In search of a title

I need a random title generator. Sometimes, you just feel like rambling on and have no specific idea or end in mind; titles just don't appear, wholly formed, at the beginning of the post.

Anyhoo...I'm over my pity party now. Not that I couldn't find something to sound pitiful about, mind you, but on that particular subject...well, I'll always have bouts of  "why do others get away with shititis," I guess.  Probably part of the human condition.

This is a list of things that kind of creep me out:

• While I won't have any problem retiring (the sooner the better, IMO), and won't miss work a bit, it kind of weirds me out that someone else will be sitting at MY desk, using MY computer, and MY things...MY chair. no. No. NO.

• People selling photos of people they never knew. This really makes me sad in addition to creeping me out. Here's an example of what I mean. People's babies and children, handsome men, families, couples. All these people lived and died, loved, hated, and at some point these photos were cherished by someone. Is there no one left in the family to preserve them? Did family have them and just not care or not know who they were (as is the case with a few really old photos I have)? These end up in estate sales, rummage sales, abandoned storage units, and the like. It weirds me out.

• People who buy the contents of abandoned storage units. Pawing through other people's possessions and memories to make a buck. Ick.

• Decapitation. The reason I won't read Tale of Two Cities. They all end up in the tumbrel headed to the guillotine. ACK!

• People who like Miracle Whip, Pepsi, sugar in their coffee, and/or sweet tea. Your tasters be borked, just sayin'.

• People who ask if you have "big weekend plans." I mean, do they party and hullaballoo every weekend or something? Or expect others to?  And, you know, even if I did (and what is or isn't "big" is subjective anyway), I probably wouldn't discuss it; and they never seem to notice I don't ask them the same thing. I don't care.

Anyway...change of pace.

Here, take some fukitol and call me in the morning.

I guess this time of year I just naturally get into a nostalgic, oh woe is me state of mind. I love the fall; October is my favorite month, although I couldn't tell you why. But at the same time, it's a very sad time of year, too. Again, I couldn't tell you why. I think part of it is that I always looked forward to school starting, but then once things got underway, once again, I had no friends and hated being there. Part of me is nostalgic for times past--perhaps because I want to do things over, be a different me?--and part of me says, why on earth would you want to do that, you crazy woman?

My son should be enjoying high school, the games, the proms, friends, etc, but instead, he's decided to be an introverted...whatever...and instead of going to high school, he's doing an online school. I suppose, in the longrun, he probably won't care that he's missed out on all of that, after all, I'm comparing it all to my memories, which would be unfair to him, but it's all rather depressing...nonetheless that he's not putting any effort into even the online lessons. With off-the-chart intelligence.

So it is that almost anything will touch off a bout of crying. Reading about a couple whom I've never met, losing their daughter to suicide...tears. When Schoep died, I cried. Partly because the dog died, but partly because I had totally missed the post on Facebook two months prior. 

Which brings us to Facebook. Curse you Mark Zuckerberg. You ass. You're sitting there, amassing billions of dollars and enough info on everyone in the world--information that I'm sure the home department of every country out there has tapped into. FB knows more about you than your mom or spouse does. I'm quite sure people have gotten married through FB, I know for a fact people have broken up through it. I've lost a couple of friends because I found out they're right-wing loonies (not just conservatives, but actual, honest-to-goodness, racist, secessionist loons). And God forbid you should actually be honest out there. People will tell you they want honesty, but they're lying. They want you to smile and nod and ignore anything they do that you might question, disagree with, or that makes you uncomfortable. 

That pretty much sums up my whole life, come to think of it. Smile. Nod. Smile. Repress. Rinse. Repeat. 

So you know, what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander in Internetland. Other people can voice their opinions loudly and be for causes, right or wrong, but as ever, if the rest of us have the temerity to say anything, well...we suck. 

And so it goes.

Back to the drawing board

Wasn't my post before last about things not turning out as planned? I got the knobs very quickly in the mail yesterday, but sent them back today. There were four small and 1 large, which I knew and said, okay, the large one can go on the door. But--there's always a but--one of the small ones didn't match the other three and was also badly fractured. Plus, two of the bolt/nut combinations were frozen, with the knob on them. So.... back they went. I guess I'll just keep the porcelain ones for now.

Poo.

Knobby memories..

Just scored a set of antique crystal knobs on ebay. I'm convinced these are exactly what was on my antique washstand when my parents bought it for $5 in 1956 from the next door neighbors in Cedar Rapids. Crystal knobs were, of course, passé in the 50s, so Mother took them off and replaced them with wooden knobs. She painted the stand yellow and the knobs dark green.

When I was expecting my daughter in 1971, I painted the washstand white and the knobs different primary colors.

I When I started restoring the piece in 1976, I couldn't find crystal knobs to save myself, so I got white porcelain ones from Gold Circle in Cleveland. But my dad died in December of that year, so I lost interest in it. I lugged that thing--door off, one drawer stripped and stained, and one drawer and the door mostly stripped--from Cleveland back to New Orleans, in storage, to Austin, and now within the last few years, I finally got it stripped the rest of the way  and went ahead and put the porcelain knobs on so I could use it. (Can we say depression?)

I'm working on another piece and was looking at crystal knobs for it (even though it's older and had metal pulls) when I found this set gleaned from an estate sale. Because of the age and the fact that one is slightly larger, meaning it was  most likely on the door, I'm convinced, as I said, that these are identical to the ones that came off the stand in the first place. These oak washstands (which originally would have had a towel rack and/or mirror-this one is very similar to mine, except the lyre is long since gone) were fairly ubiquitous in latter Victorian times. the house we were living in was a huge Victorian mansion (it's still there, but the top part of the house is gone now--damn, I wish I had pics of that place as I knew it!) at 17th and D in NE Cedar Rapids. It had been split into three large apartments and we had the "front" of the house with the grand staircase, magnificent built-in bookcases and stained glass windows. I'm betting that washstand was in the house when the Aitens (sp?) moved in the back apartment.

So now I think I will put a distressed white chalk finish on the washstand, restore the knobs and put the little casters I have for it on. There are, in fact double holes for the drawers which were patched over, so I'm thinking the crystal knobs were not original, either, since the mint ones I've found on the web all have brass pulls.  Distressing to think the ones in really good condition are also going for $500-600 on ebay and other sites. Whoa.

It's cliché, but...

....why do things never quite turn out the way you envisioned them? Now, granted, the only thing not conforming to my "vision" of the new water heater closet door is the fact that the piece of plywood I used is bowed in the middle, so it doesn't hang flat. Other than that, it's exactly as I imagined.

At least for a time.

You see, I have one of "those" houses. Yes. If you have lived in Austin for any length of time you know the houses I mean.

Nash, Phillips, Copus. NPC Homes. Over the years I've heard Not Properly Constructed; Nails, Paper, and Cardboard; Never Pays Contractors, and my own addition, after having lived in one for 20+ years....

Nothing Per Code.

Just as an example. Studs are supposed to be 16 inches on center apart, yes?  That's fairly standard everywhere in the US, I think (one of my legion of readers *cough*) can correct me if not). Not in this subdivision, baby. They're 22 inches on center. yep. How, you ask innocently, given Austin's totalitarian code enforcement, did they get away with this?  First off, the Code Regime, as I like to call it, is relatively recent, secondly, this development was outside the city limits at the time it was built.

There are lots of other little goodies lurking, too For instance, only one outlet per wall, even on the long living room walls; when the plumber roughed in the soil pipe (the pipe everything goes down from the toilet), it was too high, not to mention off-center, so he just heated and squinched and bent the pipe until the flange was close to the floor and roughly centered between the tub and the vanity. Always wondered why the fleepin' potty rocked.  Discovered this when we pulled the commode out to remove the (cheap-ass) stick-on tile and paint the bathroom floor. We had to hire a plumber to cut the pipe down and add a new flange. So the pot doesn't do the boogie any more, but it is off-center.

The bathtub drain is not installed properly and so was overflowing into the dining room for years and we didn't know it--there's a divot in the concrete slab that was covered up by the carpet. We've since removed the carpet, but haven't had the $$ to completely redo the plumbing in that bath yet. One day.

So, back to the original story. You would expect the header on top of the water heater closet to be a 2x4 all the way across, yes?  In NPC's world apparently not. When I put the big lag hook in on the right side, all was good. Same height on the left...didn't hit wood for 2 inches. They'd just built a box with sheetrock around...oh, whatever..... ggggrrrrr Hell, even the fact that the gas dryer, water heater and furnace are all in the garage is a code violation. Well, not anymore, since this half of the garage has been enclosed as my studio (and yes, I did pull a permit for that).

The plywood is slowly straightening out as it hangs and eventually I will rehang it properly with hinges, but for now, the closet has a door and I'm not losing coolth out of my studio quite as rapidly as I was.

Not sure I should post too much about all this. The Code Regime doesn't care if your "violations" are ages old or from before the area was annexed--or even unfixable (I mean, how the hell would anyone be able to fix the stud issue, sanely?), they'll try to ding you $2K per violation, per day until you fix them. Yeah, nice, eh?  Fortunately, they --for time being at least-- only work on a complaint basis.

DIY-ness

Today, I FINALLY made the door for the water heater closet. YAY me!  Okay, so I haven't hung it yet, but it's done, complete with the vent in the bottom. It's not going to be on hinges, but hung from the top on hooks.  Trust me, it'll work. 

While I was putting away my jigsaw, all the little blades were slipping out of the original packaging and I thought, Ooh! I can put those in this Mentos container...perfect size! But then I got to thinking, after a bit, the printing on them...you know, the printing that tells you what each little blade is for and if you use the wrong blade it'll make your project look like mako sharks in heat made it? yeah, that printing, will eventually wear off. So. Ages old fingernail polish that my manicurist gave me $%# years ago to do craft projects with came to the rescue.

I dabbed a bit of the color next to the blade description on the card, and then some on the shank of the blade, a different color for each type. Once they're dry then they'll go in the Mentos thingy.