We’re scarce around here, aren’t we? H.o.p. couldn’t care less that Marty and I have come down with bad colds (I went for three months without one and believe me I’m at least grateful for that) and has just popped on Mozart’s Requiem.
“Guess what I’m listening to?” he sings out.
I’ve decided the music adds a certain crushing nobility to the situation.
Mozart and Masons also reminds me that–No, Jennifer, we never did get our black and white tiled kitchen floor and please stop asking about it or the Dead Penguin will nip you. The landlord, after tearing out the kitchen wall and floor to replace the pipes that feed the radiators, instead spent weekend before last hacking the old flooring together with cut-outs from some other kind of material of another color and texture and thickness to prolong said floor’s life, and cobbled together sort-of-but-not-really baseboard replacements that look like a child’s first interaction with toy blocks, except for the fact toy blocks look FUN and none of this is happy and gay. No one will look and sigh, “Ah, there’s an architect in the making.”
I can kind of excuse the splintered and busted molding being reinstalled as it is part of the authentic (old) air of this old building. No telling how long that molding has been there. My mother, yesterday, mentioned how the windows took her back to her childhood because the glass is ripply like the windows of her childhood. They ripple likely because they are at least 60 to 70 years old. Yes, it sucks when it comes to our energy bills, but we have exceptionally old windows that ripple just like they used to because they are exactly what they used to be.
Anyway, the deed done, the old floor reinstalled (with embellishments) the landlord ran, because…
“As long as you’re going to be tearing out the floor, rather than having a busted floor reinstalled, I want a floor like in the upstairs apartment,” I’d told him. “I want a black and white tiled floor just like the Freemasons’…”
Because the black and white tiled flooring of a Freemasons’ lodge has…
…the merit of looking clean and of being easily kept in that condition. They contribute very much to the atmosphere of freshness and brightness in the building.
So there, if you ever wondered why Freemasons have black and white tiled pavement, you need wonder no longer, so don’t bother your little pointed head about it again.
The landlord had instead mumbled something about how much he really liked our flooring and too bad it was discontinued so he couldn’t make patches out of the same material. For which reason we have patches made out of some other material that are nailed down on the flooring and I’d make photos for the blog but it’s all too depressing.
The landlord (who I still like, by the way) never outright said, “No, I will not be replacing your torn floor with new flooring,” and when I insisted that we must have our baseboards back and that I hoped they would look like baseboards, he never did outright say, “They will.” So there. But I also suppose this is why, when he was done, he kind of fled, because he didn’t want to witness me standing there staring tearful at what had been wrought, my life now pointless because I will never get my Masonic black-and-white pavement after all. Never ever. Because I’m not spending the money to install it myself when we’ve got so much else that needs spending on and I learned a long time ago that you JUST DO NOT make improvements on a rented apartment. Except for a dash of paint. You just don’t do it because you never know when you’ll end up with a notice that the building has been sold and you need to get up the money for a deposit on a new place fast.
No, in lieu of permanent improvements you adorn your apartment with gobs of bookcases.
The landlord had said he’d be back week after last (which would have been this week) to paint our kitchen and its patched wall, but he never did appear and that turned out to be all right because my parents are visiting for the week and making their way from household to household.
But at least we finally had heat last night. Which was good because for several hours it looked as if we might not have heat as it wasn’t working. Especially as we now have colds, it was going to be nice to have heat (well, I was coming down with my cold). “We don’t have heat yet?!” I said, standing on chairs, checking the radiators, and was about to phone the landlord when my phone rang and he was on it and was asking, “Do you have heat?” No, I said. “Oooooh,” he moaned and made it sound like heat was at the other end of another week of our floor and wall being torn out yet again. But half an hour later I heard the pipes start to clatter and before long they began to warm.
I might not have even come down with the cold had I not gone on a ferocious cleaning jag (initiated by my parents visiting) but when you do have a cold it’s always nice to have your surroundings refreshingly rearranged and smelling of lavender from your relatively new aromatherapy burner, lavender supposedly helping with colds. And take-out Chinese. Lavender and take-out Chinese (with lots of garlic) mingles real well.
After my parents left yesterday, I crawled into bed and watched Truffaut’s 400 Blows. Hopefully, I’ll be up for the planned excursion to the museum on Friday with at least two batches of H.o.p.’s cousins and his granddad.
The third batch of cousins is making noises of canceling because, guess what, THEY HAVE THE COLD.
They didn’t make it to the big gathering at CRACKER BARREL that happened Tuesday night in Alpharetta, either.
One of my brothers scheduled the above and is forgiven that (he asked forgiveness) and our having to drive an hour and a half in Atlanta rush hour traffic to get there (late) as the company was good and no one batted an eye at anything the kids did (but they were good, too) and I came home with a knapsack full of those free packets of jams and honey (I’ve got this thing for little free packets of jams and free soaps and free shoe polishing cloths from hotels but never have I ever walked out with a towel or a television I swear).
“We’ll never get there in time, this is pointless,” Marty kept saying, as we sat sat sat in this carbon dinosaur of a river glistening red and white light far into the distance.
“It’s not pointless. When people fly across country to see you, you drive an hour and a half through rush hour traffic to Cracker Barrel in Alpharetta even if you might not make it in time,” I said.
As we slid into a parking space, we saw through the windows the salads being delivered to the several tables of relations, so we weren’t too late or Cracker Barrel was being really slow or people had held up ordering for forty-five minutes. I never found out which.
We’ve only eaten one other time in our lives (Marty, myself and H.o.p.) at a Cracker Barrel. For years we abstained because of their sex orientation discrimination policies. Though, as of 2002, this was no longer an excuse, still, we abstained. Then one night on a long drive through Texas there was no place other to eat and so last year we had our first taste of Cracker Barrel, which was a miserable experience.
No, it was an exceptional experience as they had nothing we wanted to order. Not even chocolate milk for H.o.p.
On Tuesday night, at least they weren’t out of everything (as was our previous experience) and though my meal made everyone’s eyes bug out at how uncharacteristically spartan my chicken tenders were (others had ordered meals that filled out their plates nicely), not to mention unappetizing in appearance (even my brother who loves Cracker Barrel was aghast and stuttered and called out for the waitress because he was certain this was wrong wrong wrong). There were also plenty of corn muffins left over to wrap up for my mom for late night snacking back at their hotel.
At the Cracker Barrel in Texas they had given us no biscuits or corn muffins or little packages of jams and honey.
I spent the better part of Tuesday night wondering why the decorations, which are all Americana type, included a portrait of late 18th century Lady Something English/Scottish, which looked very much like Kubrick’s Lady Bullington. As we left, I even made a point to cross the room and check the name, that’s how perplexed I was.
My family didn’t quite get my perplexity. I tried to explain. They still didn’t quite get.
“They have it because it’s old looking,” they said.
“Yes, but the Cracker Barrel look is Americana and pseudo Americana,” I said. “So, I don’t know why this…”
“But it’s old…”
“Yes, but I don’t remember Marie Antoinette being American!”
H.o.p. was attracted to the display of expensive Christmas ornaments in the shop, for which reason it’s semi-miraculous we made it out the door without purchasing a glittery bauble. How H.o.p. was convinced he didn’t need one, I don’t know. Maybe I said they were the produce of slave labor. I don’t remember.
In other news, I wrote Uncle Milton about our amazing nontunneling ants, to ask why they were amazing nontunneling ants. Uncle Milton responded,
Thank you for the email. I am sorry to hear that your ants are not
tunneling. To be honest we do not really know why the ants would not be
tunneling, that is strange. Do they still appear uninterested in working?
Which ant farm do you have? I’m just trying to see if anyone else has heard
of anything similar to this.
My response was to take the above pic and send them a link to it.
Uncle Milton wrote back,
Thank you for the response and for the picture, I love the title. It
does seem that their interest in tunneling is still mediocre. Since there
are some tunneling, I would assume that in a short period of time they will
all catch on especially if they pick up the chemical scent of a working ant.
I would give it a little time and see because the biological nature should
kick in and tell them to start working. Please keep me informed of any
progress and of anything you might need. Hopefully the slackers will get to
tunneling like the others so you will have something to look at.
We are now on the 11th day and there is no change from the picture of the 10th day.
Beyond my wildest expectations, that we should end up with highly unusual ants that don’t care about tunnels. This anomaly makes them entertaining in their own way, but tunnels would have been nice.
Of course, you’re thinking at least we have the incredible hermit crabs to cheer us up! Yes, except a month ago Sarah tunneled down, apparently to molt. And then a little over a week ago Jerry and Green Shell disappeared completely as well. So, we’re supposing they too are now molting.
How do you tell the difference between a molting crab and a dead crab when they’re buried in the sand?
As long as you’re not overwhelmed with a dead fish smell, they are supposedly molting somewhere down there, beneath all that sand and coconut fiber, still alive, not decaying, not long gone for this world. And so we daily continue to put out water and salt water and little veggie and fruit snacks (which they don’t eat as they’re underground) and food pellets.
In other words, we pretend as if we have pets because the aquarium does not smell of dead fish.
Lovely, I accidentally waxed my poor lips with Tiger Balm instead of Carmax Carmex.
Carole, I actually am sounding better now than I did on the phone early this afternoon. I know you’ll be glad of that.
But…the big lesson of this post…
Me: We have EXCEPTIONAL NONTUNNELING ANTS!
Uncle Milton: You have MEDIOCRE ants.
No, Uncle Milton, we have EXCEPTIONAL, NONTUNNELING ANTS! This is how I’ve survived, by not accepting mediocrity into my life. Instead of suffering the mediocre, we marvel at the exceptional. OK?
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