Shower of Hope

For the uninitiated, searching for a person to repair stuff in your home is parallel to picking your spouse by throwing darts at the phone book. You might find a keeper. You might find an axe murderer. You most likely will find someone who won't agree to the matter. They'll come, they'll look at your most private room in the house, and it's a tad insulting when they won't even take your money to get the job done.

The first guy I brougth to the master bath to examine the... shower chatted me up. I think he saw how big my family was and wanted to impress. He talked about the fifty year reunion with all his brothers and sisters. He told me how he'd been around the area and his family had for over one hundred years. He told me he'd write up an estimate and get back to me next week after the reunion. I'm guessing his blood line was hit by a plague or wave of Klingon warriors, because I never heard a word afterwords, and I even called and left a message. 

Nothing. 

You'd think I would have read about it in the paper.

Undeterred and still having tile in the shower held together by duct tape, I tried again. I'd gone to a tile shop to ask about what to do. Our shower is circa 1994. No backer board. Could I DIY? A gentleman introduced himself, explained he was the guy to do the job. I took his card. He made an appointment and showed up early.

After looking at my shower, he explained he could do the job, but he couldn't rehang the shower. Right now, the shower door/fixtures work fine, but the tile is bad. He could fix it so the tile would be good, but the fixtures and door wouldn't exist.
"So I'd still have only half a working shower, which would mean I'd still have a broken shower, but I'd pay you for the trouble."
"Yes. I'll write up a contract and email it to you."

I asked if he could get someone to finish the job. He said yes again. I entertained hope. But a week later, no email, no phone call, no nothing. He took my twenty-five dollars and left. I feel soo used.
So I'm back in the hunting season again. Trolling Home Depot like a barfly hoping for a quick fix. This time I'll be smarter, wiser, faster. This time, I'll get them drunk first and I won't let them leave without the equivalent of a pre-nup.

DIY Food Network Fallen Star

I love cooking shows, but they're very unrealistic. Even the Top Chef competitions don't really challenge cooks to push themselves past their comfort zones. They have fully stocked kitchens and sous chefs and secret exotic ingredients. Most people who cook don't have to worry about crazy ingredients they must incorporate, but rather essential ingredients they can't.

For example, you begin to make french toast for dinner, and find out you have no eggs, but only after you've put the milk and cinnamon and vanilla together, so you dump a whole box of banana muffin mix into the milk cinnamon mix and make banana pancakes. Preparing to make hot dogs, you discover you have no onions or mustard. Welcome to the world of inventive condiments! Yes, putting cauliflower tater tots on top of the hot dogs wins cool points, and drizzling them with the trace elements of ketchup from the leftover packets from the car might make for good tv drama, but no freshly dressed MC ever stepped out of the kitchen cabinet to award me with Top Chef points and a cleaned kitchen for making a silk purse dinner out of a sow's ear stocked refrigerator.

It's not that I don't plan a menu or shop for the meals or cook, it's that at any given moment, I must cope with all the want-a-be iron chefs or at least Food Network Star Judges, who want not just food but the right food, the perfect food, the food they don't know what it is, but want served now, hot and beautiful.

Real Conversation:

 "MOM! There is no food in the house! Can you go to the store and get bananas?"

Me: There is food in the house. There just aren't any bananas.
Son: There are no eggs.
Me: There is bacon.
Son: There is no bread.
Me: There are rolls. There are tortillas. There is dark wheat bread, plain ordinary store white bread and the ends of at least three loaves all stuffed in one plastic bag and five blueberry bagels.
Son: There is no lunch meat.
Me: There is steak-um, I already said bacon, there is peanut butter, there is provolone and if you forage, I think, some chicken.
Son: There isn't any food that's easy to make.
Me: So if I get up and make you food from what we have, would you be happy?
Son: Yes! I'll even practice the S.A.T.

Because I want the S.A.T to be practiced, I'm willing to be bribed. I begin work on hot dogs.
Daughter comes into the room. "Hot dogs? I don't like hot dogs! Mom! Can you go to the store, there is no food."
Son now points out there are tortillas, bacon, peanut butter, blueberry bagels....daughter sticks out her tongue at each, but pulls out a box of mac and cheese. "Can we have this?" It goes with the hot dogs, so I roll with it. I'm getting a chorus of yays! and I'm thinking, this is good. I'm a good mom...they'll eat, they'll be happy...

Another player entered the kitchen. She got out the celery and nutella, and peeled a mango before announcing, she ordered out because she doesn't like hot dogs or mac and cheese and does anyone else want anything? They deserted me faster than I could spell dessert.

When I served the mac and cheese and hot dogs to the remaining children, I got the question, reasonable in my younger childrens' minds, "why didn't they get to order food too?" I recalled a neighbor who used to make her kid eat her dinner for breakfast and lunch, and snack, until it got eaten. I used to think this a cruel parenting practice. I admittedly reconsidered but revenge is for the unimaginative, so today I posted a message in the kitchen, explaining the reality of things in the family mess hall.

Dear Family

I considered declaring food martial law. If you don't pay for the food, make the food or clean up after the food, you get no say in what the food might be or alternatives to eat.

However, I recognize, there are twelve different diets, different palates to please and I've yet to hit upon the magical combination of fruits, vegetables, proteins and carbs that can accommodate all of your ever shifting appetites. In recognition of my inability to create a dish which uses all of the unknown secret ingredients necessary to the competition, and because that which is created is not up to industry standards as determined by all eleven judges in this house, I'm sorry but Mom has been chopped.

Whoever the other competitors are in this kitchen, I've taken away all of the car keys. Please, open the pantry and you have thirty minutes to create an entree and your time starts now. Oh, and I've been told repeatedly, there is no food. 

Good luck.

Love, Mom

To Have a Fantastic I mean Fantasy Summer DIY

Every May it happens.  I suffer from seasonal delusion disorder.  My older children get done with school and I suddenly think they're not only skilled free labor, but artisans of the first order. 

It starts innocently enough.

The deck needs to be painted.  I know that I cannot do this on my own. Toddlers will walk onto the deck asking for Mom. Older siblings will need a judicial ruling from the responsible adult. No one knows where the skim milk is, even though I've called to them that there is a gallon in the second refrigerator in the garage. So while I cannot do this task...I do have teenagers!

So I think, my oldest two can handle this, shoot...if the oldest three do it, it can be done in a day.   The interest in, skill level of, and dedication to completing such a chore of my children to whom I have deligated this task, does not factor into my daydream.  It will look great. It will be easy. It will be quick. It's a great summer project for them.  It will create great memories and stories too!

Then I promptly go nutty. 

Hey, they could do the front stoop too...and the bathrooms upstairs.  Our driveway needs to be resealed.  I bet the two boys could handle that over the summer...and I could learn and then teach our new high school daughter how to caulk.   The shower curtains upstairs need to be replaced and I know my other daughter could handle spackle.   My list of chores grows ever increasingly complex and impossible as the delusion takes hold.  My offspring are suddenly terribly interested in their summer math packets and book reports.

I regret to admit that often a trip to Home Depot for instructions and supplies is insufficient to help me regain sanity.  Only after actually purchasing multiple supplies, bribing some of the chosen kiddos with pizza and a trip to Barnes and Noble and taking away computers, tv's and all other entertainment, do we then get midway through the messy process and discover how radically unskilled everyone in my household is.  Regrettably, my children have learned to still demand promised rewards even if the results create diminished returns.  Even more regrettably, I have to agree, they've earned them.

After the professionals come in via my emergency phone call to do damage control, I see how utterly in the preschool of home repair I and my offspring remain.  They are done in minutes. It is perfect. It is sparkling. It is expensive.  Most importantly, whatever we did, has been mercifully erased, repaired or covered up with a neat bit of paint.

What is the lesson of these large checks written to contractors that come after a two day call back and 8 hour wait?  What message do I internalize?

Don't do this? No. 

You severely overrate yourself? No. 

You cannot become a capable DIY'er by watching Restaurant Impossible, reruns of Home Improvement and the Home and Gardening Network?  Again, no. 

I learn that we quit too early.  If I'd just been tenacious and held out a bit longer, we could have saved ourselves some money. We could have done it ourselves.  Next time, we're sticking to it. Next time, we do it ourselves. We win!

So for this June, July and August, I bought a book from Home Depot entitled "How to Fix Everything."  I've made my list and I'm thinking, we'll put down some flooring in the back basement and turn it into a college student bedroom.  It will need shelving and I'm thinking we could create a closet and a utility room for a spare washer and dryer.  It will be fun for everyone!  I'll promise them pizza.

 After we paint the back deck.