Category: Daily Life

I am not a huge fan of many breakfast foods. I’ve given up on cereal for the most part, and menu items in the “syrup-covered” family (pancakes, waffles, french toast) just aren’t filling enough. However, the best-case breakfast scenario for me is a restaurant breakfast.

One of the things that makes breakfast preparation such a huge pain is that each item must be cooked separately. The eggs go in one pan, the bacon in another, the toast goes in the toaster, and any potatoes go in yet a third pan. If you happen to want biscuits instead of toast, that’s another five dirtied utensils.

At a restaurant, someone else coordinates all of the cooking and gets your food to you quickly, and at a reasonable price. What could be better?

The biggest restaurant breakfast rip-off is oatmeal. $4 for a cup of cooked oatmeal, an ounce or two of milk and 10x the amount of brown sugar you need? I don’t think so.

I’ll start by saying that I know the average woman isn’t really into cars. I was never really into cars myself until recently, except as a means to get from Point A to Point B, preferably very, very quickly. However, I absolutely love my current car even though it’s old, things are constantly breaking on it, and it has the potential to be a bottomless money pit.

To establish some kind of limit to the money pit, I’ve been trying to learn how to do minor repairs and maintenance on the car. Yesterday I got together with my wrenching club (all guys so far, although I’m trying to rope in one more girl), and replaced my shifter. I’d had the new shifter for about a month, but I hadn’t gotten around to installing it. As it turned out, the repair took LITERALLY five minutes (sorry, I’ve been watching MadTV a lot), plus a trip to Advance Auto to get a 41-cent clip I needed to hold the parts together. All those weeks that I’d been driving around with the shifter all loosey-goosey and wrapped in duct tape seemed especially ridiculous once I had the nice, new shifter in place. I did need help from one the guys to pull the old shifter out of its cradle. It was one of those brute force, “can you open this jar for me” things that sometimes we gals just can’t do by ourselves. It was still satisfying to do the rest of the job myself, though.

Yesterday night, the car-a-palooza continued with a trip to the theater to see a preview showing of Starsky and Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. (What does that have to do with cars? Their distinctive Ford Gran Torino, of course.)

I thought the movie was everything you could ask for in a throwaway comedy. In addition to Stiller and Wilson, it featured Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrell and Snoop Dogg, all of whom were hilariously perfect in their roles. The movie is set in the 1970s (no specific year, just “the seventies”), and the one detail I kept noticing in various scenes was the seemingly unending selection of 70s-era coffee cups. From the shiny, bumpy pottery kind, to the plastic-footed type, to the ever-popular “happy face” cup, every 70s coffee cup I remembered from childhood appeared at one time or another.

Granted, the movie is pretty lightweight, but I found myself laughing throughout. It wasn’t quite the triumph of the first Charlie’s Angels movie, but then again it was way better than the second Charlie’s Angels movie (which is pretty safe to say in that the latter was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Except Batman and Robin – now that was two hours of my life that I wish I could get back). Just for the casting alone, I’ll want the Starsky and Hutch DVD when it comes out.

Have you seen any good movies lately? Have any thoughts to share about your car? I’ve been doing this blog for more than a week now and nobody has left a single comment. Feel free to participate!

The other day as I was leaving an evening meeting, I remarked to someone that I needed to go home and do laundry so I’d have something to wear the next day. The other person laughed at my obvious exaggeration, little suspecting that it was no exaggeration at all.

When I was young and poor and used to have to periodically drag my laundry down the street to the laundromat in the back of a pickup truck, I got into the habit of waiting until everything I owned was dirty before I made the trip. More than a decade has passed since then, but I still can’t seem to adopt the logical practice of washing clothes regularly. I do laundry for two now, so that means both hampers get stomped full and create Laundry Mountain in the basement baskets when they’re brought down. It takes a week of evenings or a full weekend day to mow through it all. (Especially if you include re-washing at least one load each time that has been left too long in the washer.)

I’m always jealous of people who have their laundry rooms in their kitchens or near their bedrooms. Part of the reason that I don’t approach wash day with gusto is that I have to haul the baskets down the world’s steepest, narrowest stairs to the basement, hoping against hope that I don’t step on or get tripped by a cat on the way down. But then, I doubt that more approachable appliances would have much effect on my general laziness in this area.

Signs you’re a bad laundry procrastinator:

• You own 3 dozen pairs each of underwear and socks
• Football season ended two months ago and you still have a basket of team t-shirts and jerseys in your “red” pile
• You’re forced to dry yourself with a hand towel after a shower because both sets of bath towels are dirty
• When you put away your clean clothes, it’s as if you just returned from a giant shopping spree. Sometimes you find a recently-purchased item you had forgotten you owned.

We won’t even talk about dry cleaning…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By the way, I’m feeling much better today. Last night I dosed myself with some heavy-duty prescription cough medicine that I had left over from one of the other two times I’ve come down with this same set of symptoms since winter began. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you!

For the past few days I’ve had that “I think I may be catching a cold” feeling. As of yesterday evening, there was no doubt that the cold had arrived in the form of a painful sore throat. I heard the word “strep” bandied about the office last week, so I imagine someone carried in the germs and thoughtfully passed them along to me.

I’m no stranger to tonsillitis. When I was 23 and living alone in my squalid first apartment, I came down with a case of it so bad that I missed almost two weeks of work. My tonsils looked so swollen, spotted and horrible that everyone who saw them involuntarily reacted with an, “Ewww!” – including the doctors and nurses. The first doctor I went to decided it wasn’t necessary to test for strep, but that I “probably” had it. After the first round of antibiotics not only failed to help but landed me in the emergency room, I finally had a strep test (negative) and the right drugs to get me back on my feet.

In the midst of that whole medical drama, my mother had come by my apartment and, noting my lack of food, comfort and will to go on, scooped me up along with my cat and taken me to her house. It was from there that I’d made my late-night emergency room trip. It’s a little worrisome to consider what might have happened if I’d had my bad penicillin reaction alone at my place.

I know it’s boring to read someone’s self-indulgent whining about their minor ailments. But you know it’s difficult to focus on other things when you’re sick, so I’m sure you understand. I’ll work on amping up the entertainment value tomorrow.

I am now officially tired of winter. The first couple of snowfalls were pretty, even though the worst of them kept me home in my food-free house for a day. The reason I had not grocery shopped before the storm is that I’d stocked up before a previous storm prediction that had amounted to NOTHING. Rather than be sucked in again by the “weather guy who cried ‘blizzard,’” I smugly sat home and watched the estimated 2-3 inches of snow become 12+ inches that trapped me in my driveway and denied me a lunch of the world’s best Chinese dumplings (which I’m still craving, by the way).

My winter vehicle is a soccer mom van that is in dire need of mechanical assistance. The operation of the power steering ranges from “works somewhat, but squeals like a piglet” to “let’s pump up those pecs and biceps.” Yesterday my husband had finally chopped through enough layers of ice and snow that I thought I might finally be able to get my summer sportscar out of the garage and take the van to the shop. But no.

As I left the office yesterday, I saw little snowflakes drifting out the sky. Since I almost never seek out weather forecasts (see above), I had no inkling that any snow was expected. On the way home, a radio weather guy said we could expect a “dusting.” Well, I stopped watching the snow accumulate when I turned in at midnight. We got at least two inches. The driveway is completely covered again. At this point, I’m so sick of shoveling that I’m considering a trip to Flamethrowers R Us for a quick afternoon rental.

The good news is that it’s getting warmer outside and I can hear water running through the downspout by my window. But enough is enough. Bring on the crocuses and light jacket weather!

This particular story began about three weeks ago, but I
couldn’t begin to chronicle it until I’d rested a bit…wait a minute, I just
slept five hours on the couch waiting for a timer to ring so I could put
another coat of paint on the ceiling before the tile guys arrive at 8:30 a.m.

Anyway, this story begins, as most home improvement stories
begin, with a simple desire to receive more enjoyment from a room. The room in question is my kitchen, which has
way too many things wrong with it to fix all at once. However, I decided to make an investment in
new tile (installed by others) and freshly painted walls (prepared and painted
by me).

It’s important to note that at some stage early in the
planning process, I failed to secure the cooperation of my husband for this
project. I must have forgotten to say
"Simon Says" or something, because it quickly became apparent that he
had no interest in the kitchen or its relative beauty, and was intent upon not
helping me with it in any significant way.

So I began stripping off the dorky flowered wallpaper and
border in the kitchen, which went extraordinarily well! That is until I realized that the paper
wallpaper backing that had been left behind would have to be removed, too. Some of it came right off with a little picking
and peeling. The rest was tenacious to
an extent that I would never have imagined. In fact, if I had imagined, it, I might have foregone the entire project
then and there.

I went online to research the best methods of wallpaper
removal from sheetrock. The most
traditional thing to do involved scoring the wallpaper with tiny holes, then
spraying a wallpaper remover gel on it, after which the paper would just let go
and you could scrape it off with a plastic scraper. Okay, no.

The next thing I thought of was a steamer. I had rented one years before when I redid
our bedroom and removed multiple layers of wallpaper. Luckily a friend offered to lend me her
steamer and save me the rental fees. I
unpacked and filled the steamer, waited forever for it to heat up, then began
steaming and scraping the wallpaper. It
proved very ineffective, and I ended up gouging the sheetrock with almost every
scrape.

Someone online had the idea of just spraying plain water on
the wallpaper backing, then scraping.  We
had a winner! That turned out to be the
absolute best way to loosen the wallpaper for scraping. After a while I discovered that sanding the
damp paper with a drywall sanding block worked even better than scraping and
did absolutely no damage to the sheetrock. Now keep in mind that this process involves a tremendous amount of elbow
grease, so it’s really only possible to do about a square yard at a time before
you have to stop and rest (there are frequent naps involved as well).

I was about 1/3 of the way through the wallpaper removal
process when my husband informed me that he had talked to our tile guy and told him
he could come the next day. Needless to
say I freaked out and told the guy not to come. It sounds so quaint and amusing now, but at the time I had expected to
have all the wallpaper removed and the walls (and ceiling) spackled, primed and
painted before the tile went in.

Let’s skip ahead to last weekend. After redoubling my wallpaper scraping
efforts, I eventually got to the point where the only wallpaper remaining is
behind the refrigerator and in one little alcove by the door. I was resigned to the idea that I would have
to paint – carefully – after the tile was installed. That left two tasks to be accomplished before
the tile crew arrived on Monday (keep in mind that they’re contractors, so of
course they’re really coming on Tuesday).

We had, in a moment of temporary insanity, agreed to move
the stove and refrigerator ourselves. I
purchased some scrap carpet to cushion the hardwood floors and we decided we
should move the stove first, since it would end up further into the living
room. We managed to scoot it out about a
foot, only to discover that it is firmly hardwired somehow. Maybe all stoves are like that, I don’t
know. As a special bonus, the power
cable was not plugged into an outlet as you might expect. Instead, the cord goes down below the floor
level – an arrangement that would probably make the fire marshal blanch in
terror and flee the property.

We decided to leave the stove for the time being and appeal
to the tile crew to help us. ("We
are yuppies with no practical skills. How much can we pay you to do this useful task for us?") I vacuumed underneath and discovered that
every toy mouse I have ever purchased for the cats had made its way under the
stove to be preserved among the dust bunnies until now. Believe me, the cats had a par-tay last
night.

That left the refrigerator. We tipped it onto a dolly, which promptly made the door open, raining
bottles of 7-Up and Honey Brown all over the floor. I fetched some duct tape and taped the doors
shut and we continued, but not for long. As soon as we got to the doorway we could see that the handles made the
fridge too wide to fit through the door. I fetched a screwdriver and began removing them, but the screw heads on
the lower handle were stripped. On to
Plan B: removing the doors. I won’t bore you with the details (I know,
you’re already bored – sorry), but we finally got the doors off, put the
refrigerator in the living room, put the doors back on (almost correctly) and
then tried to plug it in. Turns out, we
have no grounded outlets in the living room.

By now the level of quarreling had reached personal levels
that had nothing to do with the task at hand ("Why don’t you go brush your
teeth or use some mouthwash or something?!") I fetched an extension cord from the garage
and rigged it from the kitchen to the living room for the fridge. I dismissed the hubby so I wouldn’t have to
look at him anymore, and proceeded to festoon the kitchen with dropcloths so I
could paint the ceiling.

And that’s how I ended up sleeping a few hours on the couch
last night between paint coats. I still
can’t tell whether it looks good or not, but I’ve rinsed all the painting
equipment, so it’ll have to do for now.