Our Deep, Dark and Dank Secret

Enter the unfinished part of our basement and you will find a colossal mess. It's a maze of soon to be used baby gear, tools, random household objects and where many things go to die. It's also the place you can typically find my husband if you cannot find him anywhere else in the house. When all attempts to call him go unheard all you have to do is descend the steps, open the partly broken door and there he is in all his hidden attempt at a man-cave glory.

Typically, there is only the eerie glow of the computer screen and the blinking lights of the router to light the way. All else is encased in darkness. Here you will find H pouring through his emails, downloading such classic tunes as Vanilla Ice's 'Ice, Ice, Baby' from iTunes and reading page after page of Fantasy Sports (baseball and football) websites. Facebook addiction is also included. Notice the giant trash can? It's the "to-be-shredded" pile. We is organized, no?

A common sight near the keyboard after a long day at another keyboard. The bottle cap to a consumed bottle of beer. How I envy that bastard! Blue Moon Pale Ale...I miss you....

I often wonder if it is the close proximity to his tools that makes H feel all warm and comfy down there in the dank basement as he toils at his fantasy football league and yammers away on his cell phone talking smack to his friends. The phrase, "Dude, he is so your boy!" can often be heard coming from here.

This area of the house is my secret shame. Until I had a laptop I had to work down there. It was a bloody nightmare. My stuff was constantly "re-organized" and sent to live in some lost world half the time. I seldom venture into this area unless I really have to and even then I make it as short a visit as possible. H, however, can spend countless hours dwelling in what I can only describe as his sad, little man cave.

This blog blast has been brought to you by Bill Me Later (enter to win the I Want My Man Cave contest here!) and PBN.

Edgar Allan Poe and Warren G Collide. In my basement.

I am crouched in a corner of the house, my laptop balanced on my knee caps. I figure if I stay in this spot and type quietly enough everyone will forget I exist and I can escape the onslaught of January cleaning that is H.

Days.

Days have gone by and my house has systematically grown more chaotic and messier with each passing second. Mix tapes from 1993 have been unearthed and dear God must I admit it... they have been played. Cathy Dennis anyone? Plastic margarita glasses from parties that were eons ago rolled along the basement floor as H lugged bag after bag of detritus out of the room. Somehow we still have too much stuff. Do we really own all those board games? When did we acquire that many DVDs and brands of car wash soap? Is that Diet Coke from the party four years ago? Because that is the last time I remember buying cans of DC.Should they be stored side by side or should we just buy a whole new shelving system all together?

H went with the later. Excellent (note the drips of sarcasm oozing off this word). I knew he would. Yesterday, just as I was beginning to feel better from the sludgy crud of mucus that encrusted me. I had also stopped reeling from the mess that is Christmas taken down, when H brought in the new shelves. People, the man woke up at 6in the morning to buy these shelves. He means business. Boxes lay around the entrance to the downstairs in a fashion that OSHA would not approve of. I was lethargically fingering holiday garland and red ribbons while he muttered about closet space and DIY projects that involved tiny Alice in Wonderland type doors being constructed in the den. I had to step in despite myself. I loathe this type of cleaning.

This type of cleaning is more than that. It is a PROJECT. It is dirty, time consuming and only results in many wasted hours of me reading journals chocked full of poems with titles like, 'The Blood Tells All' and the ever original, 'Young Heart'. An amateur Poe I so wanted to be. Then H gets mad, yells at me like a Drill Sargent to get back to work and focus on the task at hand, and I'm left in a sea of old history papers and Warren G recordings to sift through. After that I get ferociously hungry and eat some old candy I find in the mixing bowls in our cupboards (dictators can't see through steel), I add in some port wine cheese log leftovers and some butterfly crackers to tide me over and I slowly will return to work. I swear.

Now on Day Four of this mass cleaning. Boxes that were stored upstairs have gone downstairs. Boxes that were downstairs have gone upstairs. Boxes that were once treasured have been trashed and the wooden community drinking trough from the Philippines remains in the house. Damn! So do the matching drink cozies. My 1996 mix tape with Ronald Reagan on the cover does not. Do I feel like the house is cleaner? I'm not sure. I still have some old Styrofoam cups (who bought those?!) to deal with and four unused dog costumes to bemoan.

A Typical $900 Sunday Afternoon

Our house was pretty quiet yesterday until just after my post-run shower. See, there was this leak in the tub. The faucet. It leaked. Non-stop. All day, everyday. I would walk by it in the morning and find that H had stuffed towels around it to stop the drip, drip, drip, drip sound that was apparently driving him mad. It was like weevils in the brain to him. He could not abide it. It kept him up at night. It drove him to distraction. Me? I never heard a thing.

He casually mentioned to me over breakfast yesterday that he would be going to the hardware store to fix this leak. "A $5 or $10 job." he said. I agreed and off he went. Then as I was about to blow dry my hair I heard it. The first bit that would be a string of swear words. He was cussing out the pipes. I went back to diverting T.D. from using too much mousse on her own hair and blocked her ears with the sounds of NPR, when I heard a clang and more swearing. This time it was followed by, "Hon, I think we need to call a plumber." Oh! Suddenly it is a 'we' thing. Insert my own swear words here. "Why?" I asked with bated breath. "Because I just broke some pipes. I need you to turn on all the faucets in the house NOW!" He bellowed.

OK. First? I had on no pants. All the shades were up too. Should I really be running wild in my house like that? No. But when I broached that with him all I got was some muttering about it being my fault if the house flooded. Right. I turned on all the faucets. If my neighbors see my white butt so be it. I'm saving the house right? Then I yanked out the phone book and walked upstairs just as T.D. tried to fix the pipes herself. H looked at me and stated, "I need to cut a hole in our bedroom wall." I gulped. A hole? Oh sweet baby Jesus! A hole in the wall! Exposed pipes would greet us each morning when we woke. Is this really necessary? Can't we just call a plumber? H would not relent. Out came a saw as he and I (with great regret) moved the furniture to make room for tools and the holes debris (gasp!). He knocked out small pieces with a hammer at first. Dry wall crumbled and dust puffed out into the air. My stomach lurched and I winced. I could not look, yet I was frozen in place as the beautiful cocoa colored wall became another home improvement project. I retreated to busy T.D. She was intrested in straightening her hair with the Chi.

Then I heard it again. Swearing. I looked down and H declared, "Well I've broken two pipes." He lay on his back on the floor. A man defeated. I groaned and came down the stairs to survey the new damage. Ugh. It was more than I could bear. I put the phone book in front of him and gave him the phone. "It's what we need to do. You know it is the right thing. Hon, you are good at real estate investing, but electrical and plumbing is not your forte. Just make the call." Head hung in shame and defeat H called our local plumber. After it was all settled that the plumber would indeed come by H looked at me and said, "I feel emasculated." I patted him on the leg and said, "That's fine. Now wait for the plumber I'm going to the grocery store."

Three hours and $900 later with two plumbers and two traffic stopping/blocking plumbing trucks it was fixed. No more leak and with new hardware in the tub. They both made sure to tell me that they would have done the same things that H had done. Broken pipes and all. Manufacturer defect and old-age and all that. I just smiled. Thanks boys, but the man's not in trouble. When I told H this he smiled like a little boy. "They did? Awww." He seemed so proud. He was almost there! He could have fixed it on his own he declared. I just gave him THAT look. Discussion closed with one request. My request? That the hole in the wall (now bigger) would take precedence over my bathroom (STILL not fixed by the way Internets). I NEED IT FIXED THIS WEEK not 20 months from now. I will not be going to BlogHer telling people "No, I still can't hang my towels and yes, the hole is still there."

I'll keep you posted.

The Heaven's Sing!

Alleluia!!! My bathroom is caulked. The floor is done. The nasty old shower curtain is down! All is fixed! The new hardware has been installed.

What we thought was a weekend project turned into a month long one. The toilet sat for a week or more on the floor, hardware, screws and other assorted home renovation tools lay about all over our upstairs driving me slowly batty. Ok, not slowly.

Now though, it is Finished! All I have to do is clean it. And you know what? I'm damn excited about that fact too. A NEW bathroom and it will be clean. No more tile grout dust, dry wall patch dust, and just dust in general. Fresh towels on the the new racks. New bins for tip top organization. The only thing missing are H-proof towels. Does anyone else's husband destroy towels in record time? H does. What he does to them I'll never know but he has his own "special" towels because they get worn out so fast.

My inner and not so subtle Bree-like tendencies will be in overdrive today as I whip that new bathroom into shape. Scrubbing to my hearts content and make it all sparkly and shiny.

Yes, I just did a whole post on my new bathroom. I don't care. I will sit and stare at all it's pretty newness when all the cleaning is done. All thanks to H and his master grouting and tiling abilities. Thank you H for not throwing the bowl out the second story window or taking a sledge hammer to it though I know you wanted to.

The bathroom is perfect.

House Flipper Fantasy

H and I flip houses. We find real estate a fascinating affair. It took me a bit, but I can get just as a excited as he can when it comes down to it. I love the idea of picking out cabinets, flooring, and paint for a house that I will never live in. Seeing how a putrid piece of property shakily standing on its last leg can almost overnight come together into something beautiful makes me proud.

We really think of it as a service we are doing for the community not just a job. A beautification of sorts. Though sometimes we get obsessed. We talk about houses and various properties continuously. What's the deal with this one or that one? Have you heard back from the so and so. What contractor are we going with for the bathrooms and so on. I swear one day we will find we talk only in "house speak".

At night we watch the Home and Garden channel learning, absorbing and alternately yelling at the screen as someone does something incredibly dumb during a flip.

We brush our teeth and discuss over mouthfuls of foamy spit how to landscape a property.

We peruse the paper over Sunday brunch and talk about drywall.

I would not be surprised if one day we find ourselves furtively whispering into each others ears, "oak cabinets...yeah.. teak floors, oooh baby you know how I love backsplash tiling..."

It's like a disease. I often wonder this as I watch other house flippers on TV if they have become such a product of their environment and jobs. I fear we are becoming like people abducted by the planet HGTV and Designed to Sell.