"House" is a Verb

Right now, my hands are two little stumps of pain. My feet have the consistency of burnt hamburger-no wait, that was dinner- well, best not to discuss consistency but to draw the metaphor that if you were given the choice of what my feet feel like versus having a migraine for a year...

House. Like in, "House you and the horse you rode in on." "What the house is going on." "I don't give a flying house."

This house is fucking with my physical condition the way only Penthouse letters can, were the house a woman.

Beyond the pale of comprehension and accepted reality, in other words.

When did painting become a contact sport?

Even dinner was a chore in that the last dram of lighter fluid was evenly distributed over the charcoal, lit, and prayed over in hopes that that little blue flame would have enough critical mass to get the grill going.

No dice. And since its always hard to raise a fiery demon from the underworld on a Sunday night, especially now that football season is on- its off to the local teenage idiot hangout and convenience store for some ersatz starter fluid. Now that that's going, let's drop back into the kitchen, yes the one with the freshly painted ceiling accentuating the hideous periwinkle walls and cabinets that look like physical manifestations of a fart, to actually make the burgers on the countertops that stain so easily you swear that spills from next door come a-calling because they feel right at home here.

Meanwhile the dining room color is drying back to something between rancid split pea soup and a sinus infection.

Oh, and yes, it is possible to buy two cans of the same exact freaking white gloss paint and not have the fucking shade match. When the can says "High Hiding" they apparently mean your clean t-shirt and not the actual white surface you are trying to repaint in the first place!

I am also blessed with switch boxes that were built in 1926 of high tensile, rigid steel to withstand what can only have been someone's clairvoyant image of impending war in the late thirties. They are anchored to studs the way you'd expect a destroyer to be tied down to dock in the face of Hurricane Fukitol. Replacing them (and they do, for reasons I can't detail here need to be replaced) takes semi-herculean strength, cunning and removal of half the surrounding wall surface. It seems the stud they are anchored to is always in the next room. I've taken to opening a drywall mine in the ceiling of my basement. That space will have to be re-done at some point as I rebuild for more useful purposes than a carpeted surface upon which the cats can practice their staining abilities. In the meantime, it is being scavenged for drywall patches.

Oh and here's a fun trick: The other night I was coming home from a walk with a friend when she noticed that my key sparked when it was in the deadbolt and touched the doorknob. That was also the only sparking seen that night.

My cat sitter said she would not return (a fact I kept from my animals, Claude Balls not being a nickname I am in search of) if I didn't fix the front door; she was getting a shock -and it had nothing to do with my decorating- every time she used the key.

What's up? Well, decided to poke around the door and, the long and short of it, touching metal from deadbolt to doorknob does indeed induce an electric current, raise a spark and...

drumroll please...

makes the doorbell ring.

Now what the fuck is that all about???

Go pick on someone your own size. There's a Cape Cod on the next block that is already sensitive about having to wear glasses while playing dodge ball.