Wednesday, June 15, 2005
More about nothing...
Well, it’s another week here. I’ve been extremely busy with work, because of all the recent rain causing all sorts of water leaks everywhere (although I’ve gotten off easy compared to some of my colleagues… heh), and Rob and I are working on some home improvement stuff (putting a floor in the basement – more on this in a moment). My main cause for concern these days is that I haven’t heard much from The Mac.
Now, my parents are down there, “visiting” him. Originally, my mother was just going to go down and clean his house, since the last time we were there, last summer, the house was cleaned, and it apparently hadn’t been cleaned before… like, ever. Or, at least since The Mac had moved into it. So when we were there last summer, she cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. The walls were washed. The carpets were vacuumed (The Mac vacuums, but not the way his mother vacuums…). The plants were tended-to. Windows were washed. In fact, in the kitchen, in between the window panes, we discovered an old abandoned wasp’s nest in several well-built honeycomb formations of that grey paper they create. It was almost a sacrilege to destroy something so well-built. But we did it anyway.
I suspect my mother fears that The Mac just sits down there in Indiana not cleaning anything, the filth growing bolder and bolder each day. In truth, though, I think The Mac probably does alright – no better or worse than most single people. When I was single, I could go, like, three weeks without vacuuming sometimes. Yeah, the fur would totally build up everywhere. But it was only me looking at it, and I totally didn’t care. At least, I didn’t care enough to get the vacuum out and tackle the little tumbleweeds of fur drifting across the kitchen floor linoleum whenever I went in there to get a Coke. Now, however, because Rob will see the tumbleweeds and will probably freak out, I try to vacuum at least once a week. More, sometimes, if I notice a buildup. The Cooter is shedding now, too, so we have to take into account his giant long hairs getting in the mix. Clumps of the stuff, people.
So my mother’s original plan was to go down there and visit and clean for a couple of weeks. She would probably have taken The Mac shopping and bought him all sorts of stuff, because she dotes on him. However, these plans were altered somewhat when The Grumpaw decided he could spare the time to go, too. The Grumpaw has been at the same oil company for about 25 years now, and has amassed a truly obscene number of vacation days that he is granted each year. Plus, for many years, The Grumpaw would only take a week to two weeks per year, and the vacation days at his company would just roll over and roll over and roll over. At one point, the company noticed that they would have to give him about six months off if he were to actually TAKE the vacation days he had collected, so they put a stop to the rolling-over. They forced him to take a bunch of time off a couple of years ago, and told him that he had until two years from then to use up his vacation days, or they’d get paid out. So he would take a day here, and a day there, and a week here, and a week there for a while, which is why we ended up vacationing together last year – he had extra time he was being forced to take. This year, it’s the same story – the Grumpaw has to take some vacation time, or he’ll lose it. He still gets over a month of vacation days each year.
When The Grumpaw travels, it usually involves going to look at cars. They flew down this time, and have an itinerary of car-related events going on in the vicinity during the nearly three weeks they are down there. This is a very good thing – it’s a good thing that the Grumpaw isn’t around The Mac’s house the entire time. Of course, when he’s there at the house, he’s probably gardening or shepherding the pets around the yard, so the intrusion might be minimized somewhat.
My real worry is that they’re driving The Mac insane. My parents are nice and all, but if you have to spend THREE WEEKS with them, you might snap. Sure, a dinner here and an afternoon there, or a day-trip to the mountains, great. A couple of days on the road, well, you can survive alright. Up to a week in close quarters? We’re starting to get into dangerous territory. Three weeks? No way, man. No way.
They’ve been down there for over a week now. About a week and a half. So either they’re really getting along and are doing a lot of fun things together, or The Mac has had too much attention and is hiding out in his study under the guise of working. I hope they are all alright.
As for us, still here in Canada, I have to say that I hate the rain even more now than I did before. I haven’t spun off the road in it lately, but the driving has been tense, and the water leak calls keep coming in, and the work keeps piling up. And because everyone is busy with water leaks or they just can’t work outside in that much rain, that means they don’t have time to do my regularly scheduled projects, which irks my boards, who then yell at me, and then my life is reduced to calling and begging trades to help me out. It’s not fun at all.
We have been working in the house lately. I say “we”, but I really mean Rob. I accompany him on trips to the hardware stores, and that’s about the extent of my participation in the project so far. We are building a floor in the basement – a sub-floor, I guess. It’s a rack of 2x4s which we will then put plywood or that OSB floorboards onto. Rob is screwing the 2x4s into the concrete, which is a lot harder than you’d think. The first day, he broke the two concrete bits that came with the concrete screws. This 30-year-old concrete is pretty tough stuff. We consulted with our friend, Tom, who does this sort of thing for a living, and he said we weren’t using a big enough drill, so he lent us his hammer-drill. I had planned on screwing the 2x4s down after Rob drilled the holes, but apparently, I don’t have enough strength or weight to force them to go into the concrete. My participation will increase when we are able to screw the floorboards into the joists (yay?).
I did get a chance to clean the house last night while Rob was working on the floor. I vacuumed and tried to put things away. There are a lot of things that have nowhere to go in our house. Small things, medium-sized things, large things. They all seem to pile up on the horizontal surfaces everywhere. I need to file and get everything in the office organized, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds because there are several boxes of stuff in there that have nowhere to go – I need shelving or storage or something to put the contents into… Basically, I’m still not 100% unpacked from moving into the house five months ago. Oh, make that five and a half months.
The animals are all well. We bought Cooter a toy at the local Wal Mart on the weekend – it is a half-foot in diameter, brown fuzz-covered plastic ball with a face pasted on it, and when you drop it, it “activates”. When it “activates”, it vibrates and jiggles around, and makes a bit of a racket with music and laughter and some guy yelling something for about fifteen to twenty-five seconds. Cooter took it when it was offered to him, and then dropped it on the floor. Of course, it activated. It jiggled and rolled around on the floor, and at first, he was taken aback, but then learned to love it. Now, he carts it around the house in his mouth by the fuzz, winging it against the floor periodically to activate it. He has also discovered the NoodleDog doesn’t like it, so of course he tries to put it on the poor guy.
At any rate, the weeks are going by very quickly, and it looks like we’re starting to get into summer here, complete with mosquitos, variable weather, too many social obligations and a lot of work keeping me from slacking off. Enjoy!!
Now, my parents are down there, “visiting” him. Originally, my mother was just going to go down and clean his house, since the last time we were there, last summer, the house was cleaned, and it apparently hadn’t been cleaned before… like, ever. Or, at least since The Mac had moved into it. So when we were there last summer, she cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. The walls were washed. The carpets were vacuumed (The Mac vacuums, but not the way his mother vacuums…). The plants were tended-to. Windows were washed. In fact, in the kitchen, in between the window panes, we discovered an old abandoned wasp’s nest in several well-built honeycomb formations of that grey paper they create. It was almost a sacrilege to destroy something so well-built. But we did it anyway.
I suspect my mother fears that The Mac just sits down there in Indiana not cleaning anything, the filth growing bolder and bolder each day. In truth, though, I think The Mac probably does alright – no better or worse than most single people. When I was single, I could go, like, three weeks without vacuuming sometimes. Yeah, the fur would totally build up everywhere. But it was only me looking at it, and I totally didn’t care. At least, I didn’t care enough to get the vacuum out and tackle the little tumbleweeds of fur drifting across the kitchen floor linoleum whenever I went in there to get a Coke. Now, however, because Rob will see the tumbleweeds and will probably freak out, I try to vacuum at least once a week. More, sometimes, if I notice a buildup. The Cooter is shedding now, too, so we have to take into account his giant long hairs getting in the mix. Clumps of the stuff, people.
So my mother’s original plan was to go down there and visit and clean for a couple of weeks. She would probably have taken The Mac shopping and bought him all sorts of stuff, because she dotes on him. However, these plans were altered somewhat when The Grumpaw decided he could spare the time to go, too. The Grumpaw has been at the same oil company for about 25 years now, and has amassed a truly obscene number of vacation days that he is granted each year. Plus, for many years, The Grumpaw would only take a week to two weeks per year, and the vacation days at his company would just roll over and roll over and roll over. At one point, the company noticed that they would have to give him about six months off if he were to actually TAKE the vacation days he had collected, so they put a stop to the rolling-over. They forced him to take a bunch of time off a couple of years ago, and told him that he had until two years from then to use up his vacation days, or they’d get paid out. So he would take a day here, and a day there, and a week here, and a week there for a while, which is why we ended up vacationing together last year – he had extra time he was being forced to take. This year, it’s the same story – the Grumpaw has to take some vacation time, or he’ll lose it. He still gets over a month of vacation days each year.
When The Grumpaw travels, it usually involves going to look at cars. They flew down this time, and have an itinerary of car-related events going on in the vicinity during the nearly three weeks they are down there. This is a very good thing – it’s a good thing that the Grumpaw isn’t around The Mac’s house the entire time. Of course, when he’s there at the house, he’s probably gardening or shepherding the pets around the yard, so the intrusion might be minimized somewhat.
My real worry is that they’re driving The Mac insane. My parents are nice and all, but if you have to spend THREE WEEKS with them, you might snap. Sure, a dinner here and an afternoon there, or a day-trip to the mountains, great. A couple of days on the road, well, you can survive alright. Up to a week in close quarters? We’re starting to get into dangerous territory. Three weeks? No way, man. No way.
They’ve been down there for over a week now. About a week and a half. So either they’re really getting along and are doing a lot of fun things together, or The Mac has had too much attention and is hiding out in his study under the guise of working. I hope they are all alright.
As for us, still here in Canada, I have to say that I hate the rain even more now than I did before. I haven’t spun off the road in it lately, but the driving has been tense, and the water leak calls keep coming in, and the work keeps piling up. And because everyone is busy with water leaks or they just can’t work outside in that much rain, that means they don’t have time to do my regularly scheduled projects, which irks my boards, who then yell at me, and then my life is reduced to calling and begging trades to help me out. It’s not fun at all.
We have been working in the house lately. I say “we”, but I really mean Rob. I accompany him on trips to the hardware stores, and that’s about the extent of my participation in the project so far. We are building a floor in the basement – a sub-floor, I guess. It’s a rack of 2x4s which we will then put plywood or that OSB floorboards onto. Rob is screwing the 2x4s into the concrete, which is a lot harder than you’d think. The first day, he broke the two concrete bits that came with the concrete screws. This 30-year-old concrete is pretty tough stuff. We consulted with our friend, Tom, who does this sort of thing for a living, and he said we weren’t using a big enough drill, so he lent us his hammer-drill. I had planned on screwing the 2x4s down after Rob drilled the holes, but apparently, I don’t have enough strength or weight to force them to go into the concrete. My participation will increase when we are able to screw the floorboards into the joists (yay?).
I did get a chance to clean the house last night while Rob was working on the floor. I vacuumed and tried to put things away. There are a lot of things that have nowhere to go in our house. Small things, medium-sized things, large things. They all seem to pile up on the horizontal surfaces everywhere. I need to file and get everything in the office organized, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds because there are several boxes of stuff in there that have nowhere to go – I need shelving or storage or something to put the contents into… Basically, I’m still not 100% unpacked from moving into the house five months ago. Oh, make that five and a half months.
The animals are all well. We bought Cooter a toy at the local Wal Mart on the weekend – it is a half-foot in diameter, brown fuzz-covered plastic ball with a face pasted on it, and when you drop it, it “activates”. When it “activates”, it vibrates and jiggles around, and makes a bit of a racket with music and laughter and some guy yelling something for about fifteen to twenty-five seconds. Cooter took it when it was offered to him, and then dropped it on the floor. Of course, it activated. It jiggled and rolled around on the floor, and at first, he was taken aback, but then learned to love it. Now, he carts it around the house in his mouth by the fuzz, winging it against the floor periodically to activate it. He has also discovered the NoodleDog doesn’t like it, so of course he tries to put it on the poor guy.
At any rate, the weeks are going by very quickly, and it looks like we’re starting to get into summer here, complete with mosquitos, variable weather, too many social obligations and a lot of work keeping me from slacking off. Enjoy!!
