is what happens when you remove a towel rack carelessly, spackle the old hole poorly, and then attempt to re-hang the old towel rack half-assed-ly in the exact same poorly spackled spot.

And now, the piece de resistance:





See that empty screw-hole in that first pic? Did the sellers bother to screw this cheap replacement toilet paper holder in after they damaged the wall ripping the nice one out? Oh, no. They glued it in. Crappily. Apparently, we buyers are not even worthy of a pair of screws.

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say . . .

I've written a number of blog posts in my head over the past two weeks. I haven't committed any of them to magnetic patterns on a disk. Not even in a draft folder.

It's been rough, the move, rougher on me and the family than I thought it would be, and I've been angry, and sad, and tired a lot lately. It's been hard to strike a balance in my head about what I should and shouldn't write about. Am I overreacting to things? Am I being selfish, or diva-ish, or ungrateful? I feared posting a complaint about this or that inconvenience here, only to be chided, perhaps a bit justifiably, in my own comments section for raining on my own damn parade. After all, I got what I wanted, didn't I? I got a house. A house that will, eventually, with work, be a much better place to live than my previous apartment.


But still, I've been angry, and sad, and tired.


I've been angry at the sellers, who really left the house a mess on their way out. I mean, really, in more ways than I alluded to two posts ago.

They tore down pictures and curtains in such a manner as to leave gaping holes in the walls. They scuffed the walls, and the floors, on their way out. They tore a hole in the carpet in the living room, which they concealed during the walkthrough with a rug. (They left us the rug. The damn cheap ugly rug. I suppose as compensation?)

They took out decorative outlet covers and switchplates. They replaced some of them with cheaper or broken plates, and others they just left bare. They took out a nice new towel rack in one of the bathrooms and replaced it with the the original 50-year-old towel rack that originally came with the house, which I suppose they had been saving for that very purpose. They did such a poor job reattaching it that it actually fell out of the wall the first time we hung a towel on it, leaving a gaping hole.

They ripped out the cable connections from all of the bedrooms (which, incidentally, they had advertised as a feature of the house in the original listing). Not just the terminals for the cable connections, but the cables themselves. Ripped them right out of the walls and the floors. Ripped out the junction box allowing for multiple connections.

They cut holes in the walls to bring some plumbing up to code, as required by the contract they signed. As part of a list of code-required repairs that they delayed our closing, twice, to complete. And they left the holes there, in the walls. 12"x6" holes. Left them.

They left random piles of leaves, and piles of sweet gum balls, and piles of yard waste, and piles of dog shit in the yard.

The thing that gets me the most, I think, though, is the fact that they tore out the built-in toilet paper holder in the bathroom, damaging the bathroom wall in the process, and replaced it with a cheaper one, WHICH THEY GLUED IN. Crookedly.

Who knew it was even possible to care about a toilet paper holder so much. Apparently that toilet paper holder was a family heirloom or something.


I've been angry with the utility companies, every single one of which managed to mess up something major with the process of transferring our services from our old home to our new home. I had no phone service at my new home for four days. I had a slack electrical wire sitting in the branches of a tree in my backyard for nearly two weeks. A situation which, incidentally, the sellers had promised to have fixed before the sale, but did not. Then the phone company and the cable company both overcharged us on our first bills.

I spent something like 25-30 hours on the phone during my first week here just trying to get all of the utility problems fixed. On my cell phone, of course. Because the regular phone didn't work.


I've been angry with the mortgage company for telling me again and again when I asked them again and again that yes, they had all the paperwork they needed for closing, and then calling me AFTER closing to tell me they had forgotten things that I would have to fax to them immediately. Because, you know, I know exactly where these things are in all my half-unpacked boxes. And I have a working phone line, and a fax machine. Sure I do.


I've been angry with my real estate agent for refusing to talk to the sellers about possibly trimming or cutting down a tree that was severely damaged during the December 1st ice storm, a tree which had dropped branches during that storm that tore down the electrical service drop to the house and ripped off siding-- all damage which happened after we made an offer on the house, but before we closed the sale.

I am angry because right now I can look out my kitchen window, and see the very same dangerously damaged branch I pointed out to my real estate agent sitting on the ground in my backyard, on top of my downed phone line, that took a nice chunk of the just-replaced siding with it. The phone line that should "Probably get fixed by the end of the day on Friday. Probably. If they can get to it. Big storm, you know." (I know. I had no electricity, no cable and no reliable phone for days. Thanks).


And I've been sad. Sad to see my two-year-old shaking in his bed each night until midnight, unable to fall asleep because his new room is "weird" and "scary." Sad to see him refuse his lunch three days in a row because he "doesn't feel good." Sad to understand him so completely when he looks me in the eye and says, "Mommy, THIS IS NOT RIGHT." I've been sad, sad, sad, that fate has seen fit to gift my beloved child with an ability to adapt to change in his environment about as well as the average person could adapt to a punch in the face.


And I've been angry with myself, and sad, over the fact that I haven't been able to roll with these punches better myself. Because I DO have what I wanted. And I AM grateful. And somewhere under all of these, what I know will one day seem, petty annoyances, I am happy. And in love with the old bones of this old house.

But I'm tired. So tired. Of being tangled in packing tape, and painter's tape, and red tape. Tired of staying up even later than my son to fix all the things here that are broken.


Swing away, Pollyannas.

Scenes from a New Old House

SCENE ONE

WIFE: So, I guess at some point we should get the ladder out and check out our new attic, huh? I mean, since we own it, and all.

HUSBAND: Uh, yeah, I guess you're right.

WIFE: You know, I'm kinda scared to go up there.

HUSBAND: Yeah?

WIFE: Yeah, I mean, you know, what if there are like, dead bodies hidden up there, or something? (Giggles).

HUSBAND: Um, actually, to tell the truth, I'm kind of scared to go up there, too.

WIFE: Well, I mean, the home inspector did go up there. And he said everything was fine up there. No mention of dead people. I'm sure he would have mentioned that.

HUSBAND: What if Aragog is up there?

Silence.

WIFE: Look at all this stuff we need to unpack! We can look at the attic tomorrow.

SCENE TWO

MOTHER: Hey kid, I'm going down to the basement now to do some laundry. Don't try to come down after me without telling me, because these stairs are really steep and kind of old and rickety and there is no hand rail and there is nothing but cold hard concrete at the bottom, so if you want to come down the stairs I need to hold your hand while you climb down, okay?

CHILD: (Singing eerily from the next room)

Mommy, oh Mommy, be very careful
Going down in the scary basement!
Do not fall down the stairs.
Do not fall. Fall. FALL!

MOTHER: Uh, thanks. I think. I'll be careful. (Under her breath) Sheesh, kid, I was already afraid of the attic.

SCENE THREE: CHISTMAS EVE DINNER

WIFE: So, what do you want to do about dinner? We've been eating out too much during the move, I think. I'm afraid we're spending too much money.

HUSBAND: I know. That's why I brought this frozen toasted ravioli and frozen potatoes and some tomato sauce and this cookie sheet, and these canned vegetables. I thought maybe you could make us dinner tonight.

WIFE: Well, the thing is, I'm not sure I feel like making dinner. I'm really tired. I spent all morning unpacking. I finished the tree and I finally put up the Christmas lights in the window, but they keep falling down, and they're driving me nuts. I tried masking tape. I tried packing tape. I tried duct tape. I tried those new clippy things we got at the hardware store. Nothing works. The lights hate me.



And did I mention that I have been cleaning this damned kitchen for the last six hours straight? I spent three hours cleaning the refrigerator alone. And I used half a bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap already on these cabinets! Do you see how clean these cabinets are now?



Do you remember how incredibly dirty they were before?



I swear, I don't think anyone had cleaned these cabinets out thoroughly in the last forty years! I had no idea they were this dirty inside when we first looked at the house. I had no way of knowing, because the sellers had all of their food in the cabinets still. Can you believe they had food in these cabinets?

HUSBAND: Um, so . . . dinner?

WIFE: Do you see this blender the sellers left behind in one of the cabinets?



They used it and then they put it in the cabinet without even cleaning it! It has chocolate shake or something all over it. (Verging on utter hysteria) They put it in the cabinet WITHOUT CLEANING IT, even though most of the parts say they are dishwasher safe, and THEY HAD A DISHWASHER. HOW HARD IS IT TO LOAD A DISHWASHER?!?!

HUSBAND: Um, so, do you want me to make dinner?

WIFE: I just can't believe it! I can't believe anyone would leave a house this way when they knew someone else would be moving in to it! It looked so clean when we looked at it a month ago! Their real estate agent must have made them clean it up for the showings by threatening them at gunpoint!

HUSBAND: Because I mean, I can totally make dinner-- I don't have a problem with that at all. I can start right now. The stove looks really clean. You did a great job cleaning it--

WIFE: I used three different kinds of cleaner on that stove! Three kinds!

HUSBAND: So, I'll just make some dinner now then.

WIFE: No! No! Wait, don't make dinner. You've been moving heavy boxes all day. I'll make dinner. Although, toasted ravioli is not exactly what I envisioned as our Christmas Eve dinner . . .

HUSBAND: Well, I mean, we could eat out. I'm sure someplace is open.

WIFE: No! We are spending too much money eating out! I will make dinner!

HUSBAND: Okay . . .

WIFE: So, did you bring some aluminum foil, or some vegetable oil, or some cooking spray or something so the ravioli and the potatoes won't stick to the baking sheet? Because this is an aluminum baking sheet. It's not the nonstick one. And last time you made ravioli on this baking sheet without using any cooking spray, the ravioli burned and stuck to the pan.

HUSBAND: Um, no . . . I can get some at the store . . .

WIFE: It's Christmas Eve! It's after five! The stores are closed! (Pause). Did you bring a can opener for the vegetables?

HUSBAND: Um, I forgot.

WIFE stares murderously at HUSBAND for several silent seconds.

WIFE: So, we are having a one-course Christmas Eve dinner of burned ravoli stuck to a pan?

(Pause.)

HUSBAND: I'll be right back.

WIFE: Okay! I'll just get to making YOUR burned Christmas Eve dinner in the kitchen I spent all day cleaning for YOU, then!

Unreasonably distraught WIFE bangs random things around in kitchen while poor, beleaguered innocently forgetful HUSBAND scurries out the door. Minutes pass. Husband returns.

HUSBAND: Look! I got some Pam!

WIFE: Where on earth did you get that?

HUSBAND: I borrowed it from the neighbors. They were outside. They said we could just put it in their mailbox when we're finished with it.

WIFE: That is amazing! You saved Christmas Eve dinner! I'm sorry I was so terrible to you before. I'm just so tired, after all the cleaning, and painting, and fixing, and moving. I was at the end of my rope. We still can't open the cans, but really, who needs vegetables with dinner, anyway?

WIFE prepares baking sheet, pulls ravioli box out from freezer, pauses.

So, uh, dear, just out of curiosity, what were the neighbors doing outside anyway? I mean, it's dark, and it's like, 40 degrees out there. And it's Christmas Eve.

HUSBAND: They were in their hot tub. They have a hot tub in the backyard.

WIFE: You mean, you called our brand-new, just-met-us-yesterday next-door neighbors out of their hot tub, in 40 degree weather, just to ASK THEM FOR SOME PAM?

HUSBAND: Uh . . . well, you see, it was very dark outside, and I just heard them talking in the backyard, and I didn't realize at first that they were actually sitting in a hot tub . . . But they were really nice!

WIFE: OH MY GOD. Now we will be known throughout the neighborhood as the obnoxious new neighbors who call people out of their hot tubs at night in 40 degree weather just to ask them for Pam! Oh. My. God. I am totally mortified. I am totally, totally mortified. Excuse me while I die now.

WIFE dies.



(Okay, so I didn't really die. I had a child to make Christmas happen for in the morning, after all. Happy Belated Holidays!)