House in Progress Diary

I am SO difficult.

So, we continue to sally forth.

Today we awoke to a sticky kind of heat...the kind of heat that makes you wish that you could just sprawl in a kiddie pool all day long. Whoa. We COULD get a kiddie pool. There is no condo board here!

A is sketching different tile strategies for the bathroom. TILE is HARD. Not floor tile so much...we're digging that American Olean has 1" hexagon tile and other neat patterns with backing so you can install them in sheets. (Cheating, I know.) But WALL TILE.

That's a whole different story.

If you have good wall tile, go thank it before you go to bed tonight. Say, "Nice tile, nice tile" and brush your fingers along its straight, geometrically perfect grout lines.

For fun with tile, go to this site. Can you believe that this is my brand of FUN these days? :) I used to go clubbing. Now, I play with tile software.

Today, the cable man came. And went.

They're getting better at this cable thing. They CALL YOU right before they get there...it's no longer a TOTAL mystery. But you still don't know if it will be closer to 1 pm or 4 pm.

Anyway. It's hot, I'm grumpy, the cat is grumpy, the dog is confused. The cat is actually in the one A/C room but horked on the rug last night and is still brooding. Like WE CAUSED that! He is so sensitive.

The cable man shows up. And I'm sure that he is a perfectly sensible cable man, sent to do his job. He checks out where we need cable--downstairs and up. Then he goes outside and disappears.

I'm curious but have work to do. So I'm at my computer by the window when I notice the cable guy's truck in the backyard and he is setting up a ladder against the house to tack up cable. Completely opposite of the house corner where this cable needs to go!

So I stroll outside and ask him some questions. Turns out he wants to nail the thick black cable halfway up the side of the house and wrap it around to the front. Which, if you were looking at the house while walking up the sidewalk from the south, would look like the house was wearing a super cheesy pencil-thin mustache. Señor Bungalow.

"Near the roofline?" I ask. "No, too high." "Near the ground?" I plead. "No, too low." So, I sent him away. I started to give in then thought...wait! I own now! I don't want the outside of my house to look this way! So I sent him away like Queen Homeowner. And now a "specialty company" is coming next Tuesday to give us a quote on "fishing" the cable through the walls of the house. Which should be interesting because they will have to, somehow, go around the chimney.

Now. My husband is an incredibly lovely man. He already tried to tell me about the cable thing. Priced one of those little cable mini-dishes. I couldn't do it. I picture the radiation or whatever it is pulsing out of one of those things like the lightning bolts in a Flash Gordon comic. Or picture myself at 80 years old with a big cauliflower looking thing on the side of my head from exposure. It doesn't help that our neighbors in the old place had one and, everytime I walked within 20 feet of it, my cell phone shorted out with a zap. And, of course, the cauliflower thing could be from the cell phone....but that doesn't LOOK as lethal as those dishes.

BEFORE CABLE DISH

AFTER CABLE DISH

(the comb-over does nothing for the cauliflower growth)

And it was the All-Star Series tonight. Something that has to do with sports and it is important. He graciously offered to listen to it on the radio. So I did what any loving wife would do.

I sent him to his parent's air-conditioned house to watch the TV.

I am so difficult.

Posted by jeanne on July 15, 2003 at 10:24 PM (1)