Archive Page 98

On the eve of the demo

Published January 19, 2010 bling blog 7 Comments
Tags:

I’ve been avoiding posting about what is actually going on in my home for about two weeks now.  I can avoid it no longer, though, as the demolition gang is set to appear tomorrow at daybreak.  Well, between 9 am and 11 am, but morning in any event.  As you know, we are in the midst of a dramatic kitchen remodel.  ‘Dramatic’ may be too strong of a word, but to someone who has never called a plumber (knock on wood) or an electician (double knock), it feels dramatic.  And everything’s going, except the walls.  So, two weeks ago the cabinets were delivered.  Since that time, the place has looked like this:

Home sweet home

And this:

View from the kitchen to the space formally known as the dining area

View of the space that was formally known as the dining area

And this:

View from the bedroom door. Good morning!

It’s hard to capture a picture of the sheer horror that is felt when stepping into the condo, or out of the bedroom, but I’m certain you can use your imagination to graft a sense of it on to these pictures.  It’s a disaster!  Why, you may be asking, would we sit with these boxes in our already small space for two weeks?  Good question.  The cabinets arrived on January 5th from KraftMaid.  On January 6th, the construction folks (Crew2 from the Home Depot) arrived to “inspect” the cabinets.  They opened all the boxes (in theory anyway, I’m not totally convinced they did) to make sure all the right parts were there and that nothing’s damaged.  They don’t want to start “the install” — everything in construction parlance has nicknames; it’s not “an inspection” it’s “the inspect” — until everything’s right.  Well, of course, everything was not right.  One cabinet was damaged and some molding or something was missing.  So, they left the house promising to order the right replacements and they’d be back when that was done.  And here we sit.  We heard an estimate of 7-10 days, and the Crew2 project manager, Brian, scheduled the demo for tomorrow, January 20th.  But…we just heard yesterday that KraftMaid will be making their delivery on the 26th.  I almost started to cry.  Another week living with these houseguests whom I want to stay permanently, but not in my dining room! Or in my hallway.  Or in my living room.  I coudn’t face it; instead of panicking, though, I pretty much went into a stoic-denial mode.  I sent off an extremely brief email to Brian that said something like, “Cabinet will not arrive until Jan. 26.  Ugh.”  I anticipated him rescheduling everything again.  To my surprise, though, he said we could go ahead on our current schedule and nothing too awful will happen.  He said the cabinet we’re waiting for is a wall cabinet (aren’t they all in a galley kitchen?) and they can wait to do those until next week — I think he means upper wall.  So, we’re on.  Old cabinets out tomorrow.  Yay!

Ok, hold on there, buster.  The problem with taking the old cabinets out tomorrow is that Habitat for Humanity, to whom we are donating the old cabinets, does pick-ups on Wednesdays only.  And tomorrow’s a Wednesday.  And while the nice woman at the resale shop wanted to work with me and call in the afternoon to see if their truck could come get them then, when I talked to her today she said she was really frazzled and would prefer to do it next week.  So, where will the old cabinets go for a week?  The garage, I suppose.  Which means parking the Buttermobile on the street, which you wouldn’t think would be a big deal but it could mean a ticket due to my neighborhood having crazy parking rules because it’s so close to campus and my old high school.   In any event, I’m going to try not to think about that.  Or about how four large appliances are entering the place on Thursday and I have no idea where they’re going to go.  Tonight it is all about taking down the kitchen, which I am only semi-embarrassed to report has fallen mainly to Aaron.  I cleaned out several cabinets, but it’s a small space and, let’s face it, I was getting in the way. 

Empty!

 

 

The playoffs

Published January 11, 2010 sports 9 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

I told myself I wasn’t going to post about this, but I’m desperate to do something to cleanse my system of the anxiety and depression and, well, just emotion that I still feel in my heart (despite coating it in Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc and lots of episodes of Law & Order).  Maybe writing about it will make me feel better, or at least make me feel less. 

It’s tough being a sports fan.  I have a working theory that it’s actually tougher being a female sports fan, but I’ll get to that later.  The thing is, that with any sport there’s really only one desired outcome: to win.  And only one team can do that at a time.  And in a league like the NFL’s, only one team can do that each season; that is, win the Superbowl.  Anything less than that is, by definition, disappointing, even when we all know that only one of thirty-two teams can achieve this goal.  It’s crazy to let your emotions become so involved in something you (a) have no control over and (b) are extremely unlikely to get the results you want.  Right?  Right?  I think so.  But year after year I invest considerable amounts of emotional (and sometimes finanical) currency in these teams that can’t help but, at least sometimes, let me down.  I mean, I refer to them as “we” for crying out loud.  And I never even think that’s weird until some non-sports fan lets me know it is.

I love the Green Bay Packers.  I’m so proud of this season and so impressed with how they played.  I think today’s game had some major errors — many of which are to be blamed on Green Bay and, specifically, their defense.  Of course.  The defense, actually, seemed to have forgotten to play the game.  And I’d like to blame the officiating, officiating and the blown calls on Fitzgerald for offensive interference (more officiating, I know, but I can’t find a decent link to an article about it yet). And I will to some degree, but the truth is that it doesn’t really matter because the game is over, the season is over and the Green Bay Packers are heading home.  More importantly, though, is something that I know now, even in my disappointed and sad state:  While they may not be Superbowl-bound this year, they still are , as they always will be, my favorite team of any team that ever was and ever will be.

A long overdue word, though, to Aikman, and everyone else on national tv, they’re the green bay packers, or the GREEN BAY PACKERS.  But they are not, and never have been, as far as I know, the GREEN bay packers.  Or the green BAY packers.  Analysts’ emphasis is always off, which seems particularly weird for a fairly well-known team and an easy-to-prounounce town.

As for women.  Here’s my thinking.  Women, in general, are less likely to be sports fans than men, particularly fans of such sports as football and basketball.  I have no statistics to back me up, just 34 years of experiencing life as a female with very few female friends that share my interest.  And I have female friends, so don’t try to get me on that.  So, there are fewer women to talk to about sports, which can be sad because talking to men about sports often gets competitive and aggressive and sometimes you really just want to talk it out.  See, that’s what I want.  As a woman.  To talk it out.  About how I’m thinking and feeling about it.  And not to one-up someone else with different statistics or some writer’s theory.  Well, sometimes anyway.  And without being able to do this as much as I’d like, it’s rather isolating.  In any event, as long as I’m stereotyping myself and my friends (read: accurately describining the way things are), I’ll hit you with my second point.  Women are generally more emotional and more “in touch” with their emotions.  I really don’t dig that expression, “in touch,” but I’ll use it here because it seems kinda appropriate.  Given this (no stats, let’s just let it ride as true), sports losses — and wins — affect women more.  Women take it more personally — should I not have moved on the couch during that last drive? was it my fault?  — and they take it harder.  I don’t just bounce back from a loss like today’s.  I want to talk to Aaron Rodgers and tell him how proud I am of him.  I want to smack the defense on their collective head and say, “Why didn’t you get on the plane to Phoenix?”  I want to say, “McCarthy, don’t give up on us. And excellent work on that onside kick call!” 

But I can’t do any of that.  So I sit here and steam and stir and twitch, and wonder what I could have done differently. And I count the days until August.  Which, frankly, is a weird thing to do in Wisconsin in January.  Except it’s not.  If you’re a sports fan.  And you’re a woman.

Kitchen 2.0

Published January 4, 2010 bling blog 9 Comments
Tags: ,
As you know, we are remodeling our kitchen.  The kitchen as it sits now, I suspect, is the original 1985 kitchen.  I know that’s not that old, but it’s not exactly modern, either.  For example, there is no dishwasher and the stove has one of those flip clocks that hasn’t worked since I’ve been here (almost five years — zoinks!).  Now, I realize that appliances can be upgraded without redoing the whole kitchen, but here’s my logic (be kind): I want a dishwasher.  According to my pops, two people do not need a dishwasher.  While I’d maybe say in response, no one needs a dishwasher, a better response would be (a) he has no idea how much Aaron cooks and how many pots and pans he requires to do it; the enormity of his tasks is overwhelming (he makes his own bacon for crying out loud) and the number of dishes (clean and drying or dirty and waiting to be clean and drying) on the counter at any given moment is upsetting and stress-inducing — it’s a small kitchen so using up valuable counterspace with dishes is silly; and (b) very few people will buy a place without a dishwasher; I am apparently the exception.  When it comes time to sell, a dishwasher will go a long way.  So, why not just install a dishwasher, you ask?  Because to do so would require ripping out some cabinets and having a professional (since we know nothing about this and I really don’t want to mess up a house I intend to sell within a few, five, ten years) install it and recarpenter it and all that.  And that seemed like it would be pricey.  And then that got us thinking about replacing the stove (one appliance leads to another, you see).  And the way the stove is built into the kitchen would require a professional to fix it so that the countertops worked.  Right now, the countertop extends behind the stove a few inches so that would have to be ripped out and refinished to fit in a new stove.  And that got us thinking about new countertops.  No kitchen should have grouted tile countertops.  They may look cute on the first day you move in, but they are little more than a daily hassle.  Sure, it’s fun that you can set hot pots directly on them, but that fun quickly wears off as you stare into the nasty grout and can’t tell if you’re really getting anything clean.  So, with countertops and new appliances and the carpentry that went with that … well, it just seemed like we should do the whole thing.  And that’s what we’re doing.  Well, we’re waiting on the floors for another day (may that day come soon), but we’re doing new cabinets, new countertops, a new sink, a new fridge, a new stove, a new dishwasher, a new microwave/hood and new lighting.  Hooray!  And guess what?  It all starts tomorrow.  Sort of.  The cabinets are supposed to arrive between noon and four.  So, enjoy these pictures of Kitchen 1.0.  And please cross your fingers that we have the kind of before and after project that doesn’t make us lose our minds or the last vestiges of our pocketbook.

View of the kitchen from the front door

I left it in its natural state

In addition to a flip clock that has never worked, the stove below also has several other zany, fun quirks.  For example, certain burners will work only at certain times.  Another cool thing is that when you use the self-cleaning feature, the oven will lock up on you for what could be hours…or days.  You never know!  So unpredictable.

The infamous stove

The top light is a feature I rarely use in any room, but in a kitchen even I can see that one would be useful.  The one that came with my house has been permanently shunned, however.  In fact, when the kitchen guy came to get measurements, he asked to turn it on and I’m pretty sure I visibly shuddered.  Can’t wait to get rid of this thing.

It hurts to look at, I know

It’s a galley kitchen, which I like.  And I really hope I like the final product.  I’m nervous, but hopeful. 

Even the chalkboard wall looks bad

January 2, 2010

Published January 2, 2010 movies 6 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

So, I had a sort of informal promise (read: from the roots of embarrassment and insecurity) to myself that I would not blog again until there were a minimum of three comments on my previous post. Even if two of the three were my own comments. I’m going to break that rule in the new year and suffer the humiliation that comes from being a blogger who is seldom read. Who cares, right? If no one reads this, there’s very little to be embarrassed. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself.

Another thing that I’m going to try to do more this year, with regard to the blog, is be more honest and less safe.  Not that I was exactly holding back before, and not that I’m going to be brutal or very revealing or anything now, but I want to try to worry less about offending someone, and put my thoughts out into the interwebs more.  I think that part of the great thing about having such lovely and loyal and smart friends is that I don’t run much of  a risk of offending them.  I think everyone knows that I’d never do anything to try to hurt anyone I love.  I’d like to say that I’d never do anything to try to hurt anyone, but I think that’s not completely true. 

While I’d not try to hurt anyone, I know that some things I say would hurt the person about whom I’m saying them.  For example, I think Maggie Gyllenhall is just about as gorgeous as a person can get, but she seems to me to kinda stink at acting.  Now, I’m not trying to hurt her (and in fact I doubt very much that I’m hurting her as the odds of her reading this blog are pretty close to the odds that she will one day play me in the movie version of my life — snooze, I know), but I can’t imagine that it feels good to read people dissecting your professional performances — complete strangers and amateurs to boot; I would think it would sting a bit.  I bring up Maggie Gyllenhall because I saw a preview of the new movie Crazy Heart today before seeing It’s Complicated.  Crazy Heart stars Jeff Bridges looking even more like Kris Kristofferson than he ever did.  And it looks to me like the movie The Wrestler wanted to be.  Although it seems to have some of the same underlying structure, Crazy Heart involves a drunken country star instead of a drunken professional wrestler.  And Jeff Bridges instead of Mickey Rourke, a swap I’ll take any day of the week.  And Maggie Gyllenhall instead of Marisa Tomei.  Not really a better move there, but we’ll see how much MG bugs me.  I saw T. Bone Burnett had some role in it, so that’s even more to look forward to.

As for It’s Complicated.  I liked it a lot.  First off, let’s be clear: it’s one of those movies that basically exudes, “It’s pretty damn nice to be rich.”  I am actually a fan of these kind of movies — movies like Father of the Bride (the Steve Martin one) and Something’s Gotta Give — they make life look so shiny and pretty and, frankly, uncomplicated.  There’s always plenty of food in the fridge, champagne in the glasses and clean linens (the sheer amount of clean towels alone make It’s Complicated worth seeing).  They make life’s hardships seem way less hard.  And there’s definitely a place for those movies, in my opinion.  I don’t need to see Schinder’s List or Hotel Rwanda or The Wrestler everyday.  [Or any day as it pertains to one of those three; I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to figure out which one.]   In essence, it was a pretty fun movie and I do think it had some things to say about divorce that were quite true.   I heard Dr. Phil once say that you aren’t ready to get divorced until you aren’t emotional anymore, until you know completely that it’s done. Although that sounds lovely, I think that it’s pretty much a load of crap and I can’t think of many folks that have operated that way.  As Reese Witherspoon once said (at least as much as a sage as Dr. Phil), if you aren’t emotional over it, you probably shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place.  Since I find more truth in that statement, it seems Dr. Phil’s philosophy works more for the emotionally vacant or for people that never really cared about each other to begin with.  So, back to the movie.  Meryl & Alec had some unfinished business, it seems.   And that’s probably not that unusual.  I don’t think many divorced couples take it to the level they went to (though Liz Taylor certainly stepped it up a notch), the feelings they still had for each other seemed fairly understandable.  Understandable and realistic in a comedy exuding the It’s Good to Be Rich-vibe, of course.  I do, though, completely agree with Maggie (my cousin, not Gyllenhall) that their movie kids were totally unrealistic.  In addition to be saccharin-y, they were just odd.  No one acts like that, no one talks like that, no one is like that.  They are three twenty-something siblings who jump up and down when they see each other.  They were completely weird to me.  Except for the light of the world, John Krasinski.  May he never play the bad guy.

January 1, 2010

Published January 1, 2010 bling blog 1 Comment
Tags: , , ,

Happy New Year! Happy month of birthday, Kate!  Seriously, though, happy new year.

Ok, so it’s a little after 3 pm on January the first 2010, and I’m still in my pajamas.  An inauspicious start to the new year, you may be thinking.  I respecfully disagree with that assessment, however.  After sleeping till noon, which I permitted myself because (a) I do that kind of thing; (b) we were up until almost 3 am; and (c) I’ve been really sick, I have been quite productive.  Really.  I took down all of the ornaments, the lights, the Christmas candles and whatnot and took the tree to the curb.  I vacuumed, which took quite a bit of time due to the crazy amount of pine needles.  Aaron took care of the kitchen, with me annoyingly coming in every five or ten minutes with a new champagne glass I found buried in a hidden spot.  The box of Christmas stuff is now in the basement and the sheets — washed on hot due to aforementioned sickness — are now drying in the dryer.  We are sitting on the couch watching About Aniston, an all-day love fest to Jen on Lifetime, while puppy snores sweetly in between us.  Ah, the holidays are over and, signifiicantly, our hosting duties of 2009 have come to an end.  Having done Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I’m officially spent. 

Anyway, so it’s 2010 now and I’m fairly optimistic.  I hope for good things this year.  Specifically, my list of resolutions includes the following:

  • Drink more tea.
  • Blog at least once a week (I think the routine will be good for me).
  • The omnipresent exercise more (which I actually began to put into effect in December 09 and want to make sure to continue).
  • Be at least 1% less insecure.
  • Take better care of my teeth.
  • Learn sign language.

These are all fairly selfish things, I realize, but I’m going to keep it that way for now.  I always strive to be nicer, more sympathetic, and more generous and I really wanted to try to be more specific.  I often put on the list things like, “Volunteer more,” but truthfully, I do a fair amount of that and recently I’ve found some of the things I’ve chosen have made me an unhappier, crankier person, which isn’t good for anyone, especially for the people around me whom I love and don’t deserve to put up with even crankier me.  I quit the Regent Neighborhood Association Board a couple of months ago after being treated pretty unkindly, I thought, and I’m putting less effort into being the mentor that I’ve been to a very sweet 16-year old girl for a little over a year.  She’s totally adorable, but she’s hard to schedule things with and she often cancels.  And the most recent was an incident in which I showed up at her house to pick her up for breakfast and she was still at a sleepover and her mom coudn’t get a hold of her.  I am not at all angry about this — she’s 16! and a really good, smart kid (I actually don’t think she really needs me at all) — but I’m going to try not to worry about it too much.  I just don’t think it makes sense to do so.  Anyway, so all of that was to vent some guilt I have, I guess, about having resolutions that are much more about me than about others. 

So, welcome 2010.  I think I’m ready for you.

Oh, and totally check out my friend’s new music.  It’s really good. 

April 2026
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  

Join 78 other subscribers