The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: Fourth Edition / Happy Anniversary

You know how some years, life falls into a nice, easy routine, low on excitement but high on predictability, and other years, it’s one crisis after another? Well, 2013 has been one of those crisis years. Maybe not the whole year, but the second half has been, well, one big clusterfuck.

When I am overly stressed, I do two things: I eat my feelings, and I put myself last on the priority list. I never claimed to be well balanced, just functional.  Dealing with one crisis after another has been a full time job, with little time for any self-care. So while I did find the time to gain weight this year, I haven’t done the same for writing, one of the few things I enjoy just for me. What used to be an every week habit has now become a rare event, even though almost daily, writing is on the to do list.

So here we are, in December, the tail end of Hanukkah waving at the start of Christmas, and I find myself wondering if I will be able to honor my annual tradition of writing twelve blog posts between now and the new year, or epiphany, or whenever I decide I have met my goal, because hey, it’s my goal, not yours. Go set your own ridiculously unattainable goal. Wait, this is attainable, because I’ve done it for the past three years. And I will do it again, starting now.

Presenting, the fourth annual twelve blogs of Christmas! (Cue the trumpets. Unfurl the banner.)

(I love the word unfurl.)

The rules are there are no rules, just like in life. I write about what I want. You read it. You are moved in some way, through laughter or tears or to do something else. Maybe you would like to leave a comment, something fabulously validating preferably. Sound good? Excellent.  Let’s begin.

Here’s today’s little anecdote:

After six years of deliberating and failing miserably to simmer anything, I am getting a new cooktop. My current range is a Jenn-Air 4 burner electric coil stove with indoor grill. When was the last time you cooked on electric coils? An apartment in 1992? Your parents’ house? Never? Well, I use mine every day. Every. Day. Lordy, it’s old. And filthy. It has two settings, high and off. And the grill? It makes an excellent trivet and crumb catcher. I don’t even know how to turn it on, and cleaning it never seemed a big priority because for six years I thought I would replace it.

Jenn-Air used to be a quality product, but now it’s like so many other brands that seem to be slipping away. The real problem with it, however, is its size. The only thing the same size of a Jenn- Air range is another Jenn-Air range, which is why we haven’t replaced it.

Getting a different brand of range poses a different issue. If we get a new cooktop, we need to get new countertops. Our current counters are tile. Whoever made the decision to sink a Jenn-Air into a tile counter top clearly wasn’t planning on doing a lot of cooking, but I have made do for these past six years to the best of my ability.

New stove means new counters. If I am getting new counters, I might as well replace my kitchen sink. And if I replace a stove, sink, and counters, well, let’s do something about that backsplash. And while we are at it, let’s do it all between thanksgiving and Christmas, the week after one child is in the local production of the Nutcracker and the other one gets her wisdom teeth pulled (at fourteen! Who gets wisdom teeth pulled at fourteen??).

Go big or go home, or something like that.

You know what I am not? A contractor. Yet here I am, auditioning people to do things to my house that I will use every day for a long time to come. How’s that for a little pressure? I know, I know, it’s a good problem to have, but still, it isn’t easy. Don’t judge me.

So far, things are going pretty smoothly, and if everything goes according to plan, it will all be done in less than two weeks. Except we all know nothing goes according to plan.

My husband and I think we have everything about ready to go, starting with the teardown this Saturday. We have written checks and transferred money and proclaimed the kitchen our Christmas present, so it better fucking happen or else I want to see a box of Frye boots under my tree come December 25.

On the floor in my dining room are my new sink, faucet, and cooktop, which is gas, five burners, and fabulous. Also, it adds another task to my contracting position, which is to find a guy to run a gas line and connect the range after the counters are installed. Yesterday, the right man for the job came out to my house to have a little lookie-loo and give me an estimate. It was a last minute appointment, one I really didn’t have the time for but wanted to squeeze in before the mad rush to the carline at school.

I have talked to this very professional and pleasant individual a few times, but had never put a face with a voice. When he showed up, I was taken aback. He looked exactly like a sad clown, only without the makeup. Large belly, gray page boy hair, and the face of, well, a sad clown. He looked in the kitchen and then kneeled over the new gas cooktop, lying on the floor, and started to wobble.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I still have my sea legs.”

“Oh, did you take a cruise for Thanksgiving?” I asked politely. Yes, I am capable of polite when need be.

“Twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” he said.

I made a little more small talk, trying to hurry him along, which was difficult because his phone rang incessantly and he felt the need to answer every single call. I tried not to picture a too-small hat with a droopy little flower on his head.

He went to the crawl space and came out and took more calls and finally I had to remind him that I needed to leave ten minutes ago to get my daughters from school and could he just leave me an estimate. He told me he would get it ready that minute in his truck.

I went inside and locked up, then went to the driveway to get the estimate and say goodbye. Only he didn’t have it ready for me.  “Look at this,” he said to me, pointing to his computer screen mounted in his work truck. “Have you seen anything so beautiful in your life?”

He had opened a file of pictures of his cruise, all one hundred and fifty of them. Pictures of nature. Landmarks. His wife. The two of them at dinner. The two of them on shore excursions. Plants. Animals.  

“Lovely. Wow. Amazing.” I interjected appropriate and hopefully enthusiastic reactions to this sad clown’s vacation slides, like I gave a shit that I, in fact, did not. “Looks like a really good time.”

I was now fifteen minutes late.

“Yeah, it was really rough,” he said. He started to explain how the winds were over 45 knots per hour and the swells and headwinds and how the boat went up a wave nose first and then crashed down into a crest and I couldn’t follow because the whole thing sounded like a verbal word problem. I didn’t want to do that math, I wanted to leave, but I was being held captive by the sad clown who could make or break my cooking experience for the lifetime of my Thermador cooktop. This was not a person to whom I could afford to be rude.

“Listen,” I finally said, “I am really enjoying hearing about your trip, but I kind of have to get my kids.” I don’t know if it sounded that bad when I said it to him, but I have a feeling it was worse.

“No problemo, “he told me, and took my email address so he could send me the invoice and set up a time to do the gas line work.

Then I had to wait for him to back out of my driveway and get the fuck out of my way so I could be late to pick up my kids from school.

Here’s a word problem: if the sad clown estimates three hours of labor to do the work, how much of that time will be spent showing me his vacation slides?