The Chronicles of Marge

House Update: Summer 2011

So a few Saturdays ago—you know, the one that was 104 degrees and therefore made most of humanity incapable of movement—Jason and I sought refuge from the heat in the coolest place in our house: the basement. I thought we were going down there to organize the stuff we have but never use (and of which I should be ashamed), and, granted, we did a little of that. But lo and behold, I turned my back for five minutes and Jason had some box cutters and a pry bar in hand and was ripping up the edge of the carpet.

Back story: our basement mirrors the size of our upstairs, but only 400 square feet of the basement are considered finished. We’ve been in this house for almost 5 years and have largely ignored this “livable” area because it always seemed a bit gross and unappealing—aged carpet, yellow walls, unattractive ceiling tiles, windows that don’t open. As depressing as the basement may sound, it's a good representation of one of the main reasons we bought our house: by and large, the house was kind of depressing-looking and no one else in Durham wanted to buy a sad and unappealing house on a busy street in a sidewalk-free area of town. 

And that makes me think of the show House Hunters, which Jason and I watch a lot. Actually, Jason would revise that statement to say that his wife falls asleep during a lot of House Hunters, but what do you except when it’s past 9 p.m. and I’ve had a glass of wine, dude? Anyway, we are always amazed at the wish lists that folks have, particularly American buyers. They all want everything brand new and stainless steel. They want these giant bathrooms that I’m convinced they don’t realize they’ll have to clean one day. They want giant master bedrooms, which I guarantee will be used 80% of the time for sleeping and 20% of the time for collecting piles of dirty laundry. Lots of folks want a pool, and for that, you might as well write Pine Needles, Acorns, and Drowning Bugs at the top of your house hunting wish list because that’s what you are going to get unless you add Hot Young Pool Boy to the list and then, of course, by all means GET THE FREAKIN’ POOL AND INVITE ME OVER. And finally, everyone on House Hunters wants a tray ceiling—or rather they see the tray ceiling in the house and have a structural spiritual awakening thinking it means their house is well built and what not, to which I say, DIAGONAL SUBFLOORING, fools. (And yes, I realize I’ve probably offended most of my readership because you either have a tray ceiling or you have no idea what diagonal subflooring is and what that means in terms of the structure of your house, but still, The Chronicles are about life as Marge knows it and not about your tray ceilings and hot pool boys.) Anyway, apart from a low price, Jason and I had only three things on our house wish list: (1) the house needed a big sunny yard for the growing of tomatoes; (2) the house needed a full basement that could facilitate woodworking and give refuge to power tools and a Vogue magazine collection; and (3) the house needed to have good bones but otherwise look like a piece of shit so we wouldn’t feel bad about tearing it apart and putting it back together.

Needless to say, we got exactly what we wanted.

So back to the 104-degree day, which concerns Point 2 but pertains largely to Point 3 on our wish list...Jason and I ended up removing 400 square feet of carpet, 400 square feet of foam padding, and 400 square feet of tiles that had their heyday back in a middle school cafeteria built in 1972. We then discovered the concrete foundation of our house. It all looked something like this:

And then we went further, and it looked something like this:

Yes, we cut out some drywall JUST BECAUSE WE COULD.

But then we discovered something else. As Jason was removing some of the baseboards, he came across what every homeowner fears: a colony of termites, which was obviously not on our wish list. So instead of getting a new roof—which we still need to get sooner rather than later—we had to pony up what amounted to a mortgage payment to remove these little bastards from the premises, and from here on out, we’ll be paying, in essence, a yearly HOA fee to keep them from returning.

But at the end of the day, we can’t complain. If we had not be so hot aside or if we had an affinity for nasty old carpet, we might never have found the termites. And to be honest, Jason and I are just excited to be back at one of the things we do best: tearing shit up. It’s much easier than putting it all back together, although after you do put it all back together, you have the satisfaction of saying, damn, we’re good. And that looks something like this:

And if that seems unimpressive, consider that when we started it looked like this: 

And not only did we do it all by ourselves, WE ARE STILL MARRIED.

 

Cast Off: A Conversation

Marge: I cannot get over how small your arm is now. That is not the arm I fell in love with.

Jason: I'm going to remember you said that.

Marge: I didn't mean it like that.

Jason: Well, that's not the face I fell in love with either.

I guess I deserved that. 

And for those of you who lack the ability to read between the lines, yes, Jason got his cast off on Thursday. It was an excellent day. Granted, he can't bear any weight on his arm for several weeks, but now I no longer have to wash his armpits, praise the lord. The kitchen is also still on hold, but for anyone who cares or might want to put in an order for the fall (and I am totally serious when I say that), we found some men one day and had them carry this in for us after it sat in the driveway for 2 months.

 

 Let's take a closer look.

  

That's right, all of the countertops are in. All were made by Jason, so go ahead and BOW DOWN now, people.

Winter Hiatus

Those of you who know me well know that February is not my best month. Those of you who don't know me well: educate yourself. So SAD has derailed The Chronicles yet again. Also derailing The Chronicles: a household decision to quit baking any types of desserts at home. THAT MEANS NO CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES OR BROWNIES. IN FEBRUARY. WHEN I AM DEPRESSED. Thus I have lost the will and power to type. This may be the dumbest decision Jason and I have ever made, but it was a decision made in an effort to be healthier people—physically healthier people. Mentally healthier? Yeah, I'm not so sure about that.

My current failure to write has also meant that I didn't share any thoughts on the Season 6 opener of Lost last week. I'm not even going to promise to stick to that because we know how committed I was last year, but I am not to blame completely for my early failings this season. The show itself has kept me from writing about it. I've been so wrapped up in the possibility of alternate realities that I can't stop thinking about them. Let me first admit that I am not even smart enough to try to explain how one might actually exist, but I've been contemplating my own alternate reality for a week now, and I am pretty certain it would be more interesting than the reality I am currently in because the alternate one most definitely involves a white spaceship and my imaginary childhood friend named Laura whose house you could see through a stain-glassed apple that hung in my bedroom window. And guess what her house kind of looked like? Jacob's cabin. I am not even kidding. One further thought on Lost: Kate Austen needs to leave Sawyer the hell alone. I've been communicating with Juliet in my alternate reality as well, and she has a lone message for Kate: BACK OFF BITCH.

And to make this entry about more themes than anyone could possibly care about, here's what Jason and I did the weekend that it snowed. It is entitled A Three-Step Process to Laying a Floor and Almost Leaving Your Spouse.

Step 1: Ignorance

 

You lay down the first three courses and are all, "Damn, floating floors are a breeze. We'll finish this bad boy in an hour." And then you get down on the floor in your thermal underwear and show the world how totally pleased you are with yourself.  

Step 2: Fetal Position

 

This is when you realize that you might not have enough tiles to finish because you've been cutting the hell out of them so you can work around cabinets and FATHER OF GOD getting the rows against cabinets and the final wall to fit and lock into place is like trying to use the toilet successfully at your in-law's house. Nearly impossible to do. And at this point all you want to do is eat a meal but your other half is like, "We are finishing this now, woman, and don't even reach for those chips," and you curl up in a ball while trying to figure out how many more eighths of an inch you need to fit this piece of tile around the wine cabinet and you wonder if that wine cabinet was such a good idea after all, and then you quickly remember that is was because...

Step 3: The Spoils of Victory

 

I think the photo does not do it justice, but this is our kitchen floor. It is eco-friendly cork. It is lovely. And you can slide across it from one end to the other while wearing socks, which, of course, is all I really ever wanted out of a floor.

For Vern: Not About Dancing

My sister Vern complained over Thanksgiving that all I wrote about anymore was dancing, and I was so flattered that she read my Web site that I promised then and there to write more about Marge Life Events. But do you know what has happened to my life in the last few weeks? Work. And lots of it. So I haven't written about anything other than dancing and then only under duress and late at night on Tuesdays with the help of a tall glass (or two) of sweet tea, which then keeps me awake at night, and I only wish I could just blame the tea. But I can't because a few weeks ago I developed an imaginary world in which I like to spend my time. This world seems to be a lot like 10th century Scotland—or at least what I pretend 10th century Scotland would have been like. Actually, it's quite like Middle Earth but I felt I needed to transfer my life as a Rohirrim into something a bit more realistic, so I went with 10th century Scotland, where I've already saved my clan of people from famine and war and...wait. This is starting to sound a bit strange once outside of my head. I think it best for me to stop because this could get really embarrassing, and I am an adult and I do need to figure out more constructive ways of dealing with my life issues, which largely involve a growing feeling of doom about the state of our environment (yes, global warming is real people) and trying to determine if it is indeed possible to overdose on fiber, which over Thanksgiving led me to discover, while looking through the medicine cabinet at my parents' house, that Fleet enemas actually have a shelf life—surprising, I know. So mom and dad, yes and for the love of god, please get rid of the household enemas lest some future guest declines to eat dad's extra-hearty, guaranteed to have a bowel movement within 4 hours pancakes and decides to find relief through alternate means because no one wants to know about the consequences of using an expired enema.

And just so I don't end an entry to The Chronicles with the word "enema" and make my mother and father really proud of their eldest, I'll leave you with an illustration as to the other Time Suck in my life that has kept me away from the keyboard. It is this and it is entitled VICTORY IN OUR TIME:

 

See those cabinets? They are BOLTED INTO STUDS HELL YEAH. And to top it off, the really attractive one in the corner that you really can't see but, trust me, houses the most beautiful lazy Susan in the world was built from scratch by my husband WITH HIS BARE HANDS. Ladies, he is all mine.

We've Only Just Begun

The kitchen destruction began over a week ago, and folks, this is no joke. I think a lot of people don't understand what it means when we say we are redoing the kitchen. Most folks think of a paint job, some new hardware, and maybe a shiny-ass granite counter top, and voila! Kitchen remodeled. And of course, Most Folks (and trust me, most of you are included in that group) imagine that we've hired a professional member of Four Inches of Ass Crack While on the Job to do the work for us. But Most Folks are dead wrong. Neither Jason nor I were brought up by parents who ever paid anyone else to do anything. I mean, where is the excitment in that? I think my parents decided to forgo family vacations to exotic places like Disney World because raising small children in a house without staircase railings was much more of an adventure and cost a lot less money. And for the family Mathes: why not go ahead and solve all of your children's possible lifelong bathroom insecurities at a young age and skip indoor plumbing altogether. Yeah, if you can squat in tick-infested woods in the middle of the night, you can go to the bathroom anywhere.

Also, neither Jason nor I believe in doing anything halfway, which means that there are no cowards living in the Casa Mathes. Just crazies. Behold:

When I got home from work last Friday, I could tell that Jason was nervous. We had talked about studs and subflooring, but he was afraid he had gone too far and that I might construe this as an "Irreconcilable Difference" and file some papers and leave him with the house in its current state because why the hell would I want to learn to rewire the kitchen by myself? But alas, I walked through the door and was immediately reminded of my childhood, and I called my mother that evening and thanked her for bringing her children up in a construction zone. Little did she or my father know then how it would condition me for my adult life. Because right now, all I really want to do is curl up in a special cover and sit on the kitchen floor, surrounded by old nails and splinters of wood, while The Carpenter's "We've Only Just Begun" plays in the background, because, really, this feels like home, and I might as well get used to it, because this may be my life for the foreseeable future.

Deer and Dishwashers

Sitting here having a really dead moment at work. Not actually thinking about death or the large-ass dead deer in the bike lane that I had to maneuver around on my way to work this morning, which caused me to be all, "Oh my gosh, that is gross." But then it made me think about supper.

Anyway, it also reminded me of the story my sister Kat once told of driving on the interstate through the Deep South—Mississippi or Alabama or somewhere similar and desolate—and witnessing a man who had stopped in the median and was skinning a dead deer that had been hit by a car. I shit you not. These people exist (and considering the fact that my dad brought home a dead fox in the trunk of his car once means that I'm also RELATED to these crazy fools. I can just see the headlines now: Woman on Bike With Dead Deer Strapped to Handlebars Pleads Genetics in Case of Misdemeanors Involving the Removal of Roadkill from the Highway).

So what's new, you might ask? Not much. I haven't seen the sun since Sunday—it is Thursday now. And although it has been pretty balmy out for December, I feel like my vitamin D level has dropped to an all-time low and will require a vacation in the Caribbean to recover. Or the arrival of spring, which is the more likely option.

The other news: the kitchen remodel has begun. I don't even think I should call what we are doing a remodel—I mean, where do the thin lines between renovate, remodel, and DESTROY AND REBUILD exist? Yeah, this will be a phoenix project for sure—or at least we hope something great will arise from the ashes. It may also begin the waltz down the aisle of divorce for me and Jason. I know, I shouldn't joke about divorce (and if you are worried or hopeful, please note that we aren't getting one and never will—as my mother so thoughtfully reassured my childhood self on more than one occasion, "Your father and I will never get a divorce; we can't afford it," yes my mind is at ease now, mother), but nothing puts the topic on the conversation radar quite like disconnecting your dishwasher from the In-Sink-Erator and ending up with a vomit-type liquid that smells like decomposing intestines on your kitchen floor. Yeah, we wondered why the defunct dishwasher would spontaneously fill up with a puddle of gray, putrid fluid, and we now know where that came from. Give us a couple of months, and that accursed garbage disposal will end up where the dishwasher now resides: In Our Driveway.

I don't know why, but there's something rather comforting and nostalgic about broken appliances taking up residence in the yard—wait. I know, it reminds me of my childhood. Thanks mom and dad.