the noodle incident

(names changed)

Child appeared at my desk.
"Shawn left his noodle outside."
"His... noodle?"
"Yeah. And he ran away."
He led me outside. On the sidewalk was a sad pile of instant noodles. Kids gathered around it with wide, scandalized eyes.
"Oh, you meant actual noodles."
"Yeah. He got them from the store and then they were hot and he was throwing them and John smacked them and they burned him and they fell and then they were like, auuuugh, and both ran over the hill that way." The kids all pointed.
I got a wad of paper towels and scooped up the soggy mass of ramen. "Wait, was he throwing the noodles, or did someone throw them at him?"
"He was throwing noodles at John and going HWUP HWUP with the cup and then John went PAP and they flew up and burned Shawn's arm and he dropped them and John ate some of them off the ground and said, 'see? Still good,' and then they ran away real fast, laughing."
"Oh my." I poured water on the bits of broth and freeze-dried carrots.
"What will happen if they come back?" The kids looked keen, hoping for blood.
"Well, then they will be hungry."
"Yeah, 'cause John might want to finish them." Someone high-fived the kid.

At just about this time, Officer Library Frequenter detected that my co-worker had a rotisserie chicken in the fridge. His chicken senses are uncanny. I came back to wash noodles off my hands and found him carving legs and thighs onto a paper plate. "Hey!" He jumped, but didn't stop sawing. "When you pass those kids outside, make sure you mutter something about noodles. They'll think I called the cops."

And he did. There were shrieks, and the sound of sneakers running.

I was still grinning about this noodle business when I went to stamp a patron's book. She tilted her head at my cardigan.
"Is that the new style?"
I looked down and realized it was buttoned crookedly. "That is the cold and hasty style."
"Honey, that's what happens when you hit 65."
Recently, I had mentioned my creaky knees, and a patron patted me in commiseration, "That's how it is after 40, sweetie."
I need to trowel on more makeup, I think.

woecakes

The car has been making a sound like a garbage disposal jammed with spoons. This is no good. And I'm driving it anyway, because I am a terrible car owner, and because every time we have jacked it up and peered underneath there has been nothing obviously wrong with the brakes or wheels or shafty bits.

So I was driving it to work in this disgraceful state when the vehicle finally lost integrity and chewed off one of its own tires. I pulled over, crunching and dragging, onto an exit ramp shoulder. But what luck! I thought, Mike is only 3 miles behind me and this is his exit. I am saved! Because I can change a tire myself, but on the edge of a whizzing highway it seems better to have someone standing guard so your legs don't become meaty road bumps.

I stood for a few minutes, looking busily at my phone so onlookers would think I was doing something useful. And then there he was - sailing along on his motorcycle, in clear line of view of the busted-down car and my brilliant yellow blouse. I bobbed and waved. NYOOOOM. He blew right by, roared off the exit ramp, and disappeared around the corner. I looked at the car. "This is your fault," I told it. It is the most unremarkable car ever made. Shapeless, colorless, in no obvious state of gleaming upkeep or superficial disrepair - it has been dubbed the Invisimobile.

my car

He eventually noticed the angry buzzing from the phone in his pocket and swooped around, so the tire was changed (not by me, for all my posturing as probably-an-expert-tire-changer), and I arrived at work in the usual squeal of grinding metal. All was well, except for the fact that I was driving on a donut in an unsafe car with a 2-hour commute.

So instead of working on the new house, I irritably dragged the screeching carcass of my car into the tire shop. My mother recommended a shady warehouse near the airport. "They are cheap, and super fast, and there is a gourmet donut shop next door," she said. "The kind with bacon on top." SOLD. But then those burly men slapped my car up onto a lift, bobbed me around in circles with their eyebrows and tattoos (and a quiet side-mouthed, "You get an old car you like sell?"), the office lady plucked me out and rang me up for $119, and they sent me away with no time to sneak off to the donut shop to kill myself with sugared bacon. And the men stood in the lot waving like loons as I clunked away, so I couldn't even park in the street and double back on the sly. Not sure if this was excellent service or terrible, terrible service. The tire looks pretty good, though.

Move update: 4 days to go. Floors are done. Furniture is moved. Boxes are being packed and transported. Electricians are almost finished, and only stepped through the ceiling once. This thing may happen after all.

now somewhat less pleased

"Oh, the floors are pretty good!" I said. "You can just get the tile off that one room, finish the wood underneath, and we can do the rest later," I said.

And then the man rented a sander. And mowed up all the floors in the house.

"You ruined the house," I said.
"I had a sander!" he said.
"You took a wall out of the bathroom."
"I also had a crowbar."
"It was notched into the ceiling."
"Yeah, kinda."
"Now there is a hole in the ceiling."
"I can fix it."
"If you don't, I will have the electricians seal your body into the attic."
"Well, then the hole would never get fixed."
Damn.

So yesterday I painted the kitchen. "Lipstick on a pig," I told the grody old oven. I pulled all the drawers out to clean, and found 30 years worth of cockroach shit in a black crust splashed down the back of the cabinetry, leading to an inch-thick pile of mystery crumble. Sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at it, grimly drinking a beer with rubber gloves on. It took a bucket of bleach water and an hour of profanity, but I won. Either the swearing or the paint-smeared bottom sticking out of the cupboards endeared me to the electricians, and they changed the radio to heavy rock and started being cheerfully abusive to each other.

So the floors are unfinished. The bathroom is demolished. There is a pile of torn carpet and broken wood taller than me in the back yard. There are holes cut in the walls for outlets, and wires hanging out of the ceiling. But now the kitchen is painted. It can only start stitching itself all back together from here on out.

 

There. It is white.

 

White white white. Except the awning outside. Don't look at that.

And it all has to be done in a week. *flail*

Pretty dang pleased with myself

I did not really paint the place pink. That is just the reflection of the amazing wood floor, which has been hidden under the most foul of carpets since the 1960s. 

Back to work now, to let my blisters and spine heal until the weekend. 

No further music was blasted by the neighbors this week. Am satisfied that they may not be too horrible.

Blue and silver

I thought everyone was taking off of work to get the house ready, but NOPE. I am all by myself up here, scrubbing and taping and sanding and painting. 

But that's fine with me. And I don't even need to worry about not having a stereo until the electricians rip out the 80 year-old wires, because the neighbor kid blasts Snoop Dogg from his truck. So charming. I'll have to invite Officer Library Frequenter over for a beer some time. 

Things that are not DIY

DIY implies something which takes some skill, but which you can learn to do competently on your own through study and instruction, and thus save yourself time/money dealing with a contracted professional. Tutorials for things on Pinterest which are not DIY include:

DIY wrapped gifts

DIY air clay glued to a 99 cent vase to make it "Anthropologie"

DIY coffee creamer made from milk and sweetened condensed milk

DIY bubble solution 

DIY ornaments made out of used K-cups

Similar problem with Pinterest "hacks". Painting a dresser is not a hack. Relieving sinuses by pinching the bridge of your nose is not a hack. Drawing on a light bulb with a sharpie is NOT A HACK.

So. I used Pinterest to find a tutorial to fix old hardware. And now I PRESENT TO YOU:

 DIY HACK

removing paint from vintage hardware

at lunch break

in the staff room

with a coffee stirrer and paperclip

The original tutorial tells you to carefully simmer the hardware in a crock pot or big vessel which you will never use again (because of lead in the old paint) with a hearty dollop of dish soap for 8-12 hours, then carefully peel up the soft paint with a razor blade. Easy enough.

But even easier if you just microwave some hot water in an empty soup container, stir in dish soap, dunk your hardware, let it sit for 4 hours, and then come back on lunch break to scrape the softened paint off with a wooden coffee stirrer and a bent paperclip.

A little Barkeeper's Friend to polish that up, and it'll be like new. 

Next: DIY floor refinishing, and DIY paramedic assessment.

Pain and grossness

Oh, my bruised and battered body. It is almost as if my life as a desk-dwelling knitter-librarian has not prepared me for hard physical labor. My legs and my bottom and my back are linking arms in an Irish bar song of pain. Not my actual arm-arms, though. Evidently my arms are accustomed to hefting books and toddlers, and then from the armpits down I am just a person-shaped sack filled with pudding.

And all I did was clean windows. I stood at the sink, wiping grime as thick as gravy off of louvers that had been rusted shut for 30 years and wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Why is it so dark in here? OH HEY.

But they are my disgusting louvers, and you have to start with basic wiping before leaping in with power tools and paint rollers.

2014: a year in review

So, the annual end-of-year quiz has become a thing of gnashing and squinky-side-eyeing, because it is a thing written by a YOUTH, and after you've answered a couple of questions about money and death and love as an adult, you're pretty much ready to torch the thing and go get a drink. So here is a modified end-of-year thing, hitting the same main points. Perhaps a good thing to go with here after a protracted absence, as I have been over at Wordpress for most of the year, and managed to burn that to the ground, too. If it is a sign that I am too old and incompetent to write anymore, I am going to choose to ignore it and whack away stubbornly until one of my grandkids comes along and gives me something too advanced in its simplicity for me to operate.

So here we are. 2014 in Review.

THE GOOD - oh, go ahead and brag, you shameless tart

I got a job! And I bought a house! Am now once again a respectable Children's Librarian, in a respectable suburban three-bedroom home in Hawaii. Big improvement.

(I have been a librarian for almost 10 years, but took a year off to move islands and have my daughter, so getting back into the career stream was of great import.)

THE BAD - just get it out with quickly and move on

My 18 month-old daughter almost died after tripping and falling on a tile floor while shoe shopping - concussion, seizure, stopped breathing, ambulance, hospital, recovery, observation. I still have the dress they cut off of her. It was a horror. Then, just as we were relaxing a bit, it happened again while visiting friends in the most remote part of Maui, necessitating an air rescue - which I could not ride along on. Watching the helicopter leave, and the drive to Kahului, with no cell reception and no way of knowing if my baby was dying of a brain bleed, were maybe the worst 2 hours of my life to date. We bought the child a helmet, and she is ok. I am all nerves whenever we go out, hovering and yipping. So that's nice for everyone.

Less bad but still not great: I didn't publish a book this year. But I had Reasons.

Also, I broke a tooth. And got two other teeth capped. The dentist knows my name and asks pertinent questions about my personal life, and that is never a good situation to be in with someone who drives a Lexus or runs an administrative office.

STYLE - was there any?

I am eyeballing the skirt-and-boots-and-tights look, but haven't gotten out of my pants yet. I have a hard time buying legwear that costs as much as discount jeans but can be eaten by cats.

But I have really been getting into oxford shoes.

MEDIA - the best and the worst of 2014

Podcasts: I listened to Serial, which I didn't expect to get hooked into, but totally am. Welcome to Night Vale is always wonderful, too.

Books: Most of my reading is done in the car, via audiobook. I listened to a bit of everything, depending on what passed through my hands at the library, then I went fast and hard through Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, because they are wonderful madmen. The top 3 books of the year were Anansi Boys, Good Omens, the Tiffany Aching series, and the Silkworm (by JK Rowling as Robert Galbraith). Ok, that is 4. Well, 7, really, when you count the individual Tiffany Aching books. They are all worth having a go at.

The worst book was Velocity, by Dean Koontz. Put down the thesaurus and assume your reader is intelligent enough to follow you along with a character's emotional journey without explaining every reaction and physical movement in minute and florid detail, ok Koontz? Three sentences to describe the function of a bandaid and why it was important to the character to put one on (spoiler: to stop the bleeding). THREE SENTENCES.

Look at this nonsense:

 
Music: I liked a couple songs on the radio. It wasn't a big year for music. I tend to listen to celtic stuff and classical if I'm cleaning or knitting or doing something around the house, lest I become an angsty insufferable thing. Otherwise, it's audio books.





RESOLVE. Get some.

People talk shit about resolutions, but I am of the opinion that resolve and follow-through and ambition are all good things to have in life. You must better yourself. You must fight back against the years and the health problems and the heartbreak. Work. Try. Fail. Redouble your efforts. So that is where I am now: 2015's theme is REDOUBLE MY EFFORTS. Last year was I AM SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR ENDEAVOR (and yes, these are said in all-caps, even in conversation), and that was a pretty good one. My mother cat-sat for Stephen King's grand-kitties, and Mike brewed the legal limit of beer in one year (which is stacked floor-to-ceiling in the Harry Potter closet, because we don't actually drink that much). There was travel and new food experiences and motorcycle action. Could have done without the hospital mishaps, but that was not through any lack of cheerleading or support on my part - just dumb bad luck and a child with the physical grace of a pelican.

So this year I will learn to oil paint.
And refinish floors.
And renovate bathrooms.
I will foster my oldest child's new interests in coding, Monty Python, and Neil Gaiman novels. My middle child will be read to from a variety of excellent young-people books by Kate DiCamillo and Cressida Cowell. There will be a big home-made dollhouse for the little one, and I'll finish her quilt. We will make the new house a home. I am resolute.

Also, I will lose 10 pounds. I am instituting a no-facebook-until-fitbit-has-been-input rule, so I will probably be off of FB completely inside of a month.

So there it is. 2014 did not suck, except when it profoundly did, but as a larger picture it is a lovely snapshot in my life. One of work, nice drives, good books, happy family, too many cats and birds, and old friends come to call. Must not screw it up now.

I still miss the people I always do. I still have bad dreams and wishful ones. But it is less acutely stabby now, and that's progress.

notice to wayward readers

My new wordpress blog has been eaten by malware. We are battling the infection.

Maybe I will end up back here, 8 10 years of broken pictures and all (damn, I've been talking a long time). Will inform.

Christmas 2014

Early morning. Coffee. Couch blanket. Boys tearing through stockings. Typically, all adults are on hand at this ungodly hour to witness the children’s excitement, but this year I was the only one who got out of bed. Santa ran out of candy and oranges on the last stocking, so mine was mostly empty and topped with a squishy bit of fruit from the back of the fridge. A cockroach ran out of my stocking when I looked into it. My days of holiday magic and delight appear to be at an intermission.

There were Skylanders and Legos and a wry stare-down over a package of underwear, but the runaway hit of the day was the electronic sound effects maker. Screams and farts and deep-voiced baby cries punctuated the early morning.

OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?

But it was a lovely day, with lovely booze, and a lovely meat pie to stuff into the cousins and a lovely plum pudding that caught the table on fire. I missed dessert, because of a dinner-time diaper blow-out and subsequent bath/trouser scrubbing, I did manage to watch the end of a Christmas Story and knit a couple of rows with a kitten down my shirt.

And then it was done, and it’s back to work again. I feel a bit sad and confused about it. I think the theme of 2015 will have to be “Redoubling my Efforts”. More running, more making, more cleaning, more cookie-baking, more feeling. I will make it happen.

“If you trust in yourself. . . and believe in your dreams. . . and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men