Kitchenesque

We’re renovating our kitchen the old fashioned way – by calling in favors from friends and relatives, shopping for items on sale, and hoping that we don’t have the design vision of spider monkeys. It’s going well. There are several holes in the wall, the ceiling isn’t as crooked as we thought, and most of the outlets are actually wired-in. Also, half of the tile is up on the backsplash and we finally figured out how to wire the pendant light (pendant here referring to the little-known meaning from its Latin translation: fixture which is assembled by the spider monkeys who have more decorating taste than you.)

The electrical wiring in our house is like an artistic journey of expression. The wires are connected in a seemingly unpredictable pattern that can only be the work of an artist trying to articulate his confused mental state by making those who wish to run new wiring in our house equally confused. To this artist I can only say: you’ve succeeded brilliantly.

We began our journey toward a modern kitchen in the attempt to eradicate from it the fifty year-old lineoleum flooring with which the house came. We planned to rip it out and put down new flooring. We heard various comments on reconsidering the fate of this floor by people who had some kind of sad affection for old floors. Some thought it reminded them of the floors they grew up with during the Pleistocene era. There were those that found the unusual pattern of deeply impregnated stains of past generations unique and interesting. Still others thought that, like some garish old platter they saw on Antiques Roadshow, our floor must have value due to its vintage status.

When I called the Antiques Roadshow I was surprised to discover that vintage flooring is not exactly a field in which they employ an expert. It must, therefore, be an emerging field so all of you youngsters who don’t know what to do with your lives, take up antique floor valuing. You can right the wrongs of your parents and grandparents who didn’t invest in Microsoft in 1975 by lunging head-first into this sure to be lucrative field.

Anyone who is seriously considering a career in assessing antique floors can come on by my house and value my vintage floor because it’s still there under new vinyl. Although we attempted to rip it out, several hours, various scrapers and the removal of a mere two square feet later, we decided it was best to treat the floor like the lost paintings of masters and go over the top with something cheap and simple. One day when the vintage floor field is hot, our floor will be rediscovered and make bucketloads of money for whomever owns this house. This fortune might be useful in coaxing someone with both an electrician’s license and an art degree to sort out the electrical expressions to which we’ve added our unique signature.

Why Is It So Warm In Here And What Am I Doing In This Handbasket?

I love technology. It has really made my life full. My husband and I still have the same amount of obligations, mind you. we still have to cook, clean, work, and maintain the yard. Now we have amazing gadgets which allow us to do all of these tasks in less time. The offshoot of this is that they cost more money than had we done our daily chores through the time-tested methods of days of old. To get this money we have to work more, which means we have less free time which means we have to simplify tasks. Somehow, in the end, we are coming up short but, thanks to technology, we don't perceive that. That's the joy of technology -- it doesn't make your life easier, it just makes you unaware of how much easier your life isn't.

As our income has grown, so have our bills. Or is that: as our bills grow, so has our income? Now we not only need a cell phones but land line phone service, and high-speed internet (after all, we do have limited time so since we're being paid for our time, we have to pay more to conserve time). It's a vicious circle.

I have to be available to family and friends 24/7. This is especially important if a friend's car won't start in a parking lot on the other end of town while I'm in the bathroom at Target. Of course I, and the rest of the bathroom patrons, should know about this right away so I can call my husband to have him tell me "she must have flooded it" only to have her call me back as I wash my hands to tell me that it started after she waited a few minutes. Immediate access to me is important because, should I be unavailable, my friend would be required to contact less good friends who are either at home or provide a cell-phone emergency service such as I wouldn't provide in this scenario.

In our house, the technology question has become polarized around the issue of television use. Since our time is so darn valuable, we can't simply subscribe to a cable service or, for that matter, plop an antennae on the roof so we can access all of network TV and the joys it has to offer. No, since we don't subscribe to the concept of reality TV as high entertainment, we must subscribe to something. Since we work so hard we can't simply subscribe to nothing -- we deserve more, right? (Homework: see how many advertisements in various media tell you that you deserve their products.) And since that something must be diverse and interesting, it should come in the form of a home satellite.

Upon evaluating satellite TV's offerings based upon our woefully lacking standards we decided it was better. Therefore, the fee for it was slightly higher. Since we're not always ready to plunk down on the sofa and watch whatever might be on at the time, we have to record our choice of programs to watch when our ever dwindling supply of spare time gives us a few moments. Since recording TV allows us to watch shows at our leisure, we are also able to zoom past commercials and save ourselves even more time. However, the process of recording programs is fraught with difficulty, including finding a tape and programing the VCR AGAIN, so we must subscribe to TiVO. This digital recording system costs slightly more than regular satellite TV, which costs slightly more than cable, which costs slightly more than the roof antennae, which is more expensive than simply watching TV using the electricity which would have cost less had we simply chucked the whole TV idea and invested the $295 it would cost in bonds. This is all because time is valuable.

One of these days I'm going to wander off into the woods and live on bark and berries. Before I do that, maybe I should find a bark and berry harvester on ebay.

The Dangers of Pencils

Fate has dealt me a hand of two artistic kids. They love to draw and are pretty decent at it which is further evidence that I am not their real mother. They'll draw on anything but are especially enticed by interesting looking paper. They crowd around available paper like other kids would the Tickle-Me Elmo display during the 2000 Christmas season. There have been small fights and struggles over the custody of particularly long grocery store receipts, the clean white back of which might inspire a really long comic strip. This hoarding of paper products has continued despite the fact that we have reams upon reams of computer paper. Apparently, the receipt paper heralds formerly unconsidered possibilities.

The quantity of drawings my children produce results in primal screams from entire forests when one of them picks up a pencil. To my youngest, drawing is like playing with toys. She draws a scene, interacts with it (complete with sound effects) and then draws subsequent scenes. Inevitably, the final scene involves some kind of explosion.

My oldest is thirteen and loves to draw her typical teen attitude in picture form. All of the things she might be afraid to say aloud are pumped into drawings of surly teens insulting the casual observer. Born an animal lover, she used to draw puppies and horses but now draws a variety of mythical creatures including and especially fire-breathing dragons. Symbolic? She's 13.

While these kids can depict a variety of life-like objects on paper in recognizable form, they cannot legibly scrawl out their names. The irony of this is not spared on me, who can't draw anything except stick figures, but can manage legible handwriting. My next-door-neighbor whose kids are artistic has said the same of her children.

I am still amazed by some of the pictures thrust in front of me by my progeny considering that I can't really draw except through a long process of deliberate copying involving an overhead projector and a mound of tracing paper. I can craft, sure, but that's not art. While my kids seem artistic, I guess that makes me craftastic.

I have heard that these kinds of kids might be more visual-spatial in how they think about the world and that this trait is often shared by related children. It could be true. However, I concur with another of my neighbor's statements about her artistic kids -- they were born with pencils in their hands. That would certainly have explained the c-sections.

They have said that every decision it is possible to make could spawn an entire universe -- that every decision has been made in some alternate universe. Peanut Butter Captain Crunch or Frankenberry? Poof, an extra universe in which my tastebuds actually prefer the Frankenberry splits off from this one and all of the decisions I make in that universe are based upon my berry over peanut butter preference. Maybe, in that universe, I would have bought the Thunderbird instead of the Monza (yeah, I know) as my first car.

What if this alternate universe theory also involves drawings? What if every drawing spawns an entire universe revolving around that drawing? Then are whole societies born on the premise of merhorses or orange people with elastic tentacles erupting from their heads; entire social and political systems which revolve around the conflicts between giant sentient robotic forms of kelp and dinosaur-like insects? Does that make us the absurd form of some child's imagination that was looked upon by some mother who chuckled at her child's drawing and then stuck it up on her refrigerator?

Popeular

The Pope is dying. Apparently there are people holding vigil for him and praying for him. In the Catholic faith, you die and are judged. You go to heaven, hell or purgatory which I remember being described to me as sort of the waiting room for heaven. Prayer is supposed to help the dead get out of the waiting room. Prayer for the immortal soul of the Pope seems kind of redundant but maybe he scores bonus points. He should because who else has a straight shot at the pearly gates? If there were a line or a maximum occupancy, he's probably going to be a little further on the queue than the rest of us.

My husband starting going on about how he moves up one rung on the ladder to the papacy. I tried to explain to him that having been baptized Catholic as a baby and never practicing might be a problem. So might our marriage. So might the billion or so people who are more religious and devout than him. I mean, I was a practicing Catholic for much of my childhood and that meant I might be a little closer to it than him. Then he just HAD to point out my gender as a problem. Hey, it didn't stop Pope Joan.

So I guess we aren't exactly top choices.

I could have been a nun. I should have pointed this out to him. Yep. I actually considered it when I was about eight. Of course, I was always taught that God called people to serve him and I would need to pass that crucial test to determine whether or not I wanted to be one. Then I got worried. What if I missed the call. Or, worse, what if I actually got the call.

"Hello?"
"Hi, this is God."
"What?"
"You know, God, the almighty. I was just sitting up here in heaven going over my list of earthly helpers and discovered I had an opening. So, I thought I'd give you a call and let you know that I could use a nun."
"I'm sorry, who did you want to talk to?" Panic. Panic. Panic. " I think you've got the wrong number."
"I don't know about that. My phone service is pretty good..."
"Listen, I've got to go. My parents want me to do the dishes."
Click.

So, was it that simple? Did you get a booming voice raining down from the sky or did you have this conversation in your head because, either way, my mother was going to think I was insane.

"Wait now, tell me again...what, precisely, happened?"
"Well, God called me. It's nothing definite because he might have gotten the wrong number but, yeah, he called."
"Like on the telephone?"
"No, more like in my head. I guess there's and opening and my name came up. So, when can you take me to the convent?"