Thursday, January 27, 2011

Bathing in the sink of the public restroom at McDonald's

How to Make your House Habitable in 3 Easy Steps

1. Come up with a bunch of crazy ideas and demands
2. Have an awesome (AWESOME) aunt who invites you and all four of your children to stay at her house
3. Have summertime fun in Grosse Pointe whilst awesome (AWESOME) husband sleeps on the floor and does all the work.

Voila!  End of blog.

Just kidding.

Well, I'm not kidding about having an awesome aunt (who CHANGED OUR LIVES the day she told us to stay at her real house and eat her real food and bask in the glory of her real air conditioner in her real fabulous neighborhood in Grosse Pointe Woods.  Aunt Alicia, if you are reading this, you were Jesus to me that day!) or that we abandoned Tommy.  Poor, poor Tommy, who stayed back alone, and slept on an air mattress in the living room in a house with no air conditioner (and no electricity and no running water) in the middle of July.  Who had to drive to McDonald's to eat and to "bathe" in the sink of their public restroom.  Poor Tommy, who had never lived in "the kuntry" and so was not prepared for the chorus of noises that a herd of frogs and crickets can make in the middle of the night, which you can hear quite clearly when you have to have the windows open because you have no air conditioner (and no electricity and no running water).  Who had to learn how to rewire a house because the electrical system was so f-ed up (excuse my language, but it's the truth)
that even a professional electrician was not willing to risk his life working on it.  Who ran new lines for plumbing even though he hates plumbing with the burning passion of a thousand suns.  Who had the shockingly disgusting red shag carpet (the padding of which harbored a certain order that was distinct from, but as gross as, the stench emanating from the kitchen)
removed from the west side of the house and replaced with brand new, baby-friendly, wonderfully-boring beige, upon which children can safely build lego monuments to Harry Potter... 

No, I am not kidding about any of that.  What I am kidding about is that that was the end.  Really, that was just the work that needed to be done so that we could start doing the work.  So for five days I wallowed in the joys of family whilst Tommy wallowed in the agony of narrowly-avoiding-death-by-electrocution, and when we returned, we found a house that, although a thousand miles from perfect, was totally sleepable.  We flicked a switch: lights!  We turned on the faucet: water!  We plugged in the microwave: popcorn!  What we had so easily taken for granted before, we now reveled in.  Who gives a flying fartnugget what some celebrity said to another celebrity or which purse is more awesome than the purse I already have or which professional sports team has bested which opposing professional sports team?  WE HAVE INDOOR PLUMBING!  

10 comments :

  1. My dearest hates plumbing with a passion as well, but my pocket book likes it!

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  2. Is there a Proverbs 31 man? Oh, yes, there is! This blog is not only funny, heart-wrenching and educational, it's romantic.

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  3. You are making me blush with all your kind comments tonight. You are the sweetest!

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  4. I'm so glad that he survived. Go Tommy Go! Your Auntie was wonderful to take you all in.

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  5. Doesn't it just make you love him more? I adore a hardworkin' man :) (my Tom says that I ONLY love him when he's working on the house, haha)

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  6. I just started reading your blog today and I am hooked. I went back to the beginning and I am now working my way through....I am wondering, though, what led up to your move. I want to know the decision making process....do you eventually tell us??? Are you going to make this into a book? You should!

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  7. Ditto to Heather's comments. And "fartnugget"? Seriously? Laughed out loud.

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  8. I just re-read this post, Dweej. You are too funny!!

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  9. its amazing how much you appreciate something once you've gone without for a while, we are like that when the power comes on after a long outage or if it rains just when we nearly ran out of water in our tanks.

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