A Year Of Public Fumbling

It's official. Midnight marks the first anniversary of this here ridiculous corner of the Interwebz, with all its glorious insanity and beloved fart jokery. When I first started writing this blog, it was mostly because I had too many words to spew and not enough people to catch them, and after reading month after month of my elaborate, long-winded email epics, my girlfriends suggested that I find a space for rent on the 'webz.

And thus, here we are, a year older and perhaps none the wiser. Over dinner this summer, my friend Jess looked at me and said, "so, what's your ultimate goal for your blog?" and I swear, she may as well have asked me to explain the origin of the universe as it relates to modern animal husbandry. Really? I just like to write. Over the last year I've had some people I don't know in person find this blog, which I think is fantastic, and I had the editor of a magazine approach me about writing a humor column for her rag, which I think is super-fantastic. If people find me, I get excited, but if they don't, I'm okay with that too. Although I feel I must say, just so we're all clear:

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING ME I REALLY APPRECIATE IT AND LOVE YOU EACH DEEPLY, PERSONALLY, AND POSSIBLY ECUMENICALLY!!!

That said, I thought that for my first anniversary, I'd answer the questions that I'm asked most frequently about my exploits here at the Fumbling. So, in no particular order...

Dear Grace: Why do you write under a pseudonym?
Okay, I apologize if I've wrecked anyone's life here, but my name is not actually Grace. And, hold the phone, Lawyer Boy's name is not in fact Lawyer Boy. I know, I know, pick your jaw off the floor and try to move on, mostly because all kinds of nasty feet have been on that floor, and you do not want your jaw all up in someone's foot junks. I write under a pseudonym, and assigned one to LB as well, because we both work in professions where creativity is not exactly rewarded, per se. I don't think that the clients we work with need to know all of the insane things we do in our free time, and I really didn't want clients who got a little drunk and Google-happy discovering things about us that have nothing to do with the work they pay our firms for. I think that, at least in my life, the line between personal and professional needs to exist.

Dear Grace: Why don't you ever write about work? Funny stuff happens there, doesn't it?
I don't write about work because I'm not careful enough to prevent the people I'd write about from finding out about it. Funny, outrageous, and borderline unbelievable things happen at my office, but I don't want to embarrass anyone publicly, nor do I want to worry that they heard about this ridiculousness through the grapevine, and now they and their posse have a bone to pick with me in the parking lot after quitting time. Many of my coworkers read The Fumbling, or at least, they did until our asshole Interwebz blocker shut down sites hosted by Blogger, and I can't handle worrying that someone found me and is OMG SUPER PISSED. My rule of thumb is usually, if my boss found this and read it, would he want to fire me?

Dear Grace: What's up with all the fart jokes?
I grew up with a dad who is big into poot humor, and a younger brother who followed in the family biz. I've noticed that my friends who grew up with discreet parents and/or a houseful of sisters tend to have a much more refined sense of humor, but not me. My sense of humor is so outrageously lowbrow that guys are often amazed at the things that come out of my mouth. This is partly because I'm a girl, but partly because I'm a girl who tends to wear pearls, show up bearing meticulously-decorated cupcakes...and then drop the f-bomb in the first ten minutes of a party. I'm just very up front about the way I am, is all.

Dear Grace: Do you do anything other than write and cook?
I do, in fact, have many hobbies, most of which I don't have enough time for. LB and I have been restoring our old house for the last 13 months, and that takes a lot of time and even more energy (and, if I may, a heck of a lot of our disposable income). My friends know me for having dinner parties, making jewelry, knitting, and of course, making fart jokes. I wish I had more time to write, but it takes a couple of hours and the write frame of mind to churn out something respectable, so I'm really at the whim of my creative side, which is a fickle, fickle princess.

Dear Grace: Who's your favorite author?
Alright fine, no one really asks me that. But I just thought I'd share. It's Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dave Barry, and of course, Henry David Thoreau.

Anything else you want to know, please feel free to shoot me an email at gracethoreau@gmail.com. Again, thanks for reading and making the last year so much fun!

Who pooted?

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 2: The Staredown

Okay, in order of importance:

1) It needs to stop raining. Three days of rain. When it's italicized as Three Days Of Rain and is a play that Julia Roberts (whom I deeply, puffy, puffy heart) starred in on Broadway, it's lovely. When it's all up in my house, and it's punctuated with "ugh three days of rain ugh," it starts to eat at my soul a bit. The ground is giving way like warm Jell-o salad and the Labradozer is tracking progressively more and more foul things into the house. Waterlogged beetles, anyone?

ii) I've been feeling all week like I'm teetering on the edge of getting sick, and I am chomping at the bit to either topple over the edge into a pit of misery, or spring back victorious and bound off to do important things. Part of me thinks it's from all the sheetrock dust, plywood dust, cementboard dust, stardust, mold, mildew, and assorted bullhockey floating around my house. My less reasonable side thinks it's definitely and incurably ebola with a side of the clap. Because, you know, why not? Seriously, trying to talk down my more, shall we say, excitable side is like trying to fight off a pitbull with a toothbrush. Oral-B engaged!

C) If I'm not going to get to be the office Typhoid Mary (which is, admit it, a vague position of power), then I would really like to fast-forward to Saturday morning, when we can get on with this do-over project. Did you ever think you would see me so excited to work with a tool that could snap my fingers off if it wanted to? I have told LB that I want to learn to "do tile" this weekend, so he has gamely agreed to teach me how to work the tile saw and lay tile. I really just want to move along with this project, which I am sure will inevitably bore me after 30 minutes of tedium and loud noises, so that we can have our kitchen back. I also want our special backsplash tile to come in already, so I can love it down. Don't really care if it makes it onto the walls. Just want to stroke it and share my deepest thoughts with it.

Quattro) Watching the Labradozer half-bark and chase imaginary things in her sleep is one of the cutest things in the world.

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 1

Normally when I sit down to talk to you about important, wordly topics (like exactly how I made a pizza out of five croissants, a can of tomatoes, and seven minutes of intense prayer), I have a rule that I follow fairly strictly: I have to be telling a story. Beginning, middle, end. Writing with a purpose, and a point. I try to avoid writing what I often characterize as an "and for breakfast this morning, I had Cheerios"-style blog, because for the most part, that style bores me. Some people can write it, and write it well, and somehow, their Cheerios are hilarious. I do eat Cheerios every morning, but they're not funny. Just delicious.

However, henceforth and forthwith, I am abandoning that rule for the next week. For the first time in recorded history, though, there is a reason for my madness: HGTV's own Lawyer Boy and I are tearing out and redoing most of our kitchen, and since many of our friends are deeply intrigued by the fact that we tore out our countertops on purpose and by ourselves, they have demanded pictures of this superhuman feat. Also, I noticed that y'all tend to enjoy those rare spans of time when I actually rub two brain cells together hard enough to post more than one record of my exploits per week, so I decided that I will chronicle our kitchen do-over with photos and commentary. And also a deep misunderstanding of the functions and basic operating procedures for most power tools.

Let's begin with the reason why we felt the need to destroy our kitchen: Exhibit A, the kitchen that was last redone in 1963, at which point it was a high-end kitchen remodel.

Okay, so in this picture, it doesn't look too bad. There's a friendly sunbeam come to visit, and the cabinets are actual wood, and nice-looking wood, at that. What you can't see here is that the four doors in this room are all painted teal, as are the three windows over the sink. The coup de grace is the counters: They're laminate from 1963, and aside from being a breeding ground for all breeds of mold, they're hideous. They're white with teal daisies drawn all over them. And because laminate is the king of all construction materials cheap and shitty, these have not passed the test of time, and have warped, particularly around the sink in the face of invading water demons. So in the categories of beauty and function, we have a fail and a fail.

For an extra touch of fail, the laminate defacing the counters is also plastered to the walls, from the surface of the counter to the bottoms of the cabinets. The previous owners of our house apparently felt the same overpowering love for daisy-speckled laminate that they did for teal paint, ghastly wallpaper, and mildew. So the acres of laminate, while borderline visually offensive, are not wholly surprising. I have no doubt that the previous owners were all buried in laminate caskets lined in teal velvet.

In case you don't believe me, here's what hell they had wrought upon the dining room:

Remember, when words aren't enough...there's always vomit. And yes, we've repainted.

Now that you've seen what we're working with, here's the plan for the Semi-Epic Do-Over:

Keep: Cherry cabinets as they are; appliances, since we just bought them last year when we moved in; floor, because OMFG we are not taking up the floor. Just no. Dear Lord, no.

Kill: Countertops; laminate backsplash; ugly faux-bronze cabinet hardware; peeling wallpaper; sink, faucet, and violent sprayer that sprays whenever the faucet is on; and drywall soffets above the cabinets. The de-soffetization of the walls wasn't part of the original plan, but when we peeled off the wallpaper, it wrecked that section of drywall, and LB said it would be easier just to pop the drywall out and put in new drywall, than to patch what was there. Fine by me. I'm just the minion here.

We began The Semi-Epic Do-Over last weekend by tearing out the short section of countertop that doesn't have cabinets underneath, to give us an understanding of what this was going to entail. What we learned is that it was going to entail significant manpower, metal tools reminiscent of Civil War-era medicine, and loud explosions of otherworldly profanity. So over the course of the weekend, LB tore out the less-essential half of the counters, the backsplash behind them, and the soffets.

LB working on the soffets in his trusty work-moccasins, which LL Bean sells under the name slippers. The soffets are the parts that are no longer there above the cabinets. Did you think I was kidding about the windows being teal? Because no.

Mango approves of our progress thus far. What a relief.

LB removing the beflowered backsplash from behind where the stove normally lives. You didn't believe me when I said this stuff was everywhere, did you? We have learned some interesting things about the construction of our house during this project. For example, there used to be a window right where LB's head is (on the wall, not on his neck), and there was a sink under it.

The view of the opposite end of the kitchen from where LB was excavating behind the stove. Because I just really, really need for you to appreciate the sheer bum-fugliness of this kitchen. Our appliances don't normally congregate in the middle of the room like this. We have a strict no-loitering policy in effect.

We saved the rest of the counters for Saturday morning, since they were going to make off with our sink upon their exit, and we were trying to preserve a semblance of functionality for as long as possible. Last week I moved things out of the kitchen to make way for the hurricane, hit the grocery store repeatedly to stock up on MSG-licious frozen meals, and stared the weekend down with great trepidation.

Saturday morning, LB and I had a plan: Hit the tile store to pick out tile for the area behind the stove, hit Lowe's to pick up the drywall and plywood we still needed, and then return home to invade the kitchen and BLOW. IT. UP. The tile store adventure was simple enough: We enter, I fall in love with the most expensive item in the store, we debate, we consider, I elope with the most expensive item in the store, and we decide to take it home. Fortunately we didn't need much of the accent tile I picked, because if we had, I'd be selling one of my kidneys on eBay right now, rather than talking to you.

We left the tile store triumphant and headed to Lowe's. In record time, we had built a raft of drywall atop a flatbed cart, and steered it to the checkout line. Special thanks to Douchecannon Randomhag, for making it a point to get in my way while I attempted to pilot the 4-by-8-foot drywall raft around the store. The part later, where I pulled up close enough behind your bologna-colored minivan so as to render it unfathomably difficult to load your purchases? It was on purpose, and it was childish, BUT IT WAS AWESOME.

After a debacle at Lowe's that kept us there for an hour and a half, leaving me certain that everyone at Lowe's is in love with me and thus conspires to keep me there as long as humanly possible, we finally headed for home, where LB started to rip out the final counters and the sink.

That sprayer has been around or about that same position for the last freaking year, and it has plucked my last nerve for the last time. SO I KILLED IT DEAD. The moral? Don't cross me. Clearly.

LB with the sink. If you can't read lips, what he's saying is, "OMYGOD Grace, stop taking pictures and open the damn door!!" Smile, sweetheart!

Finally, after the sink left the building, LB ripped the rest of the counters out with the help of our friend Brian, who is so getting a gold star on his next report card for all his volunteer work. Brian and his wife Melissa, who I have been friends with for approximately ever, had us over for dinner that night, since, as you may have noticed, there was no magic to be made in our current kitchen. I'm good, but not that good.

The next morning Brian, intent on earning another gold star, showed up early to help LB build the counters, which are a layer of plywood topped with a layer of cementboard, which will ultimately be topped with a layer of granite tile. (Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? I've learned to fake it.)

The plywood base of the counters. Once they had covered this in cementboard, we cut the hole for the sink, which goes right above the cabinets to the left of the dishwasher, in a space that is currently occupied by an electrical outlet. Yup. Safety first! The missing drawer is currently in our dining room. I have no idea why. No one tells me these things.

LB and Brian laying the cementboard over the plywood base, on the opposite side of the kitchen. Where the counters used to be one section above cabinets, and then a lower section above nothing, we made one long section. The midget counter really drove me crazy, and this way, I can set up lots of food for parties in the kitchen. Like I needed an excuse to have a party.

With the cementboard in place and ready for tiling, we closed up shop for the weekend. All that was left was to clean up, and for that, we had another volunteer:

The Labradozer is really quite the clean freak. She can work that ShopVac like a pro!

The kitchen is currently full of drywall, dust, and appliances gathered together like they're on a smoke break. This weekend, the plan is to tile the counters, put in the sink, and get the essential stuff done so we can use the kitchen again. I'll keep you posted!

The Life and Times of a Halloweenie

I love Halloween. I love the fall weather, I love the midgetine candy bars, and I love the way Halloween gets everyone outside and talking to their neighbors. However, just like my forbidden love for Taco Bell, there's a very good reason why I shouldn't love Halloween: I hate being scared, and just about everything inherent to the celebration of Halloween scares me. I'm very easily startled, and I would say that I tend to blur the line between reality and fantasy when I'm frightened, except that I do not know of a single point in my life at which I have ever actually recognized any line between reality and fantasy. If I watch a horror movie, the characters follow me to bed and stare at me all night. If I encounter someone in a seasonally scary mask, they may as well snuggle up to me as I lay me down to sleep, because that mask is burned into my brain, terrifying me into sleeping with my eyes open all night long.

One of my dad's favorite stories from the The Life & Times Of Grace is torn from the pages of Halloween 1991, when Yours Timidly dressed as Cleopatra and traipsed about the neighborhood with the other kids. The dad gang ambled behind us, preventing the boys from getting into trouble, and going to the doors of particularly "scary" houses to collect candy on my behalf, since I refused to cross the property lines of any yards decorated with otherworldly foam headstones and DayGlo skulls. As we walked between two particular houses, absolutely nothing was happening. No other kids were around. No stray dogs were barking. It was calm as calm could be. And then Dad ruined it.

From ten feet behind me, in a deadpan stolen from the throat of Ben Stein, Dad said -did not scream, yell, menace, or pant- he said, "Look. Grace. A. Real. Witch." AND I WAS GONE. Legend has it that I hiked my royal Cleopatra robes to my knees, ditched my bucket of midgetine candy bars, and fled for the street, wimpering the whole way. I don't know where I was going, since I don't know where I thought "the witch" was; for all I knew I was running straight into her loving caress. But wherever I was headed, I was getting there in record time, and with a smashing gold snake headdress.

In the last 18 years, absolutely nothing has changed. I mean, I can't fit into that Cleopatra outfit any more, but I still jump at my own shadow while celebrating Halloween in a decidedly nonfrightening costume. Why would I want to be something that scares me when I look in the mirror? For once, I am exercising common sense here, people. To demonstrate what I mean by "decidedly nonfrightening," let's take a short tour through the last few years of my costumes.

Freshman year of college, before I had any sense whatsoever, and when I lived within shouting distance of someone who could loan me a spangly pink bra. And a see-through button-down. And who could spray-paint a plaid skirt onto me. That's my bestifer Shelley next to me, and the Dutch exchange student behind me. Eight years later, I still have no freaking clue what the other girl was supposed to be. She looks like she wants to beat some serious ass. While holding an appletini.
This was Halloween 2008, when I dressed as a tennis mom. See how clever I was, with my punny tennis racket of petit fours? I was serving up a good time. Interestingly, our neighbors thought that my tennis dress was lingerie, and I was giving out candy to their children in lingerie. And tennis shoes? Hm. Apropos of nothing, please note the melodramatic teal walls.

Apparently when I said I had never gone as anything frightening for Halloween, I was unaware of the existence of this picture. Phoooooooo. Ooooooooo. Let's move on. MOVE ON!

And thus we arrive at Halloween 2009, when I dressed as The Goddess of Everything. I would call myself "Pandeia," pan for "everything" and deia for "goddess," but some other mythological bitch claimed that already. It's moments like these, where I explain the Latin origins of my made-up Halloween costume nerdery, that I think we can really appreciate what I mean when I say thank God I am not dating any more.
Do I look regal here? Do I look regal enough that you could forget that I tried to create a legitimate Latin name for myself? Let's not talk about me for a minute. Let's talk about how my regal robes coordinate with the paint job in the front hall, which is no longer the color of mildew.

After a couple hours of giving out candy in my robes, which I am sure the neighbors thought was me tumbling out the door in a bedsheet, Lawyer Boy and I went to the Halloween party that our friends Molly and Lee were throwing. Molly and Lee had turned their house into a full-blown haunted half-acre, complete with an animatronic skeleton, giant video screens, and a haunted maze out back. Strobe lights flickered over the fog-filled backyard as the screams of terrified trick-or-treaters erupted from within the maze, the occasional crying child careening out of the exit, damaged for life.

So of course, I went near none of it. I was perfectly content to stay in the house, sipping Firefly lemonades and socializing with my fellow deity, Lawyer Boy:

Lawyer Boy was the God of Animal House, or, as many of our friends have aptly surmised, the lazy one. I particularly like the axe in the back of this picture. We could have used it to cut up the mini quiches, had we started to run low. That's just about all the Halloween carnage I can handle.