Hi, Everyone. Welcome to WYFP. Before we go any further, would you mind rendering this in petroglyphs on the nearest wall?:
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
Okay, this’ll be short. I’m writing this while taking a break from the latest round of Fixing Stupid. Kossack exlrrp came up with that term for the work he is constantly doing to his house. The previous owner of his house was – hmm – “creative” I guess would be a good word, and exlrrp frequently regales members of Saturday Morning Home Repair (because having houses that are in good repair gives us the time and energy to help elect more and better Democrats. Or something like that…) with horror stories of house-related stuff. Some of us instantly adopted the term as perfect for what we do on the weekends.
My current project is scraping the surface off of our dining room ceiling. It’s been on the list of projects for a while. The previous owner set down his crack pipe long enough to apply about a ½ an inch of crappily-textured plaster to the ceiling. This surface has gradually cracked and sagged until I was afraid that a huge chunk was going to land on someone’s plate during a dinner party, so a couple of weeks ago, I climbed up on a chair and just yanked down a huge chunk of it. To MrCJB’s frequent consternation, this is how many projects around our place start out.
“Honey, I made a big hole in the wall. You wanna check it out?”
“Did you notice that I started removing that board in the bathroom?”
‘What? Oh, I thought that if I took the door off, it would be easier for you to paint.”
“I can explain that pile of plaster!”
Anyway, once the initial chunk was down, the rest could only follow. Fortunately, a lot of it is coming down fairly easily because it was put up so poorly. This is frequently the case with the projects attempted by the guy we fondly refer to as “Senor Half-Assed.” Everything he did was half-assed. Everything. One time my husband was replacing the frame surrounding the window in the bathroom. He called me over and handed me a tidy little square of folded paper. Cocaine. Idiot boy had walled up his stash. “How high do you have to be to wall up your stash?” asks MrCJB. Found another one while pulling some electrical cable over some ductwork. Down falls this little bottle that had obviously held something illegal.
These instances explain the place. There are things that indicate bursts of frenetic activity. Then, half the time, it just stops. Whatever the project was obviously just - ended. As though the plug was pulled or the attention span snapped.
Our neighbors tell us stories of work lamps and power tools suddenly being powered up at 3:00 in the morning. Naked people running around the neighborhood. A friend of Senor Half-Assed ran out of wood for the woodstove, so he chopped a hole in the living room floor and burned the wood. At least it won’t be a surprise when we take up the carpeting.
Alright, I've gotta go and juggle the various blades and chisels I've got piled up on the ladder. I'm looking forward to the appearance that the tin tiles are going to give the room when they’re installed. Perhaps that’s the silver lining to this week’s FP. No matter what we do around here, it’s better than the way it was. Maybe I should be grateful that dude was such an idiot.