clicky clank
I BE FIXING UP MY DWELLING-PLACE
You know what’s not so great for someone with ordering-focused OCD and general anxiety issues? Home renovation. Where the fuck is everything?
When you get all the things out of your room-to-be-renovated, it’s not like you pack it up all nice and organized like for a move. Well, at least we don’t. All of our kitchen items ended up piled in waist-high boxes in the guest room, with narrow goat tracks between them. Like an episode of Hoarders (but with lots less cat shit and dead animals). The microwave is in the basement for us to heat up our pitiful breakfasts and lunches. There is a stack of plastic picnic plates outside next to the grill for dinners. The Grubhub app is getting quite a workout. I heat up tea water in the bathroom (yay electric kettle) like a hobo. (Is that actually a hobo thing? Probably not.)
Also, the contractors put a bunch of plastic sheets everywhere, like Dexter is about to do something awful in my not-kitchen, and every time I get something out of the fridge I need to use two hands to lift the plastic sheet like a veil from an old-fashioned bride. Why do I have to marry my fridge just to get a string cheese. Why.
So much complaining! So many first-world problems! I am lame. Progress is being made, however. There is a floor. And a sink (although nowhere to put it or use it). We also bought a stove (not delivered yet), and I learned that I am a snob. Details below!
Our refrigerator and dishwasher are made by Samsung, and in the interest of matchy-matchy we assumed we’d get a Samsung stove, too. However, it turns out that every one of the stainless-steel Samsung stoves has a button on the electronic keypad that says CHICKEN NUGGETS. I assume it is one of those stupid pre-set cooking-time things, like the BEVERAGE button on my microwave.
The more I looked at that CHICKEN NUGGETS button, the more I didn’t think I could deal with looking at it every day. Why is the stove saying CHICKEN NUGGETS to me and everyone else in my kitchen? I don’t think I have ever even cooked CHICKEN NUGGETS, those are strictly a restaurant-kids’-menu desperation move, when I’ve already given up on nutrition for the day. Not necessarily dissing CHICKEN NUGGETS, it’s just not my at-home cooking thing. And even if it were my cooking thing, why put CHICKEN NUGGETS on the stove for all to see? Can the CHICKEN NUGGETS folks not read the damn box and set the oven on a temperature? Is this for hard-core alcoholic parents who regularly pass out in a puddle of gin and expect the kids to heat up their own food?
The matchy-matchy appliance dream was hard for LT to let go, but we ended up with the LG stove. Good reviews, still stainless, similar handle, still Korean, and no damn CHICKEN NUGGETS button. Come on, Samsung. Let’s not assume chicken nuggets, please.
THE WORLD CRASHES IN, INTO MY LIVING ROOM
I have been recording and watching The Killing. It is one of those shows that has about 99 problems but a lack of atmosphere ain’t one, and if I can shut up my logical brain for a while I really enjoy all the frowning and rain and aerial shots of pine trees. At least until the Peter Sarsgaard parts because am I really supposed to believe a death row inmate is in an old-style open cell like the drunk tank in a comic strip? With other inmates right across the way available for chatting? And the ability to say, “I want so -and-so to visit me” and it happens that same day? Did anybody do any prison research at all?
During Nora’s designated television time she continues to ask for the boring-as-fuck How It’s Made. I don’t care how it’s made, but Nora does. I cannot understand watching this show on purpose unless you are coming down from rave drugs or are keeping your kid company, but Nora has been steadily working her way through the Netflix’d How It’s Made. I almost had to leave the room during the fish-farming segment, though. A Canadian fish farmer grabbed a female fish (how can he tell?) (don’t ask) with his bare hand and squeezed all the eggs out of her and into a bucket. Then he grabbed a male fish and squeezed a whole bunch (seriously, quite a lot) of fish sperm into the same bucket. Next, STILL NOT WEARING GLOVES OF ANY SORT, he put his hand in the bucket and swirled things around to make fish babies. Then he did a lot of other things with his spermy fish hands help help ahhhhh BRB I’m going to take a bath in hand sanitizer.
—mimi smartypants knows full well it’s called milt.