Great minds

So Chris and I are sitting in the den of my grandmother's house, where we're staying while the house is being built, and we're watching Saturday Night Live. They're doing the news segment, like they do. And they do this super funny story on the AIG bailout. My cell phone rings, and it's my grandmother, calling me from her bedroom.

Mommy Ann: Calling long distance.

Me: I'll accept the charges.

MA: Are you watching anything on TV right now?

Me: Well, sorta yeah. Why?

MA: Because you need to turn to Channel 13. Saturday Night Live is on and it's hilarious.

Is she the coolest or WHAT?

Text exchange

Me: You have a package.

Chris: You bet I do.

M: God delivered it, you signed for it.

C: Yep. Just my package.

M: Seriously, though, you have a package.

C: I know. You've seen it. I've got proof and everything.

M: Sigh.

Brush with Fame

So, yesterday, yeah? We're in downtown Atlanta -- my husband and I, my parents, West and Hannah -- and we're cussing our way through traffic trying to figure out where the Cobb Theater is, 'cause we're going to see Eddie Izzard perform there in a couple of hours. We take a turn that we think will get us there, and it's the wrong turn, of course (because in Atlanta, two wrongs don't make a right, but they are pre-requisite). We find ourselves in this swanky brick-paved parking complex for some nice hotel. And as we're looking for a place to turn around, West points out this guy standing off the road a ways on this grassy knoll with a soccer ball, putting his shirt on.

West: Wow, um, that guy kinda looks like Eddie Izzard.

Hannah: What guy?

W: That guy.

H: Whoa, yeah, he does kinda look like Eddie Izzard.

Liz: The guy with his shirt over his head? Somehow, he really does...even with his shirt over his head.

W, H, L (unison): We should turn around.

*This falls on deaf ears as Dad, who is driving, continues to concentrate on cussing through traffic, as well he should. We shortly turn into a lane that ends up being the exit for a parking deck, so we back all the way out of said lane with a car following us face-to-face, presumably exiting the parking deck. When the smoke clears, we're going the way we came. And Mystery Man is crossing the street beside us.*

Mom: He was wearing a yellow shirt like the landscaping crew up the hill. He's probably with them.

Chris: There he is. He's crossing the street.

L: Holy shit. It's him. It's him. Holy shit.

W: Stop. The car.

Okay, so some stuff went down before West and Hannah jumped out of the car to try and catch up with Mr. Izzard. But it mostly involved me learning things about myself, namely, that any illusions I might've had about staying cool in the face of fame are...inaccurate. At least we didn't react as badly as the car behind us -- also headed to the concert, also lost -- who were slowing down to ask the nice pedestrian crossing in front of them for directions, and upon realizing who he was, accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. No wonder he hurried off.

So West and Hannah jump out and try to catch him to invite him to have dinner with us. Because that's what we do for celebrities here in the South. We run you over, chase you down on foot, and invite you for a Frisco Melt at the Steak 'N Shake. Unfortunately, he'd disappeared into the hotel before they could catch up to him. Who knows if that was really his hotel or if he just popped in to call 911.

House Blog

Looks like we finally have a ballpark for how much our revised house plan will cost to dry in: about $60,000, possibly less. If the old rule of thumb holds true, we should be able to get into it lock and key (look at me throwing out the mad insider lingo) for about twice that. That, my friends, would actually be...drumroll please...within our budget. I realize there are a LOT of variables in there. For instance, I'm sure that "dry-in x 2" rule assumes that you don't go overboard on any of your finishing, which we probably will on a couple of things, like the wood windows (I'm not a fan of the look of vinyl, or the fact that universally, the color options offered are white and almond. Except one company we looked at had a Desert Sand option. Fancy, no? No.). On the other hand, we're taking on a significant chunk of the work entirely on our own, which might balance us back out. Or not. I've never once heard that story about the couple that built their beautiful, perfect, exactly-the-way-they-wanted-it dream home under budget. Or within budget, come to think of it. So in my grounded, completely realistic appraisal, we will obviously be the first.

Proving my Love

I just gave my bird a shot. An injection. I don't think anything more need be said, but I'm going to anyway because I feel equal parts proud and kinda stupid, and I need to share that.

Casper has been sick. I will NOT go into the details here, because I'd have no way to undo the mental picture it would burn into your brain. I'll simply tell you that his illness has transformed us somehow into those crazy "animal people." The ones who take their pets to specialists in Birmingham and pay for invasive (read: expensive) surgery. He had to stay at the animal hospital (yes, animal hospital, not vet's office, nonononono...) for four days. On Thursday, the doctor called and said he thought it would help if we'd visit him. Visit. Him. In Birmingham.

So we did.

How can I explain this to you? I feel like my body chemistry has been altered in some way. I drove an hour-and-a-half to VISIT A BIRD. And then, and then, the very next day? West and I drove through a thunderstorm, tornado sirens wailing, to pick him up and bring him home. I mean, what the hell has happened to me? I don't even like him that much...unless you count that secretly I do.

I think it's that Casper's doctor had sort of a contagious attitude. I wish you could meet this man. I wish he were my doctor, despite the technicality that he's never practiced medicine on a human before. He would cure me with caring. When he told us we'd have to give Casper injections, he made me believe I could do it. I mean, I've never given anyone, or anything, a shot before. And to practice on something that you can't explain yourself to...you can't tell him to be still, you can't tell him you're not trying to kill him so he should reconsider clamping down on your thumb with the same razor beak he just used to crush an almond...it was just a little scary. But Dr. Atlas gave me confidence. And today, when I did it, I felt like I'd just climbed Mt. Everest. And then I kinda felt like an idiot for being so excited about it and for becoming such an animal-hugging freak. I've been sort of waffling between those emotions ever since.

Hello again, drawing board

I apologize in advance if this becomes "house blog" for the next year or so. On the other hand, hey! I'm blogging! So go stuff your head with crackers! I don't wanna hear your bitching and moaning about how boring and technical Liz's blog is now that she's building her house because you can just go read somebody else's blog if you don't like it! Go to Cookie's blog, since you think she's SO FUNNY AND GREAT!

Hee.

Anyways, we finally heard back from our contractor. His estimate was that our house will cost about $WayTooMuch.50. Plus or minus. So we freaked out, threw up a few times, started frantically looking at completely different house plans, then took a few deep breaths and solved the problem. FYI, building up is way cheaper than building out, so if you ever design your own house, put your bedroom upstairs. Not only will you save lots of money, you'll keep those great-looking calf muscles for the next 50 years.

I remember some author (no idea which one) was talking about how to write a great book or something, and they said you have to be prepared to let go of your favorite thing for the good of the whole. Favorite sentence, plot point, character, whatever, everything has to be expendible if it doesn't fit (which, according to this person, happens every time). I'm sure this point has wider implications than just creative writing, but I can tell you for sure that it's been my experience with designing a house. Almost everything we originally loved about it is gone now, but overall, it's a much better design than what we started with. My only sticking point, however, is my secret door. I WILL HAVE A SECRET DOOR. I don't know who, in their right mind, would take the enormous time, energy, and emotional strain to design and build their own home and NOT put a secret door in there somewhere.

The Waiting Game

When last you read of our intrepid heroes, they were moving in with their parents/in-laws to set the stage for the building of Chez Woodlayson (the "n" is silent).

After six months of being back with the fam, I can tell you objectively what works, and what doesn't work, about this situation.

PROS:

• Better food.
• Better beer.
• More money (although, seeing as part of the point was to pay off debts super-fast, we haven't actually had more money, like, in our hands, smelling that wonderful way that money smells...until you handle it too long and the smell gets on your hands and then it just smells gross, like how food smells great until you throw it in the garbage can and then it's officially garbage and it suddenly smells awful).

CONS:

• Full-size bed.
• Increased CO2 levels resulting from breathing air that at least three other people have already breathed.
• Let's just say it's generally a bit cramped.

All in all, I'd say the pros have outweighed the cons. However, I'm getting a little antsy. We had a perc test done two weeks ago and we've been waiting to get the paperwork back to give the Health Dept. We heard from them today, asking us to call the guys who did our land survey and give them permission to e-mail them the CAD file. So I call the surveyors and they were complete butt-heads about giving the perc guys the file. The lady was all, "They're just trying to get out of doing it themselves." And I'm thinking, why the hell would they do something themselves that you've already done? By all means, let's make them earn their keep by being needlessly redundant, then they can join the higher eschelons of the professional class in the company of doctors and lawyers.

We're also waiting on a bid/material list from a contractor who was supposed to get back with us about a month ago, but I don't take this personally at all. First of all, it was deer season. Second, the last thing I need is for the very first stages to go smoothly and give me a false sense of the level of insanity I should expect.

Cute. Very cute.

So I'm at work, right, and I'm calculating occupational taxes for the month, and you don't have to know what that is or how it's done, just that it's stupid and complicated and in the year-and-a-half or so I've been doing it, there's always something that doesn't add up right and I have to spend a couple of hours figuring out what it is.

So I've got all my figures and I check them against what the computer came up with and lo, they match. And as I'm marveling at this fact and reaching over my head for the stapler to staple all the papers I've been filling out, I say to myself out loud, "Did something just go smoothly?"

At this exact moment, the stapler catches on the jar of paper clips that's sitting next to it, knocking it off the shelf and narrowly missing my head. It bounces off the desk, the lid comes off the jar, and paper clips go flying in a 10-foot arc across the office.

As if in answer to my question.

GASP

Is Big League Chew supposed to be some kind of candy chewing tobacco?

Because I'm sure everyone in the whole world already knew that, but it has only just now occurred to me.

Moved

I tend not to use this blog in the typical way. I write only when I feel like it and while I may occasionally feel a twinge of guilt about not keeping it current, I never intended for it to be a chronicle of important events or a daily journal or anything like that. Okay, so maybe I should blog at least once a month if I expect anyone to read it, but I actually DON'T expect anyone to read it and am consistently amazed that they do. So there ya go.

My point being, for some reason, I feel the need to chronicle this particular event, the closing of Chapter One of The Woodlayson Chronicles, the chapter we shall call "The Dreamplex." We lived in the Dreamplex for three years and one month, and we turn in the keys this afternoon.

I remember when I first set foot in there, literally. Chris and I had been looking for a place, but we figured the duplex would be a little small, plus both sides were more or less spoken for. Jaimie had formally laid claim to the A side, and Nathan had dibs on B. I think we'd been in Jaimie's side before, but we'd never seen the other side, which was in slightly rougher shape (some little matter of a fire in the front room), so we asked Kris and Laura if we could poke around, for curiosity's sake. The moment I stepped over the threshhold, I looked at Chris and said, "This is ours."

No joke. And if you'd seen the place then, you would've been pretty perplexed why the prospect of living there would be at all enticing. Did I mention the lovely charcoal ceiling? We just knew we were supposed to be there. Later on that day, Nathan called Kris and told him something had come up and he needed to stay put. The rest is history, which somehow brings us to today. After weeks of late nights, packing and sorting and storing and moving a little at a time, it's time for Chris and I to turn the lights out and lock the door on our first three years together. There hasn't been much in my life I was sure of, but I was sure about Chris, and Dreamplex, I was sure about you.

A recent conversation between spouses

"I never said that."

"Oh-ho-ho, yes. Yes, you did."

"I did not say that."

"I remember these things."

Smirkish stare.

"I said I remember these things. I remember anything tied to a strong emotion, like hurt and betrayal."

"Great. Now if only we could get your keys and cell phone to offend you in some way."

Text message from Chris after an hour inside the East Gadsden Walmart

"All hope is lost. No sign of help. Had to eat the crew. God help me! What have I done... What have I done?

Fin."

I think it was the "fin" that summoned silent film images of a French mime bailing water emphatically while discordant violins saw in the background. Who knew buying toilet paper could be so DRAMATIC.

Why can't it be more like Cheers?

The Weepies are musical heroin. Thanks, K&L. I've been listening to them at work, at home, even leaving the CD on repeat overnight. I don't think they're all that weepy, really. Some of their songs are even...smiley. Chris took the CD to work and played it while they were setting up for an event, and the old guy Chris works with, Ted, liked it. I thought it was cool that a 70+ year-old liked "our" music, but then again, Ted's a pretty cool old guy.

In other reviews, Sam Adams Cream Stout gets two enthusiastic thumbs up.

I sang with the jazz band at Blackstone last night, like I do two Tuesdays a month, and I realized that I hug more people during those three hours every other week than I do during the 13 days in between. Or rather, they hug me. At first, I wasn't comfortable with it. It's not smarmy or anything, not usually anyway, because we generally don't attract the smarmy crowd. I'm just not used to it. I wanna be all, "Look, dude, I don't hug people I've known for ten years. I don't kiss my momma with this mouth, or any other mouth, 'cause I don't kiss my momma. I don't know you from Adam so the thing to do here if you must touch me would be a firm handshake."

I've been forced to give this attitude a lot of thought and decided that, at least in this particular setting, I need to loosen the hell up. After all, everyone else in the room has come to this social gathering place for fun, because they want to be there. I've come because they're paying me. I didn't come to meet new people or socialize or have a good time, but everybody else there did, so I might as well come prepared to be met, be socialized with, and pretend to have a good time. Who knows, maybe someday I actually will.

Psharight.

Shit and Plumbing

I don't know if Chris's poo is especially dense or if I eat cork in my sleep, but he and I have had countless conversations about the differences in the properties of our poops, namely their seaworthiness. My poo tends to float, you see, and his sinks like some mammoth overladen barge that can be seen from space. Somehow, I come away from these conversations feeling like I'm some kind of freak for having buoyant shit. Chris has a knack for putting his opponent on the defensive and even though my rational mind tells me that lots of people have floating poo, when Chris points and laughs, the world is laughing with him.

Chris isn't really mean to me, of course, but the point is that even though I technically score as many debate points as he does around the Woodlayson house, he probably wins more subconscious battles. Why else would I be convinced that there's something wrong with the way I poop? Well, it also has to do with why it ever gets brought up in the first place. Chris goes to the bathroom, flips open the seat, and there's a perfect floating turd smiling up at him.

"Liz, your freaky floating poo didn't flush again."

"So re-flush, whiner."

"What for? It'll just escape and climb back out into the bowl."

"Are you honestly berating my shit for its survival instincts?"

So yeah, maybe my poo's floatiness causes some aggravation. On the other hand, Chris's shits are the only ones that ever clog the toilet. Maybe once in my life has anything that has ever come from my body been too much for a toilet to handle. Chris, however, has a sixth sense about it. He knows when not to even try to flush. Just leave the fan on, shut the door, and come back in an hour, because anything else will end in tears.

I'm not sure how we got started on Saturday talking about what I would do if I ever had to unclog the toilet, but for me it was a simple question to answer.

"That'll never happen."

"Why not? You'll never be responsible for clogging the toilet?"

"Oh, I get it. You think that because it's always you who clogs the toilet, it follows that that's why you always UNclog it. No, that's not it at all. It's because you're the dude. Shit is your domain. Shit and plumbing. Toilet clogs consist of shit AND plumbing, therefore falling indisputably in your realm."

"So you're telling me that if YOU clogged the toilet, you'd come get ME to fix it for you."

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Could this be because you don't know how to unclog a toilet?"

"Firstly, no, I don't know how to unclog a toilet...at least not in practice. Secondly, even if I did know how to unclog a toilet, which is admittedly a simple mechanical process, I would somehow make a horrific mess resembling the prom scene from Carrie out of the whole thing."

"Are you trying to tell me that girls are less capable of unclogging toilets than guys are?"

"No. All I'm saying is that there's no reason for me to be dealing with shit when I can get you to deal with the shit. Anyway, you should be thankful. I mean, it's the 21st Century. What other reason do women have to get married anymore? Shit and plumbing."

"Call me naive. I thought love had something to do with it."

"Sure it does. Love, shit, and plumbing. There. It's like the holy trinity of modern marriage."

"Can we at least say that the greatest of these is love?"

"Sure. Okay."

Hobbyist

I'm going to knitting class tonight. I've become a bit of a "hobby person" lately. What with the Dungeons & Dragons, knitting, yoga, jazz singing, and most recently, late-night online gaming (if Myst: Uru Live counts as online gaming to you respectable gamers out there), I can now hold up my end of some of the most random conversations you'll ever overhear. After all, who else is going to reach out to the forgotten population of octogenarian hippie nerds? Who else, if not I?

It's probably good that I have several pastimes, because I'm one of those people who is highly susceptible to burnout. And I take my burnout seriously. When I get tired of something, I move right past disinterest and straight on into disgust. This is not something I particularly like about myself, especially since I didn't seem to inherit that free-spirited, devil-may-care personality that flaky people usually have to balance out the annoying bits.

I did meet a hobby once that I could've fallen in love with, but it got away. I was too young, then, and I didn't know what I had until it was gone. Spelunking. Isn't that a beautiful name? Except, it doesn't sound a damn thing like what it means. That always bothered me. Maybe that's what tore us apart.

Very Small Slices

Just recently, I've started writing things down a lot. I used to keep journals in high school and college, never very consistently, but it was something I had an interest in doing. Archiving life. I haven't had that interest in a long time, but it's started back in little practical ways. For the past couple of weeks, I've taken notes at church, which I've always thought would be a good idea because it usually takes me all of ten minutes to forget about those interesting tidbits I was going to delve into later. Also, I bought this diet journal, because I've got these random physical ailments I've been wanting to keep up with. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it's come to my attention that I'm exceptionally bad at being aware of what's going on in my own body. I always knew that I was generally not a very observant person, but Chris was wondering if I had a brain tumor before I noticed my headaches were kinda frequent.

So far, I haven't had an impulse to do any real journaling. But I've missed this little pseudo-record and I'm flirting with the idea of bringing it back. We'll see.

We could be heroes

The Fleegans were talking about superpowers today, as in what would be our super power if we had one. It got me thinking about Chris's uncanny ability to find things, or I should say, know where things are. Finding suggests looking, and he doesn't have to look. This ability of his seems to exist in full force 24 hours a day and have no correlation to his degree of alertness or even consciousness.

For example, this is a morning scenario not unheard of at the Woodlayson household:

Liz gets up and starts getting ready for work.

Chris's cellphone alarm goes off. It beeps about five times before there is any movement. Without opening his eyes, Chris reaches a hand to the nightstand and picks up the phone. "Huhluh?" Dial tone. He carefully places the receiver on the floor and reaches for the TV remote. "Huh? Hello?" Nothing.

Liz manages to crawl across the bedroom floor from the doorway where she has crumpled into muffled snickering and hands Chris his cellphone, without turning off the alarm, of course.

Chris presses every button on the phone like a sedated monkey until it stops beeping. In the time it takes Liz to catch her breath, he is snoring.

Liz continues getting ready and realizes she can't find her shoes.

"Hey Chris, do you remember where I put my shoes?"

"Huh? Oh, they're under the couch. You accidently kicked them under there last night."

"Thanks. Hey, how about my keys?"

"In your purse."

"No they're not. I already looked in my purse."

"Not the side pocket where you usually put them. In the big pocket where you keep your wallet."

"Oh, yeah, here they are."

"Told you."

"Well, I'm gone to work. Would you like a wake-up call in a little while?"

"No, those tomatoes went bad. We need to call a florist."

Paradigm Shift

You may think I'm posting to commemorate the monthiversary (as the prefix "anno" is in this case obviously inappropriate) of my estrangement from that fickle harpy, the Internet. But in fact, I post for no occasion, and for no man, and reveal myself to be the fickle harpy. Some believe Inspiration to be an elusive muse, and probably bi-polar, as those artistic types tend to be. I know, however, that she is a garden in need of tending and that I have been letting the weeds strangle the vines. So I ask you to read this paragraph carefully and ask yourself: just how many mixed metaphors is too many?

I've been noticing something lately, about myself and -- although I haven't asked him about it out loud -- about Chris too. You twenty-somethings can tell me if you've experienced something similar. At some point I can't recall, our worldviews started to shift dramatically. I can best explain this with an example:

Before: I'd like to exercise more and eat better so I can be healthier, and thus improve the quality of my life.

After: I'd like to exercise more and eat better so I can be healthier, and thus be there for my family for as long as possible, in the process setting a good example for my children to follow so they'll learn to appreciate an active, healthy lifestyle.

Honestly, this is what goes through my head. Chris has talked about things like financial stability in terms of paving the way for the option of having a family.

My point here is not about the prospect of having kids. We're another three years away from even having that conversation. It's about this strange, gradual shift in the way we think. In the example I gave, it might seem like the shift has to do with becoming less selfish, but believe me, that's not it. I really don't know what it is. Voodoo. That's all I can think of. I don't want a family any more than I did yesterday, or the day before that. If my feelings about starting a family have changed, they have slowly shifted from revulsion to complete indifference, and I think that's the best I can expect from my underachieving biological clock.

They say that when you begin your life, you are unaware that other people exist and that their lives are as meaningful as yours. You have to learn things like empathy as part of the developmental process. Could it be that that part of human development never really resolves itself? Could it be that the crux of maturity is this expansion of one's definition of self? Could it be that I really need to take it easy on the caffeine?

Heat Retardation

Every other blogger in the state of Alabama has mentioned it. I might as well.

My God, the HEAT! THE HEAT! NEED...WATER...aaaaaaaaagggggghhhhh

It's not so much that it's hot, but that there's absolutely no reprieve from the hot. It's hot at midnight. It's hot in the shade. It's hot in the rain, which, by the way, doesn't happen here anymore.

I started thinking about the heat (as if I ever stopped) when I noticed that even the most steadfast blogs I read are getting sketchier with their posting. That's not a criticism, mind you, as I have absolutely no room to talk, but an observation. I wonder if others are experiencing the same mental lag I am. I can only deduce that it has something to do with the heat. That is, I would deduce that, if I were able to deduce anything through the haze of puddling, thumb-sucking bald sun piercing brick and concrete, unchallenged by our meager ducts and vents.

Honestly, I feel stupid. I feel tired and slow and I can't form sentences or add numbers. It takes me forever to come up with clever descriptors, like "pretty" and "blue." Don't even ask me to splel anytheng for u.

Heist

Over a month? I must've forgotten to set my alarm.

-----

My office used to be the control room of a recording studio, so I have this big window looking out into the next room. My brother's been working with the business this summer and he just now came into said room to pick up his check.

I heard the door open but no one came in. Then I saw West's head peaking around the corner. He tip-toed through the door and looked around to see if anyone was watching him, which, as he knew, I was. Then he stalked across the room toward his check, which was clipped onto the wall with his timesheet. He grabbed a sheet of paper lying on the ping pong table and carefully clipped it to the wall as a counter-weight, so he could nab his paycheck without setting off the weight sensors. After carefully sliding the check off the clip and pausing to see if he'd set off any alarms, he sighed in relief and slowly backed away. Halfway back to the door, he turned and went into a flat-out run for a clean getaway.

I laughed so hard.

-----

Last night we had sort of a girl's night over at Jaimie's house with meatless spaghetti and copious amounts of wine (or Jack & Coke, or both, depending on who you ask and whether or not they remember...anything). I stayed up until 2 a.m. on a Thursday night, because I'm still young and free and unconstrained by societal conventions like consciousness in the workplace. And because I can totally handle a four-hour sleep night without feeling old or crotchety or ill the next day. And also, I'm not a liar at all.

-----

I was at kottke earlier today and read this article he linked to about...well, it's sort of about the online community and also, other things. I'd try to give you the run-down but I'd just ruin it for you. In any case, I found it intensely interesting. The downsides are that it's kinda long and kinda heavy. But in my opinion, it's well worth the read.