Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Things Fall Apart


Bee House
Originally uploaded by Rozanne.
If you were a mason bee, wouldn’t you want to move right into one of these little holes in this rustic bee house and set up housekeeping? After pollinating all my blueberry bushes, of course. So far there are no takers. I simply don’t understand. C'mon bees!
Free housing!

If I could fit into one of these 3/8-inch holes, I’d move right in and escape all the stress of owning property of any kind. I’m dealing with a bunch of niggling worries today. Most niggling is the fact that the toilet that was leaking just about this time last year—the toilet that cost us more than one thousand plus semolians to fix because the whole floor had to be replaced—may be leaking again. In fact, I am almost certain of it. But I’m hoping it will heal itself.

But if not, we will have to have to have the brand-new floor ripped up AGAIN, and I will have to repaint the bathroom AGAIN. And we will have to hand over one thousand plus semolians AGAIN. The contractor guaranteed his work for one year. That was about one year and a month ago. It simply cannot be leaking again, can it?

Farther down on the niggle scale is the fact that my Sandisk Cruzer flash drive crapped out on me yesterday. It was one month old. I use the Cruzer to back up all my work files each night, which now I can’t do. Yow! I really don’t need to live on the edge like that. Sandisk did instantly agree to replace the drive when I called tech support, but I first have to send back the old one. Who knows how long the whole to-ing and fro-ing transaction will take? I’ll have to figure out a way to back up my files to some online storage space that B probably has. Bother.

Then my wireless connection was out for about three hours today. I’ll be honest, I have no freakin' clue how it works. It's magic or voodoo, or something. Nevertheless, I pored over the manual, not being able to make head nor tail of it and plugging and unplugging cables to no avail. B was tied up with clients most of the day, so I couldn’t ask him to come to my rescue until late afternoon. It took him two seconds to fix it. I would be totally up Shit Creek without a paddle if it weren’t for him. I hate it that I’m so useless when it comes to technology. I’ve tried to figure this stuff out--I really have--but it always seems so jargony and opaque.

The pepper grinder broke at lunchtime.

Mercury will remain in retrograde until March 25.

For the past couple of days I’ve been doing a lot of work-related research on automobile safety and am now convinced that our car is not only a heap of junk but a death trap. It’s an ’89 Honda Civic. It has no air bags, no antilock brakes, no traction control, and no automatic safety belt tensioners. What it does have is a cracked windshield, threadbare and shredded seat covers, rust galore, balding tires, and a rear bumper that is partially detached. But it is reliable. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” B proclaims. He thinks that it is tempting fate to replace a car that doesn't have something decisively wrong with it--like a cracked engine block. But I think there probably is plenty wrong with it. We just can’t see it. Like maybe the axles are about to snap in two.

Of course, when I brought this up, B asked if we were going to be buying a new car (and when I say new, I mean a newer used car) before or after we replace the windows in the front of the house and before or after we pay our taxes. Oh, yeah. After. It is all going to have to happen after taxes. That is, if there is any money left over at all.

I think I’ve just laid out a sound Marxist argument for why the ownership of property should be abolished. Maybe not Marxist but an argument of some description. It really complicates life and causes stress. I knew from the very beginning that B and I were not cut out by nature to be home owners, and I am even having trouble coping with the death of the pepper grinder. Now I'll have to remember to replace it. And what kind should I buy anyway? The one that just gave up the ghost was spendy and high end and yet I don't think it lasted more than a couple fo years. Are they all that shoddily constructed? I don't want to have to research a pepper grinder purchase. Gah!

I would very much like to go out right now and order myself a dirty martini, but instead I will go to yoga, which starts in six minutes. I'm going to be late.

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