house renovations

Since we have a house that is like 100 years old, we have put some effort into making it nicer. For example, about two years ago we remodeled the entire bathroom. This renovation included a new sink/vanity thing.

Just recently I asked my husband (who is also a member of this blog, but shall remain nameless) to wipe the walls of the bathroom. He decided to get the higher parts by standing on top of the sink. Needless to say the porcelain cracked and now the new bathroom just feels like one more thing that needs to be fixed.

We had a good run, lavender shirt.

I must tell you, my fellow people who can't have nice things, that my Tide Pen, the best friend of shirt stainers, has turned somehow. It now smells like vinegar, glue, and ass. And my shirt does too! And the stain is still there! It is really a shame; I have had this particular nice thing since Felicity's wedding and that was like three years ago. I achieved this mostly by never wearing it. I guess I will let that be a lesson to me: if you like your things, do not ever use them.

Whatcha Gonna Do?

When I break glasses, which I do all the time whilst washing up, I'm actually glad because it means I have one less dish to wash.

Scandanavian Handblown Glass Birdfeeder

Dateline: just now, my workplace.

My job involves taking things, often fragile, expensive things, made with care by artisans who are using wind power right now, and putting those things in boxes. Then I ship the boxes through the mail. You can probably see what's coming here. It's best that I'm not a surgeon.
I made gross miscalculation about slipping one of these off of a hanging display, and now it is in tiny artisanal shards.

Cars

I really hope I am over this, but back in 2002 I had 3 cars. I started with a 1995 Ford Aspire.


Some people might argue that it's not really nice, but since I think the whole car thing is a big luxury I'm going to go with ALL cars being nice for the moment. Plus it was the first car I bought with my own money.

I was on the overnight shift, coming home through SE DC trying to get on 295N. There's that one little ramp where you have no merge lane. I was screaming along to the music to keep myself awake and looking over my shoulder hoping I wouldn't plow into someone sideways when the guy in front of me stopped. I plowed into him instead. The airbag burned my thumb, my radio (which was on the seat, by the way - it was an old boom box - no nice radios for me) lost its antenna, the car was totaled.

Within weeks, I had a newer Ford Aspire - a 1996 model! Same color and everything. I was psyched to find one, plopped my boom box in the passenger seat, and rolled along. ... for 6 months until on the way home from the club some guy and I decided to enter the same intersection at the same time. Ford Aspire #2 - totaled. And then I had PTSD and was seeing random cars coming at me where there weren't any.

After that, against the advice of most everyone, I purchased a 1997 Aspire. That one got broken into and I managed to keep it (sort of) in a condition where someone would purchase it. Now I have a "new" car. I pray to the auto gods daily, and it's generally covered in bird poop from the tree I park under that I can't be bothered to clean off.

Carcassonne anxiety

Since I can't have nice things but my wife can, is an excellent caretaker of things and has seen me through multiple wallet losses and the loss of an actual car earlier in my life, she is ever-vigilant against my bullshit. Rightfully so! I do not fault her! But it leads to some conversations which may, to the outsider, seem disproportionately tense. As in the case of the board game Carcassonne. It is widely available online and is not in any way rare or pricey. But also, it has a bunch of highly loseable guys and dozens of tiles, is pretty, and is DEARLY beloved by us.

Thus:

B: What are you doing with that?

Me(E): I'm, um, taking it to work to play at lunch.

B: Do you have to?

E: I promise I won't lose or destroy it!

B: Do you promise?

E: I promise!

LATER THAT WEEK

B: Did you bring the game home?

E: I did.

B: Did you lose any guys?

E: No.

B: Or like the builders or the pigs?

E: No. All accounted for.

B: Or the tiles?

E: Well, I didn't count them, but I'm pretty sure....

B: GOD, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT?

STILL LATER THAT WEEK

B: Where is the scoreboard?

E: Remember how I took it to work and -

B: And you left it there?

E: Babe. No. I just had it in a separate plastic bag to protect it, and it's right here.

B: Please do not take it to work anymore. Please.

E: Ohmigod, fine!!

Does my dearest one seem overly concerned about the sanctity of Carcassonne? Reader, do not judge her until you have lived with me for even one day. And I have washed your darks with an entire packet of kleenex, rolled chairs on top of your delicate musical-equipment-related cords, and left your CDs lying uncased and vulnerable all around the house.

Underwear

One of our two cats -- the female, Sonny Bono -- has a strange obsession with clothing, and specifically with dragging clothing around the house. No kidding, if you forget to close a drawer it's even money that when you get home the contents will at best be merely dumped in the bedroom and at worst be spread down the steps and throughout the living room and dining room.

It's pretty startling when you think about it. She must work for hours to accomplish such thorough destruction, because she can only carry one piece at a time! And while she's doing it she makes these weird meow-grunts with every step: mra, mra, mra, mra, mra. We know this because she has the nerve to do it even when we're home.

Anyway, Sonny's favorite articles are underwear. So, my underwear pretty much always has teeth and claw marks in it.

And also, there's always a tense moment when we bring guests back to the house after being out or whatever and we have to do a quick scan to see if Sonny has deposited any bras on the kitchen table.

she rarely learns from her mistakes

I love rubber spatulas -- they are so good for getting the last bit of batter out of the mixing bowl or every last speck of chopped garlic out of the food processor. I have melted 3 spatulas in the past year because I keep forgetting that I cannot use them to mix things that are being heated on the stove. God knows how much rubber Chris and I have ingested because of this.

Further Breaking an Already Broken Item

It is sad and expensive to mess up something that's nice and new, but I submit to you all that knowing that something you had and used that was a piece of crap is now a non-functional piece of crap, thanks to you, is kind of low tide as far as not having nice things go.
I fear that it is the beginning of the end for the thrift store kitchen stools with the tearing upholstery. A key screw came loose in the one I always leap onto. Then another screw came out, and now the legs wobble. Soon, it will collapse in a heap. I know this, now anyway. The next time I go to leap onto the kitchen stool, I will NOT know this.

Dress shoes

No matter how hard I try, my dress shoes always, always end up with major scuffing on the toes. Do I drag my feet without knowing it? Am I not careful enough around screen doors? Or is it my regular attempts to sabotage commuters with rolling bags by casually sliding my foot under one wheel as we walk down the train platform?*

Either way, I now only buy one pair of nice shoes at any given time. I have been wearing this pair of black Dr. Martens for seriously two years now. Average day at work? I'm wearing the Docs. Brand new suit for an important meeting on Capitol Hill? The Docs. Going to a wedding? Docs. Day of fun in the sun at Ocean City? No shirt, swim trunks AND THE MOTHERFUCKIN' DOCS.

But seriously, it is kind of annoying. I just don't pay enough attention to the hazards of daily life when I have shoes (or anything really) that I want to keep nice!

* So satisfying when that spins a rolling bag out of control.

I need Teflon clothes.

One reason I can’t have nice things is because I have an avoidant personality. As soon as something goes even the tiniest bit wrong, it is dead to me. So a cashmere sweater gets a drop of maple syrup on it, and rather than taking it to the cleaner or washing it with Woolite on the gentle cycle within the week, I shove it into the back of my drawer. Four months later, I spy it and say, “Hey, how did this get back here?” and pull it out to find it full of moth holes. Toward the end of the evening on my mom and stepdad’s wedding day, I spilled a little bit of wine on my silk dress. I put it in the closet that night and half-vowed to take care of it the next day. That was October 2, 2005, and I still haven’t even looked at the dress despite the fact that I open my closet 20 times per week.

Rings

When Emily told me about this blog, I was like "I can have nice things! I can't think of a single story where I..." and then it all came crashing down around me, my pleasant fiction. But now that that's done, I can share with you the reason I can't have nice rings.

The first and main evidence comes in the form of an engagement ring. On the heels of cheating on my boyfriend with a girl he was actually in love with at something called a plastic party, I got immediately engaged to said boyfriend, at which point he went right out and purchased what I considered at the time a Really Expensive Ring. It had a platinum band and one single, simple emerald-cut diamond. Back then I was way more into the idea of pretending I was stable than I was into righteous indignation about where diamonds come from.

Anyways I had not had this thing a month before I was putting together a new desk - one of those massive, black and light-wood-laminate monstrosities that was so popular in 1999. I was lowering one giant, heavy piece of fiberboard onto another giant, heavy piece of fiberboard and managed to crush this ring into a shape not meant for fingers. Platinum is hard and brittle, guys. We had to blah blah get it repaired and endure the whispered mockings of everyone who could tell that this was a portent about our relationship (which was everyone who had ever met us) and ultimately I gave it back under stormy circumstances, but that was a big clue right there that I can't have nice things. If that had been the time of abundant cheap digital cameras, I am sure I would have photographic evidence.

I do have photographic evidence of the ring I superglued to my hand last year, though. It was my current beau's dead grandmother's ring, and now it's enclosed in white crustiness.

Poor decisions around treadmill use

My treadmill use involves five elements. 1) treadmill 2) Ipod 3) TV remote (I watch with closed captioning while listening to M.I.A., because exercise is hard) 4) bottle of water 5) little 3lb weights which probably do nothing.

So the little weights have their own resting spots on the treadmill, and then there are 2 cupholders. I usually place the water in one and the ipod and remote in the other. I don't have an armband or anything and I don't really want to stick the Ipod in my bra, so I just have to deal with the headphones running from my head to the cupholder.

Now what makes this evidence of how I cannot have nice things is that I know that that state of affairs is a disaster waiting to happen. I know. And I still do it. And this is how it goes:

I get on treadmill. Start Ipod, swig some water, turn on tv, grab weights, select my preferred program, and get to power walking.

Immediately, while still in the warmup phase of the program, I get my enthusiastically powering elbow caught in the headphones and yank my ipod out of the cupholder; it hits the treadmill violently and slides back to the floor. "Fucker," I say.

Now having no Ipod for motivation, and with the program getting hard, I need to channel surf even more insanely and, attempting to juggle remote and weights, I drop remote, which hits treadmill, sliding back as well as busting open. "Great, now I have to watch Throwdown With Bobby Flay? This is bullshit!" I say.

During a lull I attempt to swig water while still holding the weights and drop the water bottle, which hits the treadmill and slides back. "Goddammit," I say.

With my morale completely shot and ten minutes to go I give up on weights, and, attempting to return them to their little slots mid-tread, I drop at least one on my feet: which is good in the long term because they could damage the treadmill, but come ON. "Come ON," I say.

The wretched Throwdown and my program end, and I retrieve my poor ipod and remote out from under the treadmill, where they lay among numerous dead spiders and camel crickets. I am sad. Yay exercise!

Anyway, ipods are like the center of all my woes about the nice things I cannot and should not have, alright? They are so expensive yet so small, fragile, and frequently used! They're shame waiting to happen.

Coffee

I can't have nice things because I have an issue with drinking coffee. Specifically, accurately calculating the correct timing when I should 1) stop drinking, 2) remove my lips from the mug, and 3) the vital combination of these two actions. EVIDENCE.

Judging by the previous posts on this day old blog the inability to properly drink from glasses may be a national epidemic.

cars

I went to visit my mom and I took her to target. She never realized that they had an entire food section, so we ended up doing a little grocery shopping. At this time, I purchased a gallon of milk. As I drove home to Baltimore, completely unawares, the ENITRE gallon busted and flooded the floor of my car. I tried my best to sop it up, but the smell lingered for weeks. Eventually the smell dissipated, but I was convinced the car was tainted.

(I ended up selling the car to my parents and got a cute new car!)

Clothes

I was going through my drawers the other day, actually looking objectively at my summer clothes, and I realize that 90% of my shirts have food stains on the front, or the hem is unraveling or they are just shapeless and worn out. So I went out and bought a bunch of new shirts. Yesterday I was doing laundry, and I splashed a tiny drop of bleach on a brand new navy blue top.

cubicle mudwrestling

I have this tiny coffeemaker that mr.darkness' ex-housemate left behind. It made about 2 mugs' worth of coffee. I brought it to work, to begin my exciting project of getting brown drippy stains on all paperwork.

First I knocked the carafe off the filing cabinet and broke it. I discovered that the even tinier glass carafe from my $8 thrift-store espresso maker (that I never use) would fit if it was lined up perfectly, so I brought that to work. It has to be lodged in exactly right or coffee goes everywhere. It makes one mug of coffee, and it is impossible (for me) to pour from it without dribbling coffee down the side, so I always hold it over the wastebasket.

Then I managed to dislodge the plastic swiveling thing that holds the filter. It popped out of place and flung a limp filter full of wet coffee grounds across the carpet.

I'm pretty sure they have vacuumed, but the carpet beside my cubicle still has big dark spots on it. (I am in the corner. There is no-one else who can plausibly be blamed.)

Yes, I could get a lovely new coffeemaker for $30 at the Bloodbath&Beyond that is 2 blocks away. But parts of this one still sort of work!

that plastic recorder from 4th grade

When I was a little kid, I dreamed of playing a musical instrument. I had one of those little toy organs and managed to fill the southeast corner of my bedroom with a pretty mean "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," but I longed for something a tad louder and more portable. I was therefore delighted when my entire 4th grade class received recorders. I quickly learned such classics as "Theme from Hill Street Blues" and "Suicide is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H)." I had that little brown plastic horn (or whatever) as my constant companion. And then, for some reason, on Thanksgiving (after giving a recital to assembled family and friends) I decided that sticking a red ballpoint pen in the end of the recorder would be a keen way of cleaning it out. Needless to say, the pen got stuck. And later that weekend, I actually lost the recorder inside the pull-out couch. Of course, I didn't know it was in the pull-out couch, or it wouldn't have been lost. It wasn't until 7th grade, when we moved to a new house, that it was discovered down there with some old potato chip crumbs. And this is only one of the many nice things that gave me great delight that I still managed to ruin and/or lose.

stupid grocery store

I would have nice things, if I would stop spending my money on stupid stuff. I will spend one hundred dollars at the grocery store because it would be 'neat' to see what pomegranates taste like, and because I think I'll make banana pudding and home made lasagna and eat lots of yogurt because that's a healthy thing to take to work to eat. Then I will be annoyed with everything in my refrigerator and eat out all week. Then I will throw away the moldy pomegranates and never make the pudding, and the lasagna noodles will sit in the cupboard for years til I can't stand looking at them any more. And I will still be pudgy, and still not have the money for something like a flat screen tv, or landscaping, or lipo. ha.

Shoulder Strap on My Laptop Bag

For several years, the foam padding of the shoulder strap has been working its way out of the strap. There are about three inches of protruding white foam now, and it sticks up like a jaunty epaulet whenever I carry the bag on my shoulder.

Every T-shirt I Have Ever Owned

I recently cut myself off from drinking coffee in the car because no matter how tight that god-damned lid is, I always manage to spill some of it on myself.

Nothing is more deflating if you're a morning person than spilling coffee on yourself.

Bathroom toilet

While we're on the subject of bathroom renovations --
Two years ago, I took two days off from work to help renovate our bathroom. This meant totally gutting the thing and putting down new floors, walls, tiles, and all new fixtures.
Very late on the second day, my husband, who is germ-phobic to the max, was losing his mind trying to install a toilet. First he freaked out over the idea of a huge open hole where gravity seemed to do the work at removing sewage. Then he was agitated by the removal and re-application of the infamous "wax ring" that toilets rest on. Determined to get everything level and sealed -- because that poo might escape! -- he spent a very long time tightening the bolts that held the tank to the bowl.
And CRACKED the damn bowl.
We've left it as is, and it's a bit wobbly, but functional. But I'll be damned if I go through the agony of putting in a new one. Not with him.

I put my library book facedown on the counter, and when I picked it up, there was a smear of oil on it. I just recently got my borrowing privileges reinstated, and I feel like this is a major setback.

It's Not My Fault

I can't have nice things because I have two cats, a pre-schooler, and a husband who breaks everything he touches.
I don't usually break or lose things myself, but am often the victim of having things broken or lost for me.

Bathroom Vanity Top

On Saturday, my wife and I were cleaning the house in preparation for a couple of house guests. As is usually the case, I was given the bathroom detail. With explicit instructions to scrub the walls and uglier spots on the ceiling, at one point I stood on the bathroom sink to reach one of the back corners. Our sink is longer than your average sink because it sits on top of a vanity with several drawers and a cabinet. A nasty KERRRRACCK! let loose from somewhere near my feet.

Our sink now has what I would call a hairline fracture from front to back. Sad because the recently renovated bathroom was one of our proudest areas in the house.

Driver's License; Awesome Gold Wallet

For instance, I recently lost my wallet, it was a whole drama. I went to the DMV with photo identification in the form of an old driver's license I found one time after I lost and replaced it. The clerk tsk'ed a little. Then she looked at my record, which indicates 3 losses just since 2004. Then she said "Well, I guess you know the procedure" as she directed me to where I should go for my photo.

That wallet was killer, too. It was gold with hearts and also contained a Ross gift card with such a high dollar amount I can't bear to speak of it. I CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Why I Can't Have Nice Things

I break and lose a lot of stuff. It's pretty ridiculous.