Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2004-09-20 11:00 am
thefourthvine) wrote2004-09-20 11:00 am
Entry tags:
Real Life Update
My house is more or less under control at this point. I hope. For at least a little while. So I should be able to return to recommending and ranting and whatever other things people hope to find here.
Item: Plumbing.
Status: Working. For now.
Unanswered Questions: Will we get the County tree guy to remove the tree - or even answer his voice mail - before the ficus uses its Underground Tentacles of Death to crush our main line in its evil, ficus-y embrace?
Item: Broken appliances, including washing machine, oven, and air conditioner.
Status: Working. For, one hopes, a while.
Unanswered Questions: Will I ever catch up on our laundry? Will they find me, in some not-too-distant future, dead from thirst, halfway to the front door, purse in hand, with dirty clothing entwined around my ankles, holding me in place? God, I hope not, because that would be even more humiliating than having all our various workpersons see the contents of the Refrigerator of Doom.
Item: Refrigerator of Doom
Status: Clean and gleaming and ready to receive food.
Unanswered Questions: What was that purple stuff? Was it ever food, or was that an alien civilization that we Lysoled to death? How is it that I know there were eight zucchini in there when we decamped suddenly, with no time to clean out the refrigerator, all those weeks ago, and yet I found no zucchini when I faced the horrid, microbe-infested, fuzzy music yesterday? Where did they go in the interim, and should I be scared? What scary properties does string cheese have, that it could survive in that refrigerator for three weeks totally unscathed, essentially the only food item to do so? And so on. We won't even talk about the mushrooms, but I do want to put in a plug for disposable plastic containers, which made the cleaning process, if not easier, at least more or less guilt-free.
Item: 4,500 books.
Status: 4,200 books unpacked, dusted, and reshelved.
Unanswered Questions: Why do we have three copies of The Hobbit? Why do we have at least two copies of almost everything Robertson Davies ever wrote, including, unless I miss my guess, a few of his grocery lists? Why, after purchasing four copies of The Anubis Gates, do we still only have one, and where did the other three go? Why do we have three copies of Neuromancer, when no one in the house will admit to liking the book? Will we be able to persuade ourselves to dispose of our many extraneous copies of the Collected Works of Saki? Does Greg Egan appreciate me as much as he should, given the sheer quantity of his books that I've purchased? And an estimated 3.3 million other questions of a similar nature, all of which will probably be forever unanswered.
Item: Other assorted non-book boxes filled with the entire contents of two rooms, which somehow, when packed, magically expanded to fill the rest of the house.
Status: All unpacked except for four boxes, which, by all that is holy, will yield to our combined might before a week from next Thursday.
Unanswered Questions: Aside from the lingering one about how two rooms, which never seemed all that full, held more than the entire rest of the house was capable of holding - and I think that's one of those physics, or possibly metaphysics, questions that will plague science and religion for generations to come - let's talk about what we found in those rooms. Like that mutant hand-tooled leather belt collection, which definitely didn't belong to anyone who has ever lived in this house. Like the Gay Ken Dolls collection, about which the less said the better. Like all those notes, not just from college but from high school, which is odd because I, for one, don't remember ever taking any notes in high school. And yet some appeared to be in my handwriting, albeit mostly the ones that were in-class notes about illegal activities. Like all those museum-quality computer parts, which should've been thrown out years ago, particularly the tower unit that had a - you know, I don't even remember the name for it, but it's the really huge floppy drive that people had back in the dark ages. And so on.
Item: Life.
Status: Will now return to normal. I hope.
Unanswered Questions: Will I even remember how to find porn? Does anyone remember when this LJ used to contain recs sets, as opposed to random whining? Can I learn to live again in a house that is not a collection of expensive, finely-tuned, non-functional parts? Are my hands permanently scarred from overexposure to cleaning products?
And that is all, except for this heartfelt message from One Who Has Suffered Much: people, if you're leaving your house, even if you only think it's going to be for the night, throw away your zucchini. You'll thank me later.
Item: Plumbing.
Status: Working. For now.
Unanswered Questions: Will we get the County tree guy to remove the tree - or even answer his voice mail - before the ficus uses its Underground Tentacles of Death to crush our main line in its evil, ficus-y embrace?
Item: Broken appliances, including washing machine, oven, and air conditioner.
Status: Working. For, one hopes, a while.
Unanswered Questions: Will I ever catch up on our laundry? Will they find me, in some not-too-distant future, dead from thirst, halfway to the front door, purse in hand, with dirty clothing entwined around my ankles, holding me in place? God, I hope not, because that would be even more humiliating than having all our various workpersons see the contents of the Refrigerator of Doom.
Item: Refrigerator of Doom
Status: Clean and gleaming and ready to receive food.
Unanswered Questions: What was that purple stuff? Was it ever food, or was that an alien civilization that we Lysoled to death? How is it that I know there were eight zucchini in there when we decamped suddenly, with no time to clean out the refrigerator, all those weeks ago, and yet I found no zucchini when I faced the horrid, microbe-infested, fuzzy music yesterday? Where did they go in the interim, and should I be scared? What scary properties does string cheese have, that it could survive in that refrigerator for three weeks totally unscathed, essentially the only food item to do so? And so on. We won't even talk about the mushrooms, but I do want to put in a plug for disposable plastic containers, which made the cleaning process, if not easier, at least more or less guilt-free.
Item: 4,500 books.
Status: 4,200 books unpacked, dusted, and reshelved.
Unanswered Questions: Why do we have three copies of The Hobbit? Why do we have at least two copies of almost everything Robertson Davies ever wrote, including, unless I miss my guess, a few of his grocery lists? Why, after purchasing four copies of The Anubis Gates, do we still only have one, and where did the other three go? Why do we have three copies of Neuromancer, when no one in the house will admit to liking the book? Will we be able to persuade ourselves to dispose of our many extraneous copies of the Collected Works of Saki? Does Greg Egan appreciate me as much as he should, given the sheer quantity of his books that I've purchased? And an estimated 3.3 million other questions of a similar nature, all of which will probably be forever unanswered.
Item: Other assorted non-book boxes filled with the entire contents of two rooms, which somehow, when packed, magically expanded to fill the rest of the house.
Status: All unpacked except for four boxes, which, by all that is holy, will yield to our combined might before a week from next Thursday.
Unanswered Questions: Aside from the lingering one about how two rooms, which never seemed all that full, held more than the entire rest of the house was capable of holding - and I think that's one of those physics, or possibly metaphysics, questions that will plague science and religion for generations to come - let's talk about what we found in those rooms. Like that mutant hand-tooled leather belt collection, which definitely didn't belong to anyone who has ever lived in this house. Like the Gay Ken Dolls collection, about which the less said the better. Like all those notes, not just from college but from high school, which is odd because I, for one, don't remember ever taking any notes in high school. And yet some appeared to be in my handwriting, albeit mostly the ones that were in-class notes about illegal activities. Like all those museum-quality computer parts, which should've been thrown out years ago, particularly the tower unit that had a - you know, I don't even remember the name for it, but it's the really huge floppy drive that people had back in the dark ages. And so on.
Item: Life.
Status: Will now return to normal. I hope.
Unanswered Questions: Will I even remember how to find porn? Does anyone remember when this LJ used to contain recs sets, as opposed to random whining? Can I learn to live again in a house that is not a collection of expensive, finely-tuned, non-functional parts? Are my hands permanently scarred from overexposure to cleaning products?
And that is all, except for this heartfelt message from One Who Has Suffered Much: people, if you're leaving your house, even if you only think it's going to be for the night, throw away your zucchini. You'll thank me later.
no subject
*Nothing* but sympathy.
Although...
Unanswered Questions: Will we get the County tree guy to remove the tree - or even answer his voice mail - before the ficus uses its Underground Tentacles of Death to crush our main line in its evil, ficus-y embrace?
Really, if it's a ficus that's causing the drama, it might be cheaper to just fly me to wherever you are and tell me to try to keep it alive. At which point the ficus will -- as all ficuses do in my presence -- spontaneously wither and die.
no subject
How long do you think it would take you to "take care" of a very robust ficus the size of a two-story building, with a root system that is not only destroying our plumbing but also our neighbor's, and that has been detected as far away as Nebraska?
Oh, and I hereby grant you all responsibility for keeping the thing alive. Seriously. The ficus is now yours to do with as you will. It's Te's Ficus that is destroying our plumbing, and so shall it ever be known. Perhaps I will get a small sign made for it, so that our neighbor can know who is responsible for it, too.
no subject
But. Suburbs of L.A., hmm?
If time was less of a concern, I'd recommend a large amount of acidic, impure water of the sort which is positively abundant here in the verdantly corrupt NJ suburbs.
*many hugs*
no subject
And you may be the only person on Earth with the power to kill this tree. God knows others have tried and failed. I mean, seriously, the gardener took a chainsaw to the root system and only made it mad; he was lucky to escape with his life. So I was thinking in terms of Hercules, but we all know Te is just as good as Hercules. Ficusbane, work your magic!
no subject
My GOD. I just...
*sticks pins in ficus doll*