Caustically Optimistic

a bad name

After going to Home Depot my week only got stranger.

I went to see an Eighties Metal Cover Band with Casey in Scottsdale. Scottsdale is a chi-chi faux Manhattan and the band was cheesy and tacky. The band had on these corny wigs and stereotypical costumes. I had a great time. There is nothing like live music. The palpable energy of the crowd as half of them relived a time the other half and I do not. Casey loved it and I am an excellent designated driver.

Monday dawned to me doing more home improvements. Okay, Monday dawned and I was in Casey’s guest room – later when I found myself in my own apartment I started to work on improvements. I am amazed at my ability to undo my own stupid mistakes.

Thursday and the days leading up to it I was planning and then implementing the school dance – something I have never done before and that fact was on display. I made so many mistakes that the dance going well was a testament more to the fact that my coworkers love me and saved me from destroying my career.

Then on Saturday I helped my friend Linda move. You know someone is in a bad way when they have to ask me for help doing manual labor. At first I slept in and arrived at my friend’s house late – after getting lost in the ghetto near her house. Then with my arthritis and pre-diabetes I worked all day without eating or complaining. I am sure there were more than enough times where I was in the way, not helpful or counter productive.

Linda and I go way back to my days as a Nebraskan. She debated for our main rival. If I went to the Yale of Nebraska (and I did) she went to the Harvard. The clashes between our schools were cordial and not the titanic battles rife with stories of glory and in an odd twist we are more likely to be friends with the competitors from other teams than the ones from our squad. We had dinner after the move was done at Chili’s and gossiped about people we used to know between my trying to haze the Happy Helper and drink all the Diet Coke in the East Valley.

I hope the rest of my time here in Arizona is bizarre because I like to escape to the ordinary and not actually be ordinary myself.

the leaning tower of IKEA

When I moved into my apartment I bought this cabinet, a wall-unit, from the IKEA “as is” room for twenty-five dollars. I had been without a dresser since moving to Phoenix and most of my clothing that doesn’t get hung up has been living in boxes or in suitcases. I knew a year ago when I decided to move out the house I was renting and into something else that eventually I would want to leave Phoenix so a deal in the as-is room was great – at twenty-five dollars I wouldn’t feel bad about ditching or donating this thing when I left.

Unfortunately, “as is” is “as is.” The cabinet was a bit dented before or after I dropped it down the steps carrying it into my place and after three tries of putting it together the cabinet is wobbly. I actually had it right the first time and Casey came over and rightly assumed that I had done it wrong. We quickly disassembled the cabinet and realized that I indeed had gotten it right the first time. We disassembled the cabinet to reassemble it a third time to find that we had broken a piece that didn’t seem as critical as it did cosmetic. How wrong we were! That was the piece that created stability in the cabinet and made it useful. Now I have a Norse monolith in my apartment to mock my frugality.

I have given it names like, “The Leaning Tower of IKEA,” and consider it a monument to my ineptitude at anything mechanical, muscular or masculine. Do you need someone to write a poem, change a diaper or whip up a quiche? I’m your guy. Do you need someone to lift something heavy, catch a ball or put air in your tires? I’m having my nails done, washing my hair or gossiping.

Today, after months of people meaning to help me fix the cabinet and not I decided to fix the thing myself. This goes against my second commandment, “Let your problems solve themselves,” which follows “Don’t help, only observe and pass judgment,” and precedes, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” I have been too lazy to write any more commandments or steal inspiration from greeting cards, t-shirts and bumper stickers.

I had instructions on how to fix it from my friend who is like the Jesus of carpentry and went to Home Depot to get the things I needed to right the wrong in my living room. His instructions also included, “don’t buy crap at IKEA and if you’re going to buy crap at IKEA don’t buy it out of the ‘as-is’ room.”

On my way to the Home Depot a tranny hooker threw her/himself in front of my car to stop me. I would not be dissuaded. I was going to Home Depot. I can fix it; they can help. How hard could it be to find something in the Home Depot, get it cut (I was advised not to call it ‘tailored’), and pay for it?

Exactly.

I could have wandered into Communist China and would not have known the difference. It was a surreal experience for me because while I do know a little about home maintenance and repair I know nothing about hardware stores or taking on a big project like this. I grew up in apartments maintained by someone else and my father knew well enough to follow the instructions so I have never been in or observed this before. I did, however, have the presence of mind to try and fit in by wearing a t-shirt from a mediocre rock band and NOT wearing deodorant. I thought this would help me slide into the Home Depot unnoticed but I was wrong – I combed my hair, which gave me away.

After much wandering I found what I was looking for and then I had to wander much longer to find the “Cutting Center” to discover that the first person I asked about where to find wood and how to get it cut (something he assumed was a tawdry come-on) was the very person who would do both for me.

He didn’t really cut the wood the way I need it to be cut but he was so indignant about doing the job for which he is paid that I was inclined to let him be incompetent. My cabinet has been broken and useless for many months and could go many months more without being useful. He did indicate that the piece of wood I didn’t need from the original piece I had cut could be put in the ‘culled wood,’ whatever that was. Unfortunately, that piece had the barcode on it to help the cashier ring me out. While she figured out how much to charge me – and she could have charged me anything I would never have known – I sweated out being a hate crime as a line of people formed behind me.

Luckily it only took her a short eternity to figure how much a piece of wood cost ($2.85) and sent me on my way. If you find yourself in that situation add to everyone’s irritation by paying by debit. It is what I did and cannot recommend it to enough people.

Before going home I went through a complex reorientation to my own retail predilections cycling through Costco, Target and Trader Joe’s. I was amazed that it took me less time to fix the cabinet than any other step of this process. Right now I am just waiting for Casey to come with the drill and screws to finish the job but it seems like I’ve repaired the Leaning Tower of IKEA and made it into something useful – so eat it Pisa, I can fix things; I’d like to see them fix their mistakes as well.

Fire Drill

There was a fire drill today. The alarm always makes me jump; the kids all find this hilarious because there is the Big Bad Teacher frightened by a noise. It’s that or the fact that I am usually holding something that creates a special effect. The first fire drill of the year I was holding a stack of papers and tossed them into the air where they, fortuitously, hit a draft and scattered all over the room. Today, I was holding a Diet Dr. Pepper and threw it in my own face.

I’m glad I didn’t take Valerie up on her proposed Starbucks run. Maybe tomorrow. We only have one fire drill a month so I should be safe. That or the school will lock down while we’re out and I will wet myself waiting to use the bathroom. I’m going to buy some Imodium on the way to school tomorrow. One can never be too careful.

a world restored

Last Friday we made an impromptu and ill-advised trip to Illinois to see my mother’s brother and his family at their home and my grandparents were visiting from the east coast. My favorite cousin was going to be visiting this uncle – I am fifteen years older than this cousin who used to call me his uncle because of the age difference when he was little. We don’t see him often any longer. It was worth driving for five hours, much of it in a snowstorm.

But he’s older now and I’m not his ‘uncle’ anymore. This kind of disappointed me. I have him misfiled in my brain as my nephew. I don’t let other people attach uncle to my name. He is the only cousin on that side of the family that I liked and he is the cousin on that side of the family that likes me. I was afraid that I had lost my preferred station in his universe. But, the point of this story comes in that my cousin is active – like his father and unlike the rest of our family. It had snowed and his three-year-old sister wanted to build a snowman. We all bundled up as best we could and trundled outside to be instructed on the finer points of snowman construction by a three-year-old.

This was the first time I had met this cousin – I’m not close with my family, not even Chaos Bean. I was intrigued to meet this cousin because my mother warned me that when I did meet her, she’d ask me if I was there to take their baby sister away. I needed to visit her so that I could tell her that as we embark upon the twenty-eighth year of Chaos Bean that no one is coming to take the baby sisters away. If any of you know where they are or how to contact them, you know how to get in contact with me.

After we built the snowman, my father came out with the accoutrements that turn a pile of snow into a snowman. After the snowman was done being built my cousin and I stayed outside for another three hours throwing a football, playing with a wayward dog that wandered into the yard and throwing snow at each other. Two neighbor boys were in and out periodically to play with him or us over the course of the time.

After a bit of this my cousin got tired of being outside. He has a policy that he should be outside from sun-up to sundown; this is great during the winter and arduous during the summer. I wasn’t dressed for the weather. I had cotton pants on and regular socks in tennis shoes. I did not have gloves on and my scarf and hat were merely the ones you wear to keep you warm from door to door, not extended play outside. He asked me, “Are you ready go inside?” I said, “No, I’m fine.” I see him once every two years so under these circumstances we submit to the oppression of being outside, sopping wet in the cold. I wanted to say, “I’m nearly thirty years old, I’m soaking wet, I’m not dressed for this weather but I’ve already had pneumonia and the flu this year so what the hell.

He turned around and told the neighbor kids, “My uncle said I have to go inside now.”

And there it was. I was an uncle again.