almost ready for saturday!

the contractors promise to be done today! that only leaves me with needing to clean the whole house, replace a toilet, hang blinds, decorate the whole house, replace a porch light and a living room ceiling light, rake the back yard, and put crap in the attic. OBVIOUSLY i will get all this done before Saturday at 8:30 pm.

on the plus side, when i wake up early, there's west wing on tv! west wing! i do love it. today was the episode where they hire ainsley hayes. this is mom's favorite episode, because there's just a ton of witty dialogue. she especially likes the line where leo points out that she has an interesting conversational style, she says it's a nervous condition, and they have the following exchange:

ainsley: it's a nervous condition.
leo: i used to have one of those.
ainsley: how did yours manifest itself?
leo: i drank a lot of scotch.
ainsley: i get sick when i drink too much!
leo: i get drunk when i drink too much.

honestly, i know typed out it looks very flat, but spoken, it is HYSTERICAL. honestly, if we talked about getting drunk more often, mom and i would quote that all the time.

ok! time for me to be late to work! but get ready. saturday is waffle christmas.

my house is SO COLD.

the myriad "costs" of having a bathroom remodeled include:

• three different tubes of caulk, none of which will work.
• the band new shower and tub, which are pretty great!
• realizing that telling your contractor that you don't want sliding doors on your shower, means that you have to EXPLICITLY tell them that they should provide and install a shower rod. if you do not do so, you better thank your lucky stars that you had a super long tension rod and a shower curtain from your grandma's apartment.
• your house will smell odd for two days becasue they will have to solder copper pipes.
• your contractors will alert you to the fact that your toilet is leaking, so guess what you have to replace now! a toilet!
• a toilet costs about a hundred bucks, and i watched a great video on bobvila.com which very clearly outlines how to install a toilet. i think i can do it! as long as i borrow my mother's wet/dry vacuum and a hacksaw and a level.
• the betting pool on how badly i will fuck up installing a toilet starts at $5.
• your house will be super messy, because contractors don't care about the new carpet that they, you know, installed, so you'd think they'd remember but they don't.
• tiles.
• grout.
• don't forget that it's SANDED grout.
• a linen cabinet for the bathroom, becasue it turns out that unless you install your sink/vanity from the start, you'll never get a super long vanity that will stretch across your whole bathroom wall. which is ok, i guess, because a linen cabinet is only somewhere between $150 and $200, whereas a new long sink is really expensive!
• and don't forget that hole in the ceiling of the room below the bathroom, where the leak is, which is how we found out that the stupid bathroom was leaking in teh first place! we're going to have to replace that patch!
• also, the heat's not on, becasue the contractor keeps having to open windows and doors when he sets off the smoke alarms. so it's FREEZING.

however, i finally have gotten to start taking showers again. and that is pretty amazing.

would anyone care if i just never posted again?

since obviously i have no energy for posting.

he's an idiot.

the cat just jumped on top of the tv (approximately 3.5, maybe 4 feet off the ground). sat there for a considerable amount of time. finally, decided to start to reach for the top of the window next to the tv (at least 5.5 feet off the ground).

that kitty fell to earth like he was made out of STONE.

and then he glared at me like, "woman, WHY?!"

try again!

i can do this! yeah. i'm all over it. so after discussions with the young man, various friends, my aunt, my uncle, my stepdad and my mom, we all kind of agreed that i should just go ahead and redo the bathroom now. since it has to be done at some point. let's go ahead and do it. especially becuase i'm super horrible at caulking a bathroom apparently. this will involve another trip to teh home depot to return the lame-o unused caulk and get the bad ass-ought to work this time-caulk, AND a call to the contractor, AND two grand! siiiiiiiiiigh.

i'm watching an old fairly oddparents and timmy's parents hand out advice for halloween! like "right clicking on the mouse gives you a variety of options while editing documents" and "always say please and thank you when receiving bad halloween advice." WHY didn't i do that! that would have been hilarious. instead we watched drag me to hell and i handed out kit kats and reese's peanut butter cups.

there was something else i wanted to talk about but i can't remember. so i'm going to go take a bath and go to sleep. sleeping is good for me.

screwed up!

remember how i'm supposed to be posting every day? boy did that fail. i get tired/busy. see, i'll tell you.

• scraped out my shower
• recaulked my shower
• failed at recaulking my shower - the leak is still there
• had minor panic attack over needing to pay for a new bathroom
• cleaned kitchen
• watched season 1 of true blood
• watched iron man
• reread the twilight series and had a series of feminist, malicious impassioned speeches over the character of bella
• went to a wedding
• listened to an electrician tell me that until i reseal my basement, which may involve digging up the foundation of my house, we'll never know where the water is coming from in my breaker box
• making a new kind of dip, which was quite well received
• went throguh an enormous pile of papers and bills and either threw them out or paid them
• watched an inordinate amount of football
• thought about christmas presents
• thought about waffle xmas! the best party to hit thanksgiving weekend!
• helped to organize and carry off the first mass for our new parish! it went great! i shook the bishop's hand and made two pans of brownies!
• i went to guster's lost and gone forever tour
• i almost punched a fourteen year old at the guster lost and gone forever tour
• i visited with sarah at the lost and gone forever tour!

So you can see. There was lots to do! And more coming!

the trend of waking up early continues, or, why is 7 am so appealing to me right now?!

if i don't turn off my alarm, it automatically snoozes for me, repeating its annoying alarm every five minutes. so if i'm downstairs in the living room, and don't tear upstairs like a maniac, i can just listen to it chirping away! luckily the cat raced upstairs for me.