On Tuesday, the Grand Dishwasher Saga came to a close.1 And thank goodness, too, because Wednesday night I came down with the stomach flu the Princess caught from her best friend, who brought it back from college in Seattle.
Consequently, a lot of bowls needed to be washed, and now that I’m on the mend (shaky, back and head aching from dehydration, but not spewing) all the cups we’ve attempted to drink from need washing as well. And linens. Gastroenteritis is a messy business, and with the sudden violent onset of this particular virus, there were a lot of linens needing some soap and water.
Thank God the washing machine wasn’t out of commission. Things could have gotten dire.
Anyway, our complement of mod cons is now complete again. I’ve lost most of this working week, though, and I was already behind. Guess we all know what I’m doing this weekend.
That’s right. Loading the (functioning!) dishwasher. And writing.
Sometimes a phrase and its translation are so beautiful it stops the reading eye in its tracks. In bed last night, whispering Pliny aloud, I ran across one such happy marriage.
The translation? “In so many places and by so many fires does Nature burn the countries of the earth.”
That’s fucking gorgeous, the Latin rolls off the tongue, the English is fantastic too, and it’s also a perfect epigraph for the epic fantasy I’m working on now. The deep abiding satisfaction of coming across something so lovely stayed all through my dreams and is still here in mornlight.
Season 4 of ROADTRIP Z just started, so if you want to get in on it, now’s the time. This is the very last season, and after it ends (probably sometime in October) I’ll be doing another serial. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’ll be Robin Hood in Space, otherwise known as HOOD. (I have this thing for capitalizing serial titles, I guess.) I just have to figure out if that one’s a long standalone or broken up into seasons, too.
Good morning! It’s Beltane, which is lovely. It’s also (supposedly) the day we finally get the new dishwasher (still sitting in our garage) installed and can stop calling service people and the home warranty folks. After a bumpy start, the latter have been more than kind. The only problem is having to call them each time because I hate the phone…
*time passes*
Well, just as I was typing that, the doorbell rang, the dogs went nuts, and it was the installer. Several hours early, in fact. And despite one small snag (the water hose wasn’t long enough, so he popped out and grabbed a new one) everything went smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that the NEW DISHWASHER is currently WASHING. I mean, there wasn’t much to put in there for its inaugural load, but dammit, I made do. I FOUND things to put in there.
A big shout out to: Trevonte, Renee, Samantha, and Kinetha at AHS for their patience and kindness, another big shout-out to the original installers who had a helluva day before they got to us, yet another to Mr Gates of Gates Plumbing who was kind, professional, and thoroughly courteous, and to finish it off, thank you, Tri-County, for coming through bigtime.
I’ve got to say the last installer–the Tri-County fellow–was a wizard. The dogs calmed down while he worked, he hummed to the dishwasher while installing, and he had the nicest, sleepiest, most genuinely pleased smile I’ve seen in a while. The May Day Appliance Wizard, I’ll call him, and dear gods above but this was a pleasant way to start a brand-new month. April was horrid, but the luck has changed now.
It takes a village to get a damn dishwasher in. The thing is running now, and I can’t hear it. The old one used to be audible even outside the front door. I’ve had to walk down the hall and check that it’s still running each paragraph.
*checks again* Yep, still running. Man, it’s nice to have that back.
Now I’m going to go for a run. No rest for the wicked, and my joy will probably float me for a few blocks until my heart, lungs, and legs figure out I’m making them work again.
Well. Last week ended without me having developed pyrokinesis and burning everything in sight, so that’s good, right? Between doctor’s appointments1 and loved ones having difficulties and the ongoing dishwasher saga (still not installed, don’t ask, maybe Tuesday will change all that) and being behind on this monster of an epic fantasy (that they’re going to title something WRONG IMO but oh well, they know what they’re doing) and the Princess needing an emergency trip or two and the Little Prince needing some tough love when it comes to his homework AND the dogs AND AND AND…
…you get the idea. Every once in a while a week comes along where the universe, not content to load one up with a single disaster, crams ever more into a short timeframe and lights a match, smirking.
Consequently, I took yesterday off except for Regular Sunday Chores, but I’m still twitching. Normally I have the luxury of feeding my introvert nature, spending great chunks of each day alone.2 I also–because clearly I don’t have enough to do–broke down, got a domain, and put together the bare bones of a fan wiki.3 That part was fun; the problem with every other wiki or bulletin board install I’ve done in the past is trying to run it off my main site instead of just getting a domain and putting it there, which cratered EVERYTHING. I did it in fifteen-minute chunks in between washing up, hoovering, brushing and bathing the canids, and assorted other household maintenance items.
Consequently, today I’m kind of…staring and twitching, again. I have a chapter of Atlanta Bound to revise and wordcount on said giant epic fantasy to catch up on, a long run to get in, and all I want to do is go back to bed. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for emotional energy is beginning to feel hideously familiar, even though I’ve telescoped in a lot of other commitments. The only cure is getting some things off my plate, and that won’t happen without work.
It would also be nice to have the kitchen put back together. Everything in the cabinets that the installers will need taken out in order to do their job easily has been living on the counters for…a while, now. I would never have thought such a thing would irk me–one of the accusations leveled at me since childhood is that I’m a messy person and mess obviously doesn’t bother me the way it should. I could find anything on my bookshelf or in my room in seconds flat and never lost my school papers, though, so I guess I wasn’t so much messy as it was a convenient thing to yell at me about. When the kids came along, a certain amount of mess didn’t bother me because Tiny Chaos Machines are gonna Tiny Chaos Machine, and there’s nothing to be done about it. I am…surprised, and a little baffled, that the kitchen being a stacked-counter disaster bothers me as much as it does. I mean, the house is crammed with books and dust and fun things, but I want to put the goddamn waffle iron back in its home.
Go figure.
This is turning out to be yet another year of things I didn’t question about myself because I was told them over and over by toxic caregivers proving to be not quite true. It’s unsettling, but also pleasant. Maybe that’s also costing emotional energy.
Meh. Time to get back to work. The morning run won’t accomplish itself–more’s the pity–and neither will the bloody books.
Yesterday, while walking the dogs, I passed a dogwood in exuberant flower. I love their notched blossoms and of course the canines are always happy to stop and sniff–or snuffle, in Odd Trundles’s case. Poor Trundles had a damp rear because he had to be half-washed that morning, and walking in the sunshine to air his nethers was apparently quite pleasing. At least, he’d forgiven me for soaping and rinsing him by the time we arrived back home.
So Odd Trundles had a nightmare last night, and peed his bed. This doesn’t happen as frequently as you’d think, but it does mean I’m up early, his bedding is in the wash, and I have soaped a dog’s ass and undercarriage before 8am. It’s a good thing all my commitments for the day were suddenly changed to afternoon during the span of a half-hour yesterday.
If I can just get through this week without combusting from sheer tension, I’ll call it a win.
So. My office is full of the reek of just-washed Trundles, but at least the window is open. A plumber is coming by this afternoon to fix the shutoff valve and maybe, if he got authorization from the home warranty folks, to install the new dishwasher and take the old one away. I have each scenario planned for–just the valve fixed, the valve fixed but the dishwasher electrical somehow borked, the valve fixed and the new dishwasher installed but the old one not carted off, and the best of all possible worlds, the valve fixed, new dishwasher installed AND old one carted away. Anything will represent a step forward, so I’m pretty Zen about the whole deal. It’s arrived at the point of absurd hilarity, so I can relax now.
The other commitment this afternoon is offering moral support during a friend’s doctor visit. I can’t plan for any of the scenarios on that one. For one thing, nothing is inside my control there except showing up on time and being supportive. For another, there’s just too much we don’t know yet. Today should at least give us more information. Aggressive treatment options are already scheduled for the next few weeks, so we’ll see how it turns out.
I say that a lot. Just this past weekend, I was in the car with the Little Prince. I have this habit of prepping the kids when we’re in the car. When they were younger, everything went easier if they knew what to expect, and the car was the last-minute place for answering questions and taking them through processes. I guess I haven’t gotten out of the habit, because I started telling the Prince what we were looking for and as a bonus, answering his questions about the then-latest bits of the dishwasher saga.
“…we’ll see what happens,” I finished.
He laughed. “You say that every time we’re in the car.”
I said it again at dinner, and since then, I’ve noticed whenever it leaves my mouth. The kids are sixteen and twenty now; I suppose decades of parenting have left me with a few habits they might find a little annoying. Both of them tell me the prep sessions are comforting no matter how old they get. Plus, they’ve absorbed “plan for what we can and relax about the rest” as a Life Maxim, which is hardly the worst way to look at situations.
It’s busy, but so far I’m coping. Especially since work is going relatively smoothly, though I had to take some time off yesterday to think about ceremonial leather armor, mercury poisoning, and different diseases I can give this particular Emperor that will have the effects I want on him and the story. I need his decline to be fairly rapid since we’re in the last third of the book, and the coronation is the next-to-last thing that happens before number one of the trilogy reaches a natural resting place.
I hadn’t planned on blogging today, since I was due at a medical centre early for a friend’s PET scan. Unfortunately, the scheduler got it wrong, so it’s another half-hour, early morning drive later in the week.
I did get home in time to call the home warranty folks about the dishwasher again. The poor installers had nine jobs yesterday, mine was #9, but the first seven were builder/apartment complex jobs, which meant each. one. took. forever. The delivery/install window was 1-5pm, and they didn’t end up getting here until past nine. Then, as soon as one of them touched the dishwasher shutoff valve, well, there was a brand new leak in my kitchen.
Which often happens in older houses, I guess. The valves stay open, who on earth shuts them? Sot he rubber gasket dries out and cracks, and the instant it’s disturbed, well, water longs to be free, and will take any path it finds.
I have to confess, I closed my eyes and leaned against the fridge for a few moments, and I could sense the installers giving each other nervous looks. I had to count to seven and take a few deep breaths before saying, “Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea or some hot cocoa?” They looked quite done in.
Poor fellows insisted on making sure the new dishwasher was settled safely in the garage, and told me several times to call them if the home warranty people got shirty.
Bless them, the poor boys. They really wanted to go home, but paused to make sure I was okay. They seemed genuinely disappointed that they couldn’t get the blasted thing sorted. I am still not quite able to laugh about the whole thing yet, though I’m sure I’ll get there in a few days.
On the bright side, I girt my loins for calling the home warranty people, only to find out they were a step or two ahead of me (many thanks to Samantha in the Georgia call centre) and already had a new repair/installer vendor ticket created. So…I just wait for the vendor to contact me to schedule a time for them to come by, fix the dripping valve (thankfully, the fellows made it so it was just dripping, not a steady stream) and finally, finally put the bloody dishwasher in. I haven’t even looked at the new one, really, beyond making sure it wasn’t dented. I suppose I should go and take a peek at it once I’ve had another jolt of coffee. My eyelids feel like they’re going to slam shut at any moment.
I’ll probably go out in the garden and check on the pea starts again, too. The snails didn’t seem to have found them when I looked yesterday afternoon. They could just be slow starters (ha) but I’m hopeful. The new tomatoes are all caged (lest they run rampant) and have taken to their growing work with a will. The dogs, exhausted from the excitement of last night and this morning (Mum was UP! and SHOWERED! and LEFT!) have both achieved liquid status, though Miss B will be up as soon as I move, determined not to let me stir a step without her if she can help it.
So…that was my morning. At least I’ll get some wordcount today, which I was pretty sure wasn’t going to be the case. Small mercies. But first, more coffee, and some time spent singing to the garden. I need a reset after the past couple days, and serenading the peas–not to mention the grapevines–will do just fine. I might even read them a little Caesar, if they still seem interested.
Well. Last week ended without me having developed pyrokinesis and burning everything in sight, so that’s good, right? Between doctor’s appointments
So Odd Trundles had a nightmare last night, and peed his bed. This doesn’t happen as frequently as you’d think, but it does mean I’m up early, his bedding is in the wash, and I have soaped a dog’s ass and undercarriage before 8am. It’s a good thing all my commitments for the day were suddenly changed to afternoon during the span of a half-hour yesterday.
I hadn’t planned on blogging today, since I was due at a medical centre early for a friend’s PET scan. Unfortunately, the scheduler got it wrong, so it’s another half-hour, early morning drive later in the week.