To-Do List

Cows (and barns)

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

So much work still to do.

Today, I hope, to make some progress in the cow bathroom.  Excess is a whole lot harder to do than one would think.  Everytime I added a new image (or frame), I had to move everything around.  Finally, I decided to hang all the frames (empty) and go from there.  I then had to patch all the nail holes that were then exposed.  So, today I sand and paint and fill frames. 

There’s still the daunting task of wall-papering the ceiling and I have no idea when I’ll get tile on the floor.  Things take a long time in the barn – I never seem to have money and time at the same time.  Still don’t.

Downtime (so to speak)

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

Connie has been assiduously trying to avoid this.

I’ve been, for the most part, quietly trying to have a nervous breakdown. Sometimes, the looming psychotic break has been kind of noisy. A few days ago I was quite convinced there was no way I was going to get through the holidays without a goodly amount of twitching, drool, and keening.

I did manage to correct my equilibrium and the holiday went quite well. But the last couple of weeks have been frenetic. To recap: HMOKeefe had a stroke, I had foot surgery, 70-hour work weeks, nearly a foot of snow that trapped me on the hill, and all of that has been punctuated by the need to Do Something About Christmas. I had been threatening to run amok at the Exxon with a $20 bill to accomplish my Christmas shopping, but I discovered (on Christmas Eve no less) that Macy’s was damn near paying people to carry stuff out of the store.

I’m kind of tired.

I was supposed to have left for Massachusetts yesterday – a 12-14 hour drive through the mountains, diagonally through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, up I-95 through New York, etc. etc. My foot still doesn’t work quite right and thought of trying to negotiate that drive with the threat of bad weather was just too much. So, in short, I have a week off that doesn’t involve a cross-country trek.

It was a really hard decision to make. HMOKeefe and I don’t get to see one another much and Christmas week has become a tradition. But, in all seriousness, if I’d gotten stuck at the Bates Motel during a surprise blizzard in the Cumberland Gap (which did happen once) or in Harrisburg, PA during a hail storm that dented cars (that too happened) or run over by a semi in New York (a really close call once), I’d have gone right over the edge to the land of haloperidol. But the decision was clinched when I learned I was having a house guest on January 6th.

The big red bucket, the big red sponge and the grungy mop.

Under the best of circumstances, my house is filthy. Three dogs, me, no time, and a general disinclination to spend my free-time with a bucket of soapy water conspires to keep me barely one step ahead of condemnation by the Health Department.

There is no hope whatsoever that I can turn this place into something June Cleaver would have been responsible for by January 6th, but I should be able to do a goodly amount of damage control. The house qualifies as a Super Fund Site right now, so you have to understand that any effort I make is naught but a feeble attempt at cleanliness and order.

I have often and, sometimes loudly, proclaimed, with all appearances to the contrary, that I enjoy having a clean house. I am not one of those people who is comfortable with domestic chaos. I won’t let people in and I do take the precious few minutes here and there that I do have to do the little that I can.

I also, and I’ll kill you if you tell anyone, kind of like housecleaning. The kicker is that I don’t enjoy it unless I have hours and hours to do it all. I can’t complete Step A unless I know I have time to do B, C, D, E and F.

I never have that kind of time.

But now I do.

I think I have everything I need other than bleach.

I am a little daunted by where to start. The leftover pan of lasagna that’s been in the refrigerator for two months might be a good start. And then there are the houseplants that have been in the guest bathroom bathtub since I dug them out of the garden to protect them from the first freeze back in October. The cobwebs that span the two posters on my bed are also candidates. (Cobwebs on my bed pretty much explain my life of recent.)

If I can really get my ass in gear, I might paint the family room. And, of course, there’s the finishing of the cow bathroom that seems like it’s never going to be finished.

In the old days when I had a ton of vacation time, I used to take a week off in the spring and another before Christmas to get and keep the house in order. I miss that. Like I said, I like a clean house. People talk about what they’d do if they won the lottery. Near the top of my lottery list is always to have someone come in twice a week and clean.

Dusting and mopping, scrubbing and scraping.

And so, I’m fixin’ to turn into the Housecleaning Fairy. I’ve loaded up the CD player, put on my grubby clothes, and fished out the sponge and bucket. I’ll probably have to run out to get bleach. By this time tomorrow, I hope to be wallowing in enough domestic order to begin to tackle the chaos that exists behind closed doors (closets, cupboards, shut off rooms).

Where’s the stick?

/ wvfurandroot / 13 Comments

I didn’t get the house cleaning/furniture moving gene. Or the vacuuming one.

No pictures. Are you kidding? Let you see the mess I have wrought with one good foot, a bad back, and a Loratab fog?

Last year's Little Tree that started this monstrous horrible mess.

As my father would say, Where’s the stick? [You’re supposed to ask, What stick? And then he says, The stick you stirred this mess up with.]

It’s a flippin’ mess. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. Well, yes, I can. It went something like this.

Mom is coming up eventually to wallpaper the ceiling in the cow bathroom.

While she’s here I should ask her to get the little tree out of the closet for me.

There’s no place for the little tree.

There is a place if I move the sofa forward a couple of feet.

Ah, but, now there’s no room for the desk. [I’d rather die than do without the desk. I love desks.]

OK. If I move the Evil Sewing Machine, I can slide the desk down 10 feet and Voila! room for the tree.

Can’t move the desk. It’s too heavy, I have one foot, and my back already hurts.

Take the drawers out.

Push.

One inch at a time.

Gaze in horror at the mess behind the desk. [I found Willy’s toad, may he rest in peace.]

Drag out the vacuum cleaner. [I’d rather clean the cat box with my tongue than vacuum, but sometimes you just gotta break down.]

Oh No!!!!!!!!! Where do I go with all the crap on the desk and the walls.

Connie wrings her hands in panic and considers another Loratab.

At present, the Evil Demon of Fabric Manipulation is in the middle of the floor as are the vacuum and the carpet cleaner. There’s a toad carcass, a forest worth of dried leaves, several acorns, and a letter I never mailed on the floor where the desk was.

The puppies are wild with consternation.

I never move furniture. I never vacuum. And Willy is mourning the toad.

It’s my mother’s fault.

My mother sewed, vacuumed and moved furniture the way some women buy shoes or bake. It was a great comfort to her to stir everything up (Where’s the stick?) and then re-assemble it in a completely different pattern – often using the Torture Implement of Bobbinhood to whip up some curtains or table runners along the way. When she’s stressed, she vacuums. Vacuums when she’s happy. Vacuums when she’s sad. Vacuums because she needs to and vacuums because there is nothing else to do. At any one time, she owns three or four vacuum cleaners. She lusts over them in stores like I do desks (and shoes).

I spent my formative years listening to the drone of the vacuum cleaner and bruising my shins in the middle of the night.

I only move furniture around until I have found the exact perfect configuration. I’ll move it round and round for some months, maybe years, and then I find the one setup that works and there it remains until it disintegrates into a dust heap. I term it finding the spot the universe wants that piece in. The family room and the Christmas tree are always a battle. The exact perfect configuration does not accommodate the tree.  I was not happy with last year’s arrangement and so here I sit.  Completely demoralized as I lose this battle.

And. So. Here I sit. The family room is in complete disarray. I’m completely out of oomph. My foot hurts. My back hurts. And there is a dead toad lying on the carpet.

I hate being a grown-up.  I have to clean this up whether I want to or not.  And it’s going to involve the vacuum cleaner.  And I have to touch [shudder] the Beelzebub of Thread to keep from bruising my shins in the middle of the night as I stumble down here to guzzle Coca Cola.  (I never drink soda, but Loratabs provoke a need for massive quanities of Classic Coke.)

Usury and Plunder (or Bank of America Must Die)

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

A few months ago, Ann Minch posted the following Youtube video:

I felt her pain while chortling with glee. A year or so ago, Bank of America ended up with my mortgage – one of those last minute shuffles before the Great Credit Crisis of 2008 became public knowledge.

The change in my mortgage company didn’t concern me. I’ve had a Bank of America credit card for years with nary a problem.

But then, BUT THEN, there was The Incident this summer.

My card was declined at the Bob Evans. I called the number on the back of the card thoughtfully provided for just such situations, punched in my account number, and spoke to a woman in Customer Service who was very nice and assured me this wasn’t a problem – a sort of “these things happen” smiling voice on the other end of the phone. After we sorted things out it shook out that I had shorted my last payment by $2.  I offered to pay it then and there, but their billing process wouldn’t allow me to just pay the $2, I would have had to pay the $2 plus my next payment which I hadn’t gotten a bill for yet.  Ms.-Smiling-Voice-These-Things-Happen told me the $2 would be tacked onto my next bill and all was well in Credit Card Land. I was amazed, confused, and flabbergasted just enough not to ask if it wasn’t a big deal why was my card declined.

I get the new bill – they want my regular payment plus the $2 plus a $39 late fee. I’m a wee bit annoyed. Again, I call the number on the back of the card, punch in my account number, and am immediately routed to the Collections Department (not Customer Service) where Attila-the-Credit-Hun informed me that since I was late on a payment, I was charged a late fee. I told Mr.-Jerkdom-of-the-First-Order that I had made my payment in a timely manner as I had all my other payments for years and years including my mortgage payment and that accidentally shorting a payment by $2 didn’t seem to warrant a $39 late fee. Mr.-Hun-the-Jerk-of-First-Order disagreed.

TWO DOLLARS. TWO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two dollars was enough to throw me to the wolves in the Collections Department. But the story doesn’t end there. Oh no.

Several days later, I get a letter. Due to the “delinquency” on my account, they were slashing my credit line and shooting my interest rate into outer space.

I called Attila.

Attila-the-Asshole is not a reasonable human being.

In my best Scarlett O’Hara, I announced to a red sky at night that I would pay that damn card off, refinance my mortgage, and badmouth Bank of America every chance I got.  As God is my Witness, I’ll never be usuried or plundered again.

Unfortunately, it’s taking a long time to pay that card off and given the Sucky Credit Crisis, I anticipate refinancing isn’t going to be the cakewalk it was the last time, so I’ve just been stewing in my juices and occasionally glaring at the Huntington branch of Bank of America when I drive by.

I haven’t used that card for anything. I will move into the Huntington City Mission and turn tricks in 41/2 alley before I’ll use that card.

I’m thinkin’ Attila must have gotten laid, because a couple of days ago, I’m paying bills and I notice my credit line has been restored and my interest rate is back in the stratosphere (higher than it had been, but significantly lower than Attila’s spleen venting of a few months ago).

So, I’m a little less willing to turn tricks to avoid the card than I was last week, but I still don’t intend on using it. I don’t piss off easy, but when I do it can be for life. (I’ve been boycotting Dole for 25 years and I can’t remember why.)

We have a perfectly wonderful local bank where I’ve had my checking account for 25 years. They’re solvent, were solvent, and didn’t need a dime of bailout money. Why I got hooked into Chase, Citi, Bank of America and all manner of Too-Big-To-Fails is beyond my ken right now. All I know is that as soon as I can, the locals are getting all my business – mortgage, credit, retirement accounts, and any future lottery winnings.

I was too afraid of trashing my credit score to join Ann Minch in her boycott – my finances are precarious and I didn’t need something else to worry about. But I admire her. I can’t remember the exact quote, but it’s something like “a satisfied customer will tell three people, a dissatisfied customer will tell 9.”  Ann Minch went beyond that.  She not only told thousands and thousands, she stood up to their bullying and won.

Bank of America must die – hopefully at least 7 people will read this (I’ve already told two).