Tag: satire

The Gutting of the Bathroom Day 3

Day One didn’t go as planned.  I would have expected nothing less.  Mitch wasn’t done installing the new front door that we had to put in to fit the hole in the wall.  I forgot to mention that, sorry.  The new tub/shower we bought wouldn’t fit through any of the doors into the house, so in order to get the new tub inside, he had to remove the front door and cut a bigger hole in the side of the house so that the tub would fit through the doorway.  Mitch started that project two weeks ago and as usual, the three-day project took two weeks.  The original structure of our house was built in 1928, when the short people ruled the world.  Then an addition was added on in the 1930’s.  Whoever built the original structure and the addition used whatever materials were available and there were no building codes then.  The roof comes down and meets the top of the walls at right about six feet.  There is no way to put in a regular height door without a building permit and an expensive front entryway built.  So we did the next best thing, bought a solid wood door and cut inches off the top and bottom of the door so that it fit height wise.  There was still the width to worry about.  The original door was six-foot by thirty inches wide and did I mention it was an old fashioned homemade cabin door with a wooden slide bar?  Straight out of the 19th century.  Not the least bit in anyway energy efficient or even safe security wise.  So the door had to go.  I’ll post pictures.

I took out all of the shelves in the closets and tried removing the metal wall strips for adjustable shelving, but some of the screws were stripped and wouldn’t come out.  So I gave up on getting much accomplished on day one and decided to take the dogs for a long walk.

Day Two, Mitch worked on finishing up installing the new storm door and because the weather was so beautiful, I decided that it would be a good day to mow.  So I mowed the yard, pulled weeds, raked leaves and pretty much blew off another good day to work on the bathroom.

Day Three we actually got started.  Mitch finished getting all of the metal strips out while I pulled all of the trim off around the window and doors.  I pulled all of the base board out.  While Mitch removed the doors and door frames and knocked out the sheet rock that encased the closets I went to the plumbing store and picked up the pedestal sinks we had ordered..  We found the vent pipe from the furnace which will have to be moved from the outer corner of where the closet was and no longer is.  Mitch is getting his money’s worth out of his sawsall that I bought him.  I think that’s his favorite tool. 

Surprisingly, no fights yet.  Is this an omen or the lull before the storm?  I’ll keep you posted.

The Gutting of the Bathroom or Will Our Marriage Survive the Remodel?

Today it officially begins.  My first day of vacation and the start of the Gutting of the Bathroom.  We have the most hideous master bath in the world, (my opinion).  So we (me) decided that we would take a week’s vacation and totally remodel the bathroom.  I mean how long can it take?  We’re taking out the ugly tub and even uglier vanity with the wood grain laminate countertop.  Who puts a wood grain laminate countertop in a bathroom anyway?  The sink had started to chip and crack.  There are two 70’s refugee globe lights hanging from swag chain over the vanity and one huge honkin mirror on the wall, complete with chips and backing scratched off.  I’m not sure how mirror backing can come off when it stays on the wall, but oh well.  When the lights were hung, evidently the person didn’t have a hole saw and cut a square hole so that the square edges of the holes peek out around the circular caps of the lights.  Very attractive and stylish too.  There is also a can light hung on the wall next to the toilet, to help you see for the ever important reading that men do in a bathroom.  The lovely can light was also installed using the square hole for a round cover.  But there is no light by the bath tub, guess you don’t really want to see that well in the shower.  The linoleum on the floor has cracked.  There are three closets just inside the doorway as you walk in giving you a cramped feeling that the walls really are closing in on you.

But all that goes away starting today.  We are going to move the tub/shower to where the vanity was.  Two of the three closets are going away forever.  In place of a vanity, there will be two pedestal sinks and a cabinet between them that is actually two pieces, the base cabinet will have a granite countertop on it and the upper cabinet will be hung on the wall and have sides that meet the base.  There will be two much smaller mirrors and there will be NO swag lights in there anywhere.

So far, we’ve argued over every piece for the bathroom.  Mitch has traditional tastes and I am more modern, contemporary.  It has almost gone to blows in the home improvement stores.  I had almost come to the conclusion that this marriage will never work, because our tastes are so vastly different. 

First is was the tub.  Mitch declared that we could only have a one piece tub and shower combo.  “Because no matter how careful you are or how good of a job you do caulking, the damn thing always leaks.”  Try finding a really nice looking one piece tub/shower combo, there aren’t that many out there to choose from.  Then is was the sinks.  I found a really nice looking square pedestal sink that he hated, saying it looked like it was institutional.  The really big argument came with the cabinets.  Nothing readymade really grabbed either of us.  I was willing to buy unfinished and make it work, but Mitch hated them all.  He found a custom cabinet shop and went to talk to them without me to get some design ideas and costs.  I just knew that custom cabinets would cost a fortune, granted they would be worth it, but I am working on a budget and figured the cabinets would bust the budget.  Surprisingly, the price was very reasonable, so now Mitch and I could focus the next argument on the design of the cabinet.  I said he is traditional, well if you have a fireplace mantel with a candlestick on one side, there needs to be a candlestick on the other side.  That’s Mitch.  Make me crazy.  This is when I started to doubt our marriage.

We finally found the tub by accident, we had gone to buy tile for the floor and there high up on the rack on display, was a one piece tub/shower combo that I actually liked.  I had Mitch drag one of those ladders only for use by store personnel over for me to climb up on and check it out.  We bought it on the spot and called one of our friends to come and load it in their truck and take it home.  We found two very nice oval pedestal sinks at a plumbing supply store and ordered them.  After long heated debates, Mitch took me to the custom cabinet shop so that I could look at and touch actual cabinets instead of sketches on paper.  We made a decision and now it’s on order.  Things are starting to gel.  I still have to go get towel bars, mirrors, faucets and lights (without Mitch), but I think we might make it.  I’ll keep you posted and let you know how our progress goes.

Clean Dogs Inside and Out

Just when I thought that nothing would surprise me about the dogs, I am totally amazed at them.  We are getting ready to gut our master bath and remodel it.  That is another story in itself.  In anticipation of the demolition, I removed everything from the closets and put the contents in boxes and placed the boxes in the living room.  I secured all of the medicines and harmful chemicals, but wasn’t too worried about the candles,  soap and some of my makeup samples.  Silly me.  We came home from work to find that dogs unknown as of this writing had eaten two bars of Dial soap and half of a bar of Super Eight soap.  Why?  What would possess a dog to eat soap?  Yuck! 

So far no involuntary bubble blowing, no gas or diarrhea. Normal massive appetite.  I just don’t understand what was so tasty about soap.  Maybe all of the frequent bathes has caused them to like the taste of soap.

Just another shining example of the intestinal fortitude of Labrador Retrievers.

Road Trip (2nd excerpt)

The plan was that we fly into Boston, catch a bus to some bus stop, wait for owner of the car to come and pick us up and drive us to some unknown location to look at the car and if all goes well we pay him the cash, load up the car and drive home.  I had never done anything like this, so needless to say I was concerned that we would fly halfway across the country to have our heads bashed in, robbed and left in a field to die by a serial killer like on TV.  I know, I watch too many cop shows. 

The owner of the station wagon showed up and was very nice, but a typical car salesman.  After some more haggling, we paid for the car, loaded up our luggage and headed out to the highway.  After driving the wrong direction for about 30 minutes, going toward Cape Cod instead of west to New York, we turned around and got on track to upstate New York.  Our road trips are always an adventure.  We don’t make hotel reservations and drive until we get tired.  I only have one rule.  NO creepy roadside motels.

The drive through upstate New York was beautiful. We were a little early, the first of September, so the trees hadn’t turned yet, but it was still beautiful.   I loved the Finger Lakes and all of the vineyards and wineries, I was in heaven.  We tasted many wines and bought lots of bottles of wine. You know me, stimulating the economy.   Good thing we had just bought a station wagon to haul all of my finds.  How timely. 

After the Finger Lakes, we drove up to Niagara Falls.  We got there late in the day and didn’t have to pay to park, or get in.  Which was nice.  There were still a ton of people running around taking in nature’s strength and beauty.  But no one was willing to ride a barrel over the falls so that I could take photos of the historic event.  And I take awesome photos.  What a bunch of wet blankets.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first excerpt and this one, come back for more.

Road Trip (first excerpt)

Mitch bought the Buddy Mobile, a 1978 Chevrolet Caprice Station wagon in 1999.  He bought it to replace his 1976 Chevrolet Suburban which had 300,000 miles on it and was very tired. We used it to haul Buddy, our yellow lab, around town and for all of our gear for hunting.  It was a good reliable wagon that got lots of abuse.  Mitch replaced the engine in it in 1995.  It was like a Timex watch, it took a lickin and kept on tickin.  It went through two engines and about 3 tons of dog hair and drool.  The air conditioning went out a few years ago, so in the warm weather with all of the windows down, the dog hair would swirl around like a mini tornado inside the car.  No matter how many times we would vacuum and clean the car, there was always dried dog slobber and nose prints on the windows.  There was also the aroma of “Eau de Dog” in the upholstery that no amount of little green trees could eliminate.

People would point at the dog heads hanging out of the windows as we drove along.  Sometimes I wasn’t so sure that people weren’t also pointing and laughing at us.  The car definitely was distinctive.  Well it now had over 300,000 miles logged on it, so we decided it was time to retire it and buy something newer for the dogs and hunting.

After I gave the go ahead to look, Mitch went on an online search for the best fit for the money.  He searched cross country and even got into online auctions on E-Bay.  We ended up as the high bidder on a 1995 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Station wagon.  Much newer, only 15 years old instead of 31 years old.  We are definitely moving up in the timeline.  Oh, did I mention that the car was in Boston, Massachusetts?  Since we live in Missouri this meant “Road Trip”.  Because I like to multitask, we decided to combine flying to Boston to check out the car and if it met our needs, then we would turn the drive back into a mini vacation.  I had Mitch pick up travel books from AAA for all of the states that would be on our journey home.

Great White Hunters? (final excerpt)

Mitch waited until Todd left and said, “There are never any birds in these places.  My father would take us into the woods all the time and there were never any birds in the woods.  Oh well, let’s go and get this over with and then we can head over the hill and down into the back side of this field.” 

Against Todd’s advice, Mitch decided that we would both go down into the draw.  The draw had a mixture of snow and frozen mud.  There wasn’t really any easy way down the slopes into the draw.  The good news was that there was a wide open area with very few trees that I could use to slide down to get in the middle of the draw, because I could tell it was not going to be a question of if I was going to slip and fall, but when.

Once down in the draw, we both started off toward the other end with the dogs going back and forth, in and out and not having the trouble I was having keeping my balance.  What looked like snow up top was actually ice-crusted snow up close.  Carrying the gun, not falling on my butt and dropping the gun was immediately more important to me than “no birds.”  Not too safe, huh.  Mitch got up ahead of me about twenty feet and saw what Todd was talking about.  At the backside of the draw, there were birds everywhere.  There were chukars and pheasants just milling around the tree line and the junk farm pieces.  He couldn’t get close enough fast enough.  The dogs were on the birds making them scatter and fly.  Mitch started shooting his gun at the birds and nothing was dropping.  I was down in the bottom of the draw trying to get up the slick icy sides of the slope.  As I was crawling up the hillside, I could hear the gunfire and the birds cackling and the whump whump whump of their wings flapping and Mitch cussing and yelling for me to get up there and help out, and I couldn’t get up the hill.  Just as I had crawled almost up to the top, the shotgun sling slipped down my shoulder.  As I grabbed a tree root to pull up on, the shotgun slid off my arm and slid down the hill back to the bottom.  I looked at the gun at the bottom of the hill and then turned my head back up to where I had almost reached, just inches away from level ground, debating whether or not to slide back down to the bottom of the hill.  I was seriously considering just leaving the gun down there, but I couldn’t, it had been a Valentine’s Day gift.  Still holding the tree root, I turned and sat on my butt.  Then I let go of the root with one hand and pushed off with the other.  Sliding down the hill with only lycra running tights and canvas field pants as a buffer between my backside and crusty ice. 

Mitch was still shooting at birds and screaming, “Susan get up here!  Where are you?  I can’t do this by myself!”

Digging my heels in to stop my slide at the bottom, I just missed a close encounter with a large tree stump.  I yelled, “I’m trying, but I can’t get out of here!”

I picked up my gun and crawled upward again.  I realized that day, that not giving up is essential to hunting.  By the time I finally got out of the draw and topside, all of the birds were gone.  Mitch didn’t hit anything.  Oh yeah, we sure cleaned out the birds for Todd; they flew over the road to the neighbors land.

Great White Hunters?

This year we have been experiencing a real winter, with cold temperatures and snow.  Mitch told me this would be “real” pheasant hunting (you mean all the other times weren’t?).  This was going to be a short trip, just a weekend trip with an overnight stay.  So I didn’t need to pack my whole wardrobe, I was reminded.  But I would need to think COLD and pack “warm”, in other words, my whole wardrobe.  Can’t have too many layers. 

When we got to Todd’s preserve there was another group of hunters just heading off in the direction that we normally went.  Todd came walking over to us and we caught up on what had been going on since November.  The morning was cold with a strong wind out of the north and there were heavy clouds, looking like it could start snowing soon.

Todd said, “I’m going to take you to a different place to hunt this morning.  It’s over by my house and there are lots of pheasant and chukkar that have escaped and are just hanging out around in that area.  I want to get that area cleaned out.”

It didn’t matter to us where we hunted as long as there were birds, and this sounded like it would be just too easy, so we said sure.  We loaded the dogs back into the car and followed Todd over to the property close to his home.  Mitch pulled the station wagon in and parked alongside Todd’s truck.  We got out and surveyed the area.  We had never been to this area before and felt kind of special, like we had made it to the inner circle or something.  There was about 200 acres of more land that Todd owned.  To our left was a corn stubble field, in front of us were small hills and down over the hill was a wooded area.  But Todd wanted us to work a small wooded draw off to our immediate right.  It started at the road and went back into his property about the length of a football field.  It wasn’t very big at all.  Along side of the draw on the left were old junk, parts of some farm machinery, tubes that looked like they were part of a silo and various other sundry items.  On the right side of the draw was where he kept some cattle at the edge of his family lands.  So we had to be careful about shooting in that direction.  Down in the draw we could see a winding creek and open ground with no cover except for the tall trees growing out of the draw.

Mitch was clearly skeptical and we were both a little disappointed.  We thought that we were going to “hunter’s heaven” and here we were standing at the edge of what looked like a huge waste of time.  But outwardly Mitch didn’t show any of his disappointment to Todd.  Todd told us to start at the street and work our way to the back and we could go to our left and work the cornfield and after that we would go farther into the fields.  Todd suggested that one of us stay up top on the outside edge on the right side of the draw and the other one go down in the middle and work our way back.  Todd said he had some things to do and would come back by in about an hour and see how we had done.

Another Hunting Trip

We just got home from pheasant hunting in Central Nebraska.  There were ups and downs with the trip.  We even made a few discoveries.  We bagged eight birds.  That was an up.  The weather was way too hot, 75 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds.  That was a down.   We walked through prairie grass fields that were six feet tall plus in spots.  And so dense I couldn’t see the dogs with their neon colored bandanas through the tall thin reeds right in front of me.  When one of the dogs would flush a bird, it would hang suspended in the sky for just a split second before it caught the wind and take off making that whump, whump, whump, sound like a helicopter.  They were very hard to hit in the high winds and when one was shot, the pheasant were hard to find in the dense grass.

Charlie was the star of the hunting trip.  This was his best year ever.  He didn’t range out too far, stayed in close and checked on us frequently to see where we were in the tall grass.  He flushed two birds right off and retrieved both of them.

One of our discoveries was that not all hunting dog breeds are hunters.  Mitch has had such high hopes for Orso, our chocolate lab.  Orso, the water dog that doesn’t especially like water, doesn’t retrieve and doesn’t use his nose to hunt.  He is four years old and has absolutely no interest in pheasant hunting.  His idea of pheasant hunting is chasing after Charlie and AJ in the field to see what they are doing and then running back full bore into me to make sure I’m still there.  Try walking on uneven terrain carrying a seven pound shotgun, wearing an ammo belt full of shotgun shells and a quart of water and have a ninety pound dog bash into you. 

Mitch shot a pheasant and before picking it up called Orso over to find the bird, hoping he would show some interest in the dead bird.  Orso walked up to the bird, put his paw on it and preceded to start pulling feathers off of the bird.  A huge no-no.  Then it even got worse.   I shot a bird and called the dogs to find the bird.  After not getting the retrieve as quickly as I thought they should, I ran down the hill to where the bird dropped and there was Orso and now AJ pulling the feathers out of the bird.  Orso was teaching bad habits to our best hunting dog.  That was definitely a down.  Needless to say, Orso is not going on any future hunting trips with us.

Orso

I have always laughed and poked fun of some pet owners.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  Those pet owners that pamper them,  give their pets special treats, dress them up like people, paint their toe nails and basically fawn all over them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love our dogs dearly.  We have spent so much money at the vet’s office, that each year our goal is to NOT get the annual  Christmas calendar.  And each year we get a new calendar.  We feed them carrots for treats and I make frozen yogurt pumpkin pops for them as a cold treat.  But I think  we finally became one of “those” pet owners.

Orso, our chocolate lab, a.k.a. water dog, does not particularly like water.  He doesn’t go swimming really.  He might go in up to his chest or swim out and back a few yards when he’s hot, but that’s all he does.  He absolutely abhors the rain.  He will stand under the eave of the house and refuse to go out in the yard to go pee or on walks, he’ll walk next to me under the umbrella, just to not get his head wet.  He’s not interested in retrieving anything on land or in the water.  When we go pheasant hunting, he usually walks at my heals.  Last week we were at our friends’ house for a play day with their two dogs, which entails a walk to the public access boat launch for an afternoon of swimming, tag and a good game of wrestling.  Tied up to the dock was an old aluminum runabout.  No one was around and Orso walked right up to the boat and jumped right in like it was his own.  We had to pull him out a couple of times fearful the owner would show up. 

The rest of the dogs decided on a game of tag, but Orso wasn’t interested.  I turned around looking for him and there he was sitting at the back of the dock wagging his tail waiting patiently for a pontoon boat to come in and tie up to the dock.  He wanted to get on that boat so much.   We talked another friend of ours into taking Orso for a boat ride on his pontoon boat.  Our friend asked if Orso would try to jump in the water and Mitch told not to worry, Orso wouldn’t jump in.  He walked back forth looking at the other boats in the water.  Mitch opened the gate to the front deck and Orso walked out and sat down totally at home afloat on a boat.  That was the best day of his life.

Buddy (part 2)

Buddy was probably the easiest dog for anybody to own.  It only took about three days to housebreak him.  Even at a year and a half, Buddy was very calm and didn’t jump up on people.  I’m only 5’2″ so having an eighty five pound dog jumping up on me always ended with me on the losing end.  I’m not saying that Buddy was perfect, but he was very close to it for me.  He always had a happy expression on him face.  Buddy loved to be around people.  He wasn’t pushy or overtly “in your face” like some dogs, he would come up to people to greet them and get petted, then go lie down and just be near everyone.  Just in case there might be food and just in case someone might drop something his way.

Buddy went everywhere with us.  In the car, he would stick his head out the window into the wind as far as he could.  Buddy would open his mouth to taste the air and the wind would force the skin on his muzzle covering his mouth to  flap up and down.  People would drive past us and be laughing at the sight of this huge yellow head hanging out of my Pontiac Grand Am and towering over the top of the car.  He filled up the whole back seat.

Mitch decided it was time to start working with Buddy and his hunting skills.  We got a pheasant wing (yes, a real dead pheasant wing) from his brother.  Why anyone would keep a dead pheasant wing with the feathers still on it in their freezer is beyond me, but his brother had one.   Mitch wanted to see if Buddy would be attracted to the scent and bring out his hunting instincts.  Mitch would let Buddy smell the pheasant wing then go and hide the wing for Buddy to find and then hopefully retrieve bird wing back to us.  Buddy liked the smell of dead pheasant, what self respecting dog wouldn’t like the smell of something dead?  Personally I can’t think of anything worse than putting a fresh or rotted dead animal in my mouth.  But evidently these are things that dogs live for.

The hiding and the finding worked great, but the retrieving, not so good.  Buddy wasn’t real keen on coming when called.  He would come only after he was good and ready.  So I came up with a “brilliant idea”.  Let’s tie a lightweight rope to his collar which I’ll let play out as he runs to go fetch the bird wing, then when he grabs the wing we’ll call “come” and bring him back pulling up the rope that he is tethered to.  Great idea in theory, not such a great idea in practice.  I tied the rope to Buddy’s collar and while I was trying to get the rope untangled, Buddy was grabbing the rope and pulling at it.  I was pleading with him to stop, “No Buddy no.”  Well all Mitch heard was “Go”.  So he hid the wing, Buddy went charging out in the yard to find it  and I went along for the ride with the rope wrapped around my hand.  I was certain that the ring finger on my left hand had been amputated.  I cried like a little girl.