2014-05-19

The Day The Universe Sent Me A Beer

I used to never believe in anything spiritual or karmic gobbeldy gleek, but sometimes there is just no other explanation for the weird things that go down at the hoedown at the showdown.

This weekend was another busy one, our old house is slowly decomposing and we're forced to fix certain things (okay, have other people who know what they're doing fix things) and replace things one chunk of cash at a time. 

The next most obvious project are the old, creepy doors. They're seasoned, and starting to look perfect. Perfect for the set of shooting the movie Saw 37. 
They no longer say: "Welcome." 
They creepily whisper through a white mask: 
"I want to play a game."

I mean, cool by me, I would always prefer Comfytown to look haunted. That should keep burglars (and neighbors) at bay.

The BETTER front door
More important than their bad image is their bad attitude

Our doors are not about that Opening and Closing life anymore. They're so Over It, they can't even. They just want to retire and hang out in Florida, never closing, just blowing back and forth slowly and maybe detouring the occasional alligator. 

The back door is made of the wood of some kind of rare sponge tree apparently. When it's wet, or even humid outside it Hulks up with some kind of awkward door boner, and doesn't want to fit in the door jam. 
Need a door for a haunted house?


I really have to manipulate it, with my hip about 7 times to get it closed. This is sounding like the worst porn ever, and it's visually even worse than it sounds. What I lack in muscle I make up for in bulk weight and can usually wrastle it closed, but it's not pleasant. 

Then some days I can't open it, because dead weight doesn't work that way, and we have to use the front door and pretend the back door doesn't exist. We're Beyonce and the back door is Solange beating on Jay-Z in an elevator. Nothin' to see here.

NBD, right? We had looked into replacing doors, you can always find a discontinued model or some other long-story clearance door that looks fine for a couple bills. Plus installation, sure. 

We're not even trying to be heroes and pretend we can make that work. If you think all doors are a standard size, and should be easily interchangeable to keep us all sane, you're thinking is correct. Also if you ever run for King of the World you HAVE my vote, but you're also adorable and naive to the ways of the construction world....and dead wrong. 

Long story, over a year and approximately 288 trips to various home improvement and hardware stores later, we finally went to the right place to order, they had to come out and "inspect and measure the area." This is code for Find More Shit To Charge For.

This is like when you go for an oil change and Johnny Jumpsuit tells you in his most serious voice that Maurice (my former car) also really needs:
An air filter, and 
some kind of Sumnorother belt, and 
you really should replace that Schmeezer Valve before it causes your certain, painful and untimely death. 

And of course everything holding up and surrounding our doors is rotting on BOTH of our door frames.
What do you mean? It only needs a coat of paint. Just hang the discounted door, would ya?
Boring story short (TOO LATE) we're ending up at over $2,000 for the cheapest doors we could find. If nothing goes wrong, that is, which is not typically how our stories unfold.

We took care of the final (please gods everywhere, let it be the final trip) details of ordering the doors, now we wait for the installation nightmares to happen, flawlessly I'm sure. That was Sunday morning. While we were at Home Depot, we decided to get some flowers and such for the grounds. You know who else had that idea on the first warm weekend of Spring? THE ENTIRE WORLD.
from dailyfinance.com
Kind of like this picture above, but add giant orange carts filled with whining older kids, crying younger kids, and people who bitch at you if you don't just magically know to get out of their way, and then as soon as they're in front of you, come to a dead stop and just decide THIS is the spot they need to take a Pit break and not move.

In fact, if you think you're ready to be a home owner, here's a good test. 

Go to Home Depot on the first warm weekend of the year, and see what happens. If you, your sanity and/or your relationship with your significant other (if you're in a relationship, which you don't need to be to be a homeowner) are still in tact after that trip, you're ready. If you want to run screaming from this madness, find the nearest bar or liquor store and just forget you ever had the idea to fix or spruce up your castle, you might just want to keep renting. And that is fine, let me tell you. There is no shame to that game.

I miss the hell out of my tiny little condo. I had to pay an association fee, but you know what came with that? ALL landscaping and exterior repairs. Worth every damn penny to someone who has no clues about these mysteries of the universe.

When it comes to our landscaping, it's slowly getting worse every year. When we first moved here, there were beautiful flowers everywhere, not a weed to be found, and some things we could not identify planted neatly in rows, some sort of Secret Garden. Yeah that small creature and weed magnet of a garden got immediately ripped out and replaced with grass. 

We managed to mess up the grass, too, though. Now our yard suffers from male pattern baldness, we could open a Dandelion Winery, and the flowers ... we now get about FOUR tulips that come up in random places around the yard. 

We can never keep up with all the weeds, weird beetles, bugs and whatnot, but we do try to plant some already-bloomed flowers in the Spring to detract the eye from the bad spots. Kind of like how I would always have huge high bangs to draw the eye away from my chins and inability to wear even the most simple makeup. 
It was the 80s, dude. AquaNet was mandatory.
See what I mean? Almost anywhere you look, all you see is bangs. 

So I looked through our cluttered garage for the planters we use and re-use. Our garage is like that one closet in old sitcoms, where everything came piling out, covering the person who opened the door. After some time, I worked my way back and found the POTS, but couldn't find the hanging mechanisms that snap to the top. They probably have some perfectly logical name, but I have no idea what that is. 

What also would be perfectly logical would be to store those hanging mechanisms right by where the pots are stored, right? They go together like peanut butter and banana daiquiris. You would think when you put them away, you put them away at the same time. Together. 

But time, clutter and teenagers separated the happy couples. I ain't even mad though, because I had to go to the farthest nether region of the garage to find where the hanging parts had fallen, and guess what else I found?

I guess if you read the title of this, you could probably guess, and this game sucks so I'll just tell you: 
A beer. 
Some old, forgotten bottle of Miller Lite from some party that either I threw, or maybe even the teenager and his friends might know something about, since I don't really see myself forgetting or neglecting a beer at any point of my life. Either way, that stale lukewarm, gods know how long it's been in there beer was like a pot of gold at the end of a rain cloud. I'm sure I looked like Gollum clutching his Precious, from the look of .... mmm wonder, on my husband's face watching me chug that old thing. Hell yes, I drank it.
Whatever I suck at graphics.
Gollum pic from imgarcade.com
Hey, judge away but we never buy beer anymore. It's not in the budget, it's more calories than I can justify lately, and teenagers

The very definition of Irony is not being able to buy beer because you have teenagers, when they're one of the biggest reasons you need beer. It's also cruel and unusual punishment to ask a person to do yard work for hours without pay or beer. 

That stale, probably frozen-unfrozen-refrozen 10 times old beer was the best beer I've had in a long time. I don't want to think about how it got there. 

Maybe my dead alkie old man sent it somehow, to make up for all of his many pranks and asshattery over the years. 

Mayhaps the Universe just knew it has been over-serving me Bullspit Pie for months, and I needed a break? Let's just go with that.

Thanks, Universe, I needed that.

There were a few other times when I wasn't sure what I was going to and magically I found myself with just what I needed. I'll write about those another time, this is long enough. Have you had an experience like that?

30 comments:

  1. It's like the Universe was serving you Communion! You have experienced the Sacred!

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    1. I felt pretty special, I have to say. I did not even want to share any with my husband, who had the SAME kind of day, but HE did get to take a nap in the afternoon while I did laundry and cleaned out the spare bedroom. I earned that stale-ass beer!

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  2. We're in the same situation as you! We have to replace both our front and back doors...installation seems to be ridiculously expensive, but it's worth it!

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    1. It IS ridiculous, right? I can see in OUR situation, but then again it's like fixing the car, or pretty much anything. It would take more time and money to learn how to do it myself, so *insert trumpet fanfair* CHARGE IT!

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  3. I absolutely see how a Miller Lite from God himself could make the worst home improvement project bearable. Have you considered starting your own religion? There's a TON of money in that...

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    1. If it happens again, I will DEFINITELY call it a "water into wine" situation. For now, just enjoying the memory.

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  4. Beer from the heavens beats the Hell outta manna any day. Pun intended. You ever watch Rehab Addict on HGTV? A few minutes of that show and it's host, the 5 foot blonde ass kickin' take no prisoners pistol, Nicole Curtis, and you'll wanna get your hands on a badass bandsaw and get shizzy widduh home improvement, yo!

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    1. My spirit was definitely nourished.
      I have not seen that, we no longer have HGTV sadly. I used to love watching it. I definitely need that sort of inspiration, I'll see if I can find it online, or at least a YouTube video of it. Sounds pretty rad.

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  5. Only a good writer can turn something as mundane as doors and turn it into such a hilarious post.
    My garden looks like the Tropical rain forests. But it serves to hide away all the dead bodies of ex's, that I've buried over the years.

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    1. Nicely done, then. I'm sure they were full of great fertilizer. I'll bet you can grow THEE best Blood Oranges on that spot.

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  6. door boner. the door boner. LMFAO.
    and the best part of the door boner for me is that my at my inlaw's house ALL of their freakin doors have boners (FIL decided to remove all doors for repainting, forgot to mark them, and did not manage to put even ONE of them back in the right door jamb) and I will forever think of this EVERY TIME I go there and have to wrestle one of the doors into it's jamb. thanks for that!

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    1. hahaha I don't know what else to call it, the damn door SWELLS awkwardly. It's maddening.
      I kind of feel for your in-laws, doors is hard business. You wouldn't think they would be, and if Life were fair, hell we wouldn't even really need actual doors, just those hippie beads or swinging cowboy saloon type doors just to define space. BUT Life has never been fair, why would this be? Sorry if you'll be blushing every time you try to force a door closed in your in-laws house, but hopefully that will help ?

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  7. God bless alcohol in all its forms. Amen.

    This was hysterical! Why is home improvement such a pain in the ass? We've been talking about a new backdoor for a while, but now I'm afeared.

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    1. It really felt like a faith healing MIRACLE moment.
      I don't know, Beth, I really don't. I thought for us it was because we have NO experience in fixing up houses, every house either of us lived in could easily be on the show "Hoarders" for various reasons, but after YEARS of trying to get the hang of it, now we know why contractors make so much damn money. Because just like Divorce Lawyers they're WORTH IT.

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  8. I love those moments..of course I can't recall any right this second because REASONS also Brain Fried...but its like it shows up in a soft pool of light and angels sing and you are just like YES YES YES YES .

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    1. My brain is fogged up as well, hypothyroid and sleep deprivation and I always love "because of REASONS."
      I've had this happen a few other times, with cash even, but I dunno this beer was special.

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  9. Door boners and a Schmeezer Valve. Oh you have no idea HOW MUCH I needed this post and your silliness and lightness and just to zone out to the dumbfuckery of the situation right now. Thank you for this post. The universe gave you beer, and gave me your writing.

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    1. I like the sound of Door Boner, awkward to close but fun to say.
      I'm always glad if I can make ya chuckle! It's kind of all I have :) in the way of services to offer.

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  10. This is hilarious! BUT I can't believe you drank it!

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    1. I love me some beer :) it's usually best after yardwork but as I said, we haven't been buying any. I mean, you can't just GIVE BACK a gift from the Universe, right?!

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  11. You're SO funny! The home improvement crap - barely want to even go there because we've spent SO MUCH money fixing stuff. I now want to "fix" the back porch but know it's money I'll never get back. I just want to move, but you know, we don't have a couple hundred thousand bucks lying around... when we moved here, we gutted the place. All new bathrooms and kitchen and floors and paint and we knocked 2 walls down and everything. In just six months or so, every single pipe that they'd replaced had to be replaced again because they used some that weren't compatible or whateverTF with the other ones? UGH. Anyway, good luck with the door installation and YAY for finding a beer! I'd totally have drank it too.

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    1. Ugh I weep for your pipes. That is a bucket of Sucky. We put over $10,000.00 dollars, not dollhairs into making the basement bathroom work because nobody between two reactors and a very expensive inspector person, nobody told us it had a boat toilet that really wasn't for use. It was BELOW the sewer and they didn't hook it up right. We had to out in pipes, dig up the for, etc. We'll never get that money back.

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  12. I was all LOLing over door boners, and sponge trees, and Home Depot on the weekend, and then you said you don't buy beer anymore, and now my heart is sad. If that's what it's like to have teenagers, I'm shipping mine to boarding school when they get older, because, aww hail no.

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    1. Well, I know people have done it. You either need a locking fridge or the ability to stay up past 9:00. Since I have neither at my disposal I find it easier to hide brown liquor in various places around the house. Cheaper too. That's why you don't see a whole lot of whinos carrying around a case of beer. Storage.

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  13. strangely no I have never found a bag of heroi-.... uhh, scratch that.... no , no it hasnt happened.... although I have seen many a door jam boner... we used old school doors from old construction site... they are not gorgeous but hey...you dont find an old warm, moldy beer every day... hey could you please email me? Heres a surprise... I effed up the dates!

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    1. No sadly I don't find a moldy beer every day, but I guess that makes it all more special.
      Doors be tricky.
      Started reading the Boston guide! Interesting stuff! Thanks again :)

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  14. Home improvements are enough to drive ANYONE to drink. pretty cool story though about the mystery beer. I think it was "heaven sent", LOL!

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  15. Too funny. I thought this was going to be a story about your doors but it turned into a story about your yard which then morphed into a story about find a glorious surprise when you most needed it.
    Love: "from male pattern baldness," manipulating the door w/ ur hip, "weed magnet," the whole description of Home Depot.

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