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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(More Bugs & Cranks goodness:
And a Child Shall Lead Them Off: “And in the leadoff spot? Utility infielder Omar Infante. Ouch.”
Meanwhile, it’s the weekend. And you know what that means…)
One of the sublime joys of weekend life is jaunting off to the grocery store to pick up supplies.
Okay, not really. I hate grocery shopping. Not sure why, exactly. Comes with the penis, I suspect. Anyway.
“I hate grocery shopping. Not sure why, exactly. Comes with the penis, I suspect.”
I’m told by the missus that if we don’t make regular trips to ye olde foode shoppe, then we don’t eat. I’ve tried — repeatedly, mind you — to explain that there are now these places called ‘pizza joints’ which will, with just a simple call on the phone, bring a hot and delicious pizza pie right to our door. Every night, if we want them to.
Evidently, she doesn’t believe me. I’ll allow that it sounds like a wonderful, magical dream. But dammit, I’ve seen these places. And their funny-colored little cars.
But until she finally comes around, we have to get food from the store occasionally. And while I don’t relish making the actual journet, I do like to help out. I’m all about the helping. Which usually means contributing to the list, like I did this weekend.
And like I also did three years or so ago, which I wrote about in Making a List, Wrecking It Twice.
See? I said I like to help.
I never said I knew how. But I’m out there trying. And I think that’s what’s important.
Thank heaven for those pizza joints, or I’m pretty sure I’d starve. Anyway, happy weekend — and bon appetit.
Permalink | 2 Comments(Bugs & Cranks latest:
Wednesday Walk Watch: Week thWee: “Yuni sez: ‘What is this “ball four” you speak of?'”
Now, onward and somewhere-elseward.)
The meter weenies where I park at the office are really starting to cheese me off.
First, a bit of background. Where I work, there’s not a lot of parking to go around. The bigwigs get spaces in the garage, Important and essential staff rate reserved spots. Visitors can park in assigned areas for a day at a time.
“Me? No spot. Proving once again that ‘peon’ and ‘parking space’ are close together only in the dictionary.”
Me? No spot. Proving once again that ‘peon’ and ‘parking space’ are close together only in the dictionary.
So, I park on the street. Several blocks away. This in a town with some sort of archaic bullshit law on the books where no one is allowed, at any time, on any street, to park for more than two hours at a time. Ever.
I don’t know why. I can only imagine that they came up with that claptrap ordinance back when all the cars by the curb were disturbing the local buggy horses or the caveman carts or something. Parking spaces designated for only two-hour stopping are like thirty-year mortgages due in full in five. Or three-minute eggs cooked for thirty-seven seconds. A stripper doing her routine to the Seinfeld intro jingle. She’d barely get in a single gyration. It’s shameful. And not in the good way.
Now, you may be thinking, certainly there are alternatives to fighting-the-law-and-the-law-won every damned weekday for the sake of making it to work. And you’re right — there are. For one, I could walk to work. Done that — twice, actually, on days my car was in the shop. With a brisk tailwind, I can go from door to door in just about ninety minutes. Which is approximately sixty minutes longer than my usual vehicle-assisted commute, each way. Pass.
There’s always public transportation, of course. I used to ride the bus and the subway all over Boston, and Pittsburgh (buses only) before that. I mean, just look at me. I have the face of the kind of guy who ought to be riding public transportation. Maybe sleeping in a subway car, or begging politely for change between stops. Most people can’t believe that I could afford a car in the first place, so it’s a logical choice.
Problem is, our house is in an awkward spot when it comes to Boston Metro transportational coverage. My wife deals with it now, and it sounds like a nightmare. She currently walks three blocks to a bus stop, where she waits a while, catches a bus that takes her to a subway station, where she waits another while, then catches a train that gets her within a few blocks of her building. And the same in reverse each night — unless there’s a problem with the trains, or one of the buses has broken down, or the whole scheduling system is in a state of general higgledy-piggledy. Which is usually, from what I gather.
My ordeal would be a tad worse, given that I’d have to go three extra stops, switch subway lines, and catch just the right lettered car heading towards my office. I’ve never made the exact trip, but based on my wife’s commute and previous experience with riding the Beantown rails, I have a pretty good estimate of how long it would take: ninety minutes.
(Hence the walking when the car was on the fritz. It took just as damned long, bu at least I didn’t have to pay three conductors, decipher route map hieroglyphics, and stand at all times behind the yellow line. Also, there’s a sneaky rumor floating around that ninety minutes of walking qualifies as something called ‘exercise’. My aching blisters were inclined to agree.)
(Oh, and because it’s simply unpossible to post anything this spring without a reference to our impending move, you may be decidedly unsurprised at this point to learn that finding more convenient commutes is numero uno on our list of reasons to find a new house. I’m currently thinking something tucked in the corner of a strategically-located subway station would be just ducky.)
Probably there are other ways I could adjust my commute. I could buy a bike and risk my life dodging potholes, pedestrians and Masshole drivers. I could ride a Segway, but those things aren’t much faster than walking. Also, I’m plenty dorky enough as it is — and I rather enjoy having a soul. My best alternative so far would be to give up and sleep in the office, which my wife didn’t protest against nearly enough when I told her. But someone’s got to be here to kill spiders and carpool the dog around, so that ended up not working out, either.
And so, I drive. And park rather illegally, hoping most days to avoid a ticket. And most days, I do. Until recently.
Three weeks ago, I got dinged on a Friday. No worries there. I take the occasional ticket as the cost of doing business, living and working where I currently do. Two, three, even four tickets a month don’t quite add up to the cost of an assigned spot in the garages a few blocks over where I might be able to get on a waitlist shorter than my expected lifespan. And if I’m either paying some slumlord garage owner or an organization that might also have actual cops on the roster, then I’d rather opt for the latter. I’m not thrilled about contributing to the meter monkeys’ salaries to help them enforce some cockamamie two-hour nonsense, but maybe a few pennies of each citation goes to keeping hoods off the streets or getting cats out of trees or propping up the local doughnut industry. Or prosecuting slumlord garage owners who price me out of a spot. Something.
Anyway, at the end of the week, I found a ticket on the windshield. Fine. Then, Monday afternoon — bam, another. Not cool.
Things were quiet until Thursday that week, when I returned to find another ticket taped to the glass. That’s when I started mixing things up. There are a couple streets on which I’ve never gotten a citation. It’s a bit further to walk, but I was quickly reaching my April quota — and zero desire to go over. So I extended my commute by a few steps to shake the fuzz.
And the fuzz were shaken — until yesterday, when I got a ticket on my usual street, and then today, when I got popped on one of my backup avenues. Which I thought were safe. But no. I feel so… violated. It’s like the meter weenie just shot my car and scrawled ‘TOUCHABLE’ on the curb with its own transmission fluid. Color me aghast.
So now I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. Our move (mentioned it again!) will hopefully be a longer-term solution, but that could be weeks, even months, away. In the meantime, how am I going to get to work? Skateboard? Big Wheel? Hot air balloon?
That Segway idea is starting to look better and better. Surely, I could stand to be just a little more dorky. And what good is a soul when three-quarters of your salary is going straight to the parking cops? I just hope the thing comes with airbags — those Boston drivers are brutal.
Permalink | No CommentsI swear to god, this is not becoming an all-moving, all-the-time, house-hunting get-it-sold harried homeowner site.
I promise. It won’t. There are plenty of other things to talk about besides my wife and I entering our first house-selling-at-the-same-time-as-house-buying circus.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of any of them right now. So it’s another ‘Happy Homeowner post, just for today. On the bright side, this one involves my wife’s caulk.
I said ‘caulk‘, there, sparky. Keep yer mind out of the gutter, for once. This story does involve a bathtub, and eventually a naked person, but it’s not the one you want. Frankly, it’s not the one anyone wants. We’ll get to that in a minute. Back to the caulk.
Way back several weeks ago, when we picked out a broker to help sell our house, she gave us a few pointers. Fresh flowers for the open house. Anything that needs to be repaired, painted, or tossed out, do it now. And, she offered with a sly wink, this would be a super time to recaulk the bathtub.
“Hell hath no fury like a wet flabby man shoehorned out of his bathtub by a team of emergency personnel.”
Evidently, that’s something people look for when they browse a home. Forget whether the place is falling down, on fire, or sitting directly on a commercial airstrip. Are those cracks around the tub sealed properly, is what people want to know. Personally, that sort of thing would be pretty far down my list of items to check — somewhere after structural integrity, foundation sinkholes, roof leakage, badger damage, exploding water heaters, poltergeists, snake nests and whether there are any bodies crammed in the crawlspaces. That’s just me, I guess.
Still, if people want the caulk, I’ll give them the caulk. Or rather, my wife will. Which sounds like it would be awfully embarrassing for everyone involved.
Moving right along, then.
Being the proactive homeowning tiger that she is, the missus decided on Saturday afternoon to take our realtor’s advice and caulk our bathtub. I was working somewhere else in the house at the time — reports that I was napping on a pile of laundry in the basement are grossly overstated, probably — and so missed out on all of the hot girl-on-tub caulking action. I was only, in fact, made aware of my wife’s plans when she later found me — drooling on a pile of towels — and declared:
‘Well, I recaulked the tub.‘
I congratulated her on a job that I assumed was well-done — or at least a hell of a lot weller-done than if I’d attempted it — and asked the obvious question for someone who’s unfamiliar in the ways of bathtime caulkage:
‘So… now what?‘
‘Well, now we can’t get it wet for thirty-six hours.‘
I did a little sleepy math in my head.
‘You mean, we can’t take a shower until… like, six o’clock Monday morning?‘
‘Nope. Afraid not.‘
That threw me for a loop. Here it was, barely Saturday afternoon, and we’d have to go showerless until Monday morning? But think of the heat, woman — it’s going to be eighty degrees all weekend. There’s a full day of yard work we have planned tomorrow. And we don’t have any air conditioning. Also, I’m pretty sure these towels I’ve been sleeping on haven’t been washed yet, and they’re making me a little itchy. How the hell am I supposed to get clean before Monday?
‘Guess you’ll just have to take a bath.‘
She took me to have a closer look at her caulk. I could see then that the new goo was applied around the top of the tub and down the sides, so a shower couldn’t possibly work. But a bath, if one were careful to keep the water from sloshing over the rim of the tub, would work just fine. Lots of people bathe rather than shower, she assured me. No doubt I could handle one weekend bath, too.
I only saw three problems with her logic. First, I haven’t taken a bath for cleaning purposes in close to thirty years. Which brings up the second, who the hell knows where my favorite rubber ducky has gotten off to? I’ve never bathed without ducky before — I’d feel all… naked in there. Third, and most importantly, I’ve grown a couple of feet longer and some indeterminate number of inches wider since my last trip into a tub. So help me, if the fire brigade has to come in and rescue me from that thing, it’s on her head. Hell hath no fury like a wet flabby man shoehorned out of his bathtub by a team of emergency personnel.
(Well, okay, that’s probably not true. Hell probably wouldn’t get so winded and short of breath about it. From what I understand, Hell involves a lot more cardio training than I’ve been getting lately. A couple hours of volleyball a week is one thing. Slogging through a pool of lava while pitchforks are poking at your kidneys is frankly probably better for your heart.
Not your kidneys, of course. But the heart, no question. Advantage, Hell.)
Still. ‘Bathtub clean’ is to ‘no clean’, as ‘bathtub gin’ is to ‘no gin’. Which is to say, an outstanding improvement. So, when I woke on Sunday morning, I stumbled off to the bathroom to make literal use of the place, for once in my adult life. I won’t go into the gory details, you can thank me later, but I do have a couple of observations from the experience to share:
In the end, I got marginally cleaner, probably. And I don’t think I caused any permanent damage to myself, the tub, or to the precious newly-squeezed caulk. Thank goodness. Otherwise, my wife would have had to re-apply it, and I’d be going showerless into the work week. I think I’d have to call in a couple of sick days, honestly.
And if I conked myself any harder on the faucet or snorted up more bathwater, I might actually need them. Thank goodness a good caulking only comes ’round once a decade or so. I’d never make it otherwise.
Permalink | 2 Comments(Bugs & Cranks update o’ the day:
Don’t Make Yunel Angry: “I say from now on, the Braves schedule a short pre-game news conference. Chipper can run out, call Escobar a big baby and say something disparaging about his mother or his dog or his haircut, and that’ll be that.”
And there you have it. Now on with the weekend.)
It’s beginning to look a lot like summer here in New England.
While the rest of the country has enjoyed warm sunny weather for the past couple of weeks — with the exception of Alaska, perhaps, and parts of northern Minnesota — it’s only in the past few days that Bahstan and the close-by ‘burbs have seen anything remotely resembling summer. As it turns out, when it doesn’t rain, it doesn’t pour, either — today, the mercury topped out in the mid-eighties in an afternoon that felt like it was stolen from a Carolina July.
“Soon enough, we’ll be flashing the leather, swinging the lumber, sliding and diving and playing strong up the middle.”
Minus the humidity. And the barbecue. Also, we didn’t sit on the porch all afternoon sipping sweet tea and declaring that we were “feelin’ the vapahs”.
Of course, when the weather finally thaws around here, a not-so-young man’s thoughts turn to just one thing.
Well, okay, fine. Two things. But my wife says I’m not allowed to look at one of them any more. So let’s focus on the other.
Namely, softball.
Our summertime softball league hasn’t started up yet — but it won’t be long now. Soon enough, we’ll be flashing the leather, swinging the lumber, sliding and diving and playing strong up the middle.
But like I said, I’m not allowed to think about that sort of thing. So meanwhile, we’ll be playing softball soon, too. Let’s talk about that.
Or rather, let’s take a look at years past when I’ve talked about the softball team. Not every post, of course, because there are quite a few. Instead, let’s re-celebrate this same time of year, when the sun is shining, the aluminum bats are pinging, and we’re all making fools of ourselves on the field as an excuse to drink a few beers on Sunday afternoon. Ah, softball. How I’ve missed you.
And the other thing, too. Just don’t tell the missus. Instead, let’s have a look at those posts:
June 1st, 2007: The ‘Crack’ of the Bat?
May 8th, 2006: Hot Corner Halfwit
(And just to prove that we hardy New England types can start a softball season in just about any weather:)
September 14th, 2003: Whatever You Do, Don’t Lick the Aluminum Bats
That’s all for now. Happy weekend and sloppy softballs, all.
Permalink | No Comments(A trio of Bugs & Cranks baseball goodness since our last visit here:
April Foolishness: “Imagine for a moment that you’ve been invited by Mr. Peabody to take a trip in the WABAC machine. Maybe Sherman is out sick this episode, or he’s been grounded for altering the course of history, or his testicles finally fell and he’s not ‘cute’ enough for TV any more.”
Wednesday Walk Watch: Week tWo: “It’s Hump Day once again, and time to check in on the batting chumps who take their lumps, turn their skippers into grumps and wind up down in the dumps — all for the want of a walk.”
Boldly Catching…: “When reached for comment, Braves’ skipper Bobby Cox said, ‘I think McCann’s finally going to be the droid we’re looking for again.'”
Now back to the usual nonsense. Thanks for playing along.)
The saga of prepping the house for sale grows by the day. And we’re still more than two weeks from the first open house. By the time we have people actually looking at the place, we’ll need another house to live in, just to get away from the ordeal. Today’s surreal little episode involved the painters.
A few weeks ago, we walked around the exterior to assess how the house looked, paintwise. We hadn’t lent a critical eye to the paint job out there in a while, and we were hoping it would be okay. Or at least ‘adequate’. ‘Rustic’ could have worked. Even ‘charmingly weathered’.
“When I awoke, it was to the sound of sandpaper and chisels and lord knows what other kinds of tools. My last dream had something to do with being savagely tortured by Bob Vila.”
The reality? Try ‘flakytastic ghettolicious’. That’s a technical term. Usually reserved for condemned houses and abandoned warehouses, as I understand it. That’s just super.
So, we hired painters. We would have painted it ourselves, but there are extenuating circumstances. We don’t have all the ladders and equipment we’d need, for one thing. For another, I have serious doubts that the two of us could paint the house before it’s actually time to retire in it. Also, we’re just not that good. And I hear the Jackson Pollock look is out in the domicile market this year. Maybe next time around.
So, like I said, we hired painters.
They’ve been here for a couple of weeks now, and most of the house looks a thousand percent better. They scraped the paltry few crumbs of paint left on the sides and the back, and have slathered new layers over top already. Sure, the backyard is littered with ladders and gutters and storm windows and such, but you don’t look at that. They’ll put most of that stuff back where it belongs. Eventually. Probably.
Meanwhile, this morning was porch scraping day, evidently. When I awoke, it was to the sound of sandpaper and chisels and lord knows what other kinds of tools. My last dream had something to do with being savagely tortured by Bob Vila. All I remember now is him saying, ‘No, Mr. Bond — I expect you to bleed.‘ Not cool.
I gathered myself, got ready for work, and finally hit the door. On the other side was one of the painters, and it turns out he had a question for me.
At least, I think he had a question. Frankly, English is not the first language of any member of this painting crew, nor the primary language for many. And my foreign language skills are limited to asking for beer and bathrooms and insulting peoples’ ancestors in various European tongues. None of which seemed like the answer this guy was looking for, probably. So I tried to decipher exactly what he was after.
Best as I could tell, he wanted to get into the house to raise the windows facing the porch. They were scraping in that general vicinity, and probably needed to do some work around the sills. All I caught from the conversation was something about ‘windows’, and motions that looked like ‘raising’. Either that, or the guy was planning on yanking up some willow trees out back, or power-lifting the widow next door. I figured it was safest to just let the guy in the house. We don’t have a willow tree, and old widow Johnson next door isn’t as light as she used to be.
I opened the door again, motioned him in, and turned around to head to work. The way I figured it, the guy was welcome to do what he needed to do inside, whether I was there or not. Hell, if these guys had desperately needed to be inside before, they could have broken a window, crawled through, and replaced it before I got home. Unless they missed a shard or two for me to step on, how would I even know? This ‘open door’ policy I was adopting just seemed easier.
It also took my painter friend by surprise, apparently. He cocked his head at me and said, ‘I should go in? Ees okay?‘
I shrugged, for the reasons just mentioned. Sure, I said. Step right in.
‘You’re leaving? And I can go in?‘
He was starting to make me a little nervous. Briefly, I considered staying to help with whatever he needed inside. But I realized the ridiculous miming and confusion that would entail, and quickly got the hell over it. If I’m going to flap my arms and dance around babbling incoherently, it had better be at a wedding reception somewhere. Hopefully, I won’t be in the middle of giving a toast. But in my own living room on a Wednesday morning? I’ll pass.
Still, the guy wasn’t convinced. ‘You sure? I can go in?‘
By now, I figured it was a vampire thing or something. He had to ask three times if he’s really invited in before he’s allowed to hang from my rafters and suck the blood out of me. Eh, whatever. I’ve had a good run; it’s a chance I was willing to take. Still, I jokingly said, ‘Hey, just don’t take off with the checkbook, eh?‘
He chuckled and said — maybe just a quarter beat too quickly, ‘Oh, no worry. I wouldn’t go for the checkbook.‘
Wait. So what, then? He’s got something else in mind? A little less jokingly, I said, ‘Okay, then. Well, we don’t have any fine china, so I guess we’re good.‘
‘Ah, that’s okay. I don’t want your china, either.‘
Okay. Now I was nervous. I’m sure it was just a cultural disconnect — or my half-sleepy stupor — but he suddenly seemed a little shifty. I had to ask. ‘Jewelry?‘
‘Oh, no. No jewelry.‘
‘Cash?‘
‘No.‘
‘Computers? Silverware? Linens? Beer? Good god, man, just what are you after in there?!‘
‘I just raise the weendows. I can go in now?‘
Oh sure, why the hell not? I covered all the bases I could think of, and it’s not like the guy’s not going to be back tomorrow, and the next day, and probably most of next week. I’m sure he just needed the windows up for a while, and anyway, I thought of every bit of mischief he could possibly get into in the house.
I was halfway to work before I thought of that old urban legend of people breaking into a house and doing unspeakably nasty things with people’s toothbrushes.
I’m not sure how I could have translated or mimed that, exactly, to let him know I was onto the idea. So I’m sort of glad I didn’t come up with it while I was still standing on the porch with him.
Still, I’m buying new toothbrushes on the way home tonight. And locking the damned door when I leave in the morning. I don’t much care whether our window sills are painted. At this point, I just want to be able to sleep easy at night, and to own a toothbrush I can look straight in the eye again.
Yeah. Those were the days.
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