If anyone has an acoustic guitar handy, you might want to gently strum the Weebles jingle as I acknowledge with some irritation that today I too wobbled but didn’t fall down — because our front door was partially open and its angled side was in the way. It’s a monster-thick, frighteningly heavy wooden door that’s …
There are many reasons why I’ve temporarily withdrawn into quiet, largely offline pursuits recently. Besides the toll of sleep deprivation and daily uncertainty about how useful my arm will be, I often find myself unhappy with the general state of the world and the Internet’s contributions to it. Getting away from that and immersing myself …
It’s tougher to angle baseboards and crown moulding properly than it looks, as I learned by watching my father nearly suffer a nervous breakdown during one memorable weekend project in the early ’90s. One of the things he told me then, and reiterated decades later when he helped replace the baseboards in my first house, …
Today’s been a blur and there was no time to work on the cottage. Instead I was on a strange mission that Muriel watched with interest and mild concern: in almost six years of being joined at the hip, she’d never before seen me tape trash bags to the bathroom ceiling at the behest of …
Today I learned the hard way not to blindly trust instruction manuals. The cottage’s said to fit doors and windows near the end of construction, making minor adjustments as necessary. It took around 90 minutes to install two windows and one door, and as Crankenstein sat on the ottoman in my office and watched me …
I can’t sing or dance and I’m nothing much to look at, but damned if I’m not great at submitting myself to endless torture trying to fix something that isn’t working. It’s a skill, or maybe a value, that I picked up from my parents. My dad will make 12 profanity-laced trips to Lowe’s in …
My home office was out of commission today while the electric company replaced a transformer, so I did what anyone else would do in that situation and watched a Judith Light movie.* The review is already half-written but a slightly less successful endeavor was undertaken beforehand, one that taught me a valuable lesson: don’t paint …
Within the next week or so I should have a hobby-specific website up and running, news I expect some of you will greet like audience members during Oprah’s ‘favorite things’ episodes. Except your outpouring of emotion — the screaming and shaking and hysterical crying reminiscent of Muriel’s pre-breakfast rituals — won’t be because everyone’s getting …
Crankenstein and I were perusing desserts on our most recent jaunt to an Asian supermarket when she plucked a box of wife cakes from the shelf and mused “I might start calling you this.” We deliberately avoided the turtle tanks, lest I have a turtle nightmare — a nod to one of the more infamous …
Soon I’ll have no choice but to block Middle Sister’s number — she’s the opposite of Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond earrings and never brings me luck. This morning she called and despondently asked “Have you heard about Dad?” No, I hadn’t heard about Dad, but I remembered the last time she called with a similar question …