--- My house is a

--- My house is a pit. So, why don’t you clean it?
Well, that would be the logical solution to the problem. Yet, as we all
know, I very rarely devote any time to upholding the very vague (as I
see it, anyway) principles of logic. Logic is boring. Everyone else has
logic. Why should I? I like being illogical: it’s infinitely more fun
to keep everyone on edge when it comes to the things that fly out of my
mouth. However, this time I am following the course of logic---in a
roundabout sort of way. I told you all how they ripped up the alley and
the streets surrounding the Cake Eater Apartment. After two weeks of
dirt-road-in-the-middle-of-the-city action, jockeying for parking on
the street (God forbid that ever happens again), listening to the beep, beep, beep noise all trucks owned by Cake Eater City---yes, even the pickup trucks---make all damn day long
when they shift into reverse, they finally got around to laying down
some asphalt. That was two weekends ago. Now, I’m told by the men in
my life that the normal course of action is to let the asphalt settle
for ten days before they lay the second layer. Ten days past was on
Tuesday. They still haven’t laid the asphalt, and I doubt they’ll
get around to it before this weekend, because of course, the Cake Eater
workers need the overtime. Laying asphalt is a messy, dust raising
business, and I’m not going to clean the apartment until it’s all
done. The husband tells me to keep my eyes open for the street sweepers
because they’ll have to clean up all the debris that’s settled on
the road before they pave again. They haven’t shown yet. And I’ll
be damned if I’ll clean up all the dust, just to have another layer
settle over the apartment when they pave. But the urge to clean is strong. I’m tempted to say the hell with it and just do it. I just know
however, that the minute I do start cleaning, they’ll show up and it
will all be for naught. I can live in squalor quite easily, but the
state of the apartment is even getting to me now. The husband,
neat-freak that he is, has been at pains to keep his mouth shut for
weeks. When it starts bothering me, well, that’s a bad omen. --- It
was windier than Chicago in January here in the cities yesterday. The
husband and I went for a walk over at Lake Harriet yesterday afternoon
and just about got blown off the path. The masts on all the sailboats
were clanking noisily in their posts; the walkway in front of the band
shell, where people normally feed the ducks, resembled a sea wall; a
windsurfer was scooting back and forth across the lake at about---I
estimate---thirty mph and looked like he was having a damn good time
doing so, too. As one gentleman who was sitting on a park bench,
scoping the action, observed as we passed, “It’s an amazing day at
the lake.” Yes, siree, it really was. People were getting splashed as
the waves crashed against the beach, seven feet away from the path,
squealing in horrified delight as they got wet; everyone was huddled
over, fighting their way against the wind; runners were actually
putting their shirts back on, instead of removing them. Everything was
opposite of what it usually was, in a unique kind of way. But there
were still obnoxious people there: you would have thought, given the
fact their hair might have been pushed out of place by the wind, they
would have stayed home. Not so. The poor husband. I feel bad for him
because he seems to be raising a lot of ire in our fellow walkers every
time we walk over there. The husband enjoys cigars and has since his
dad taught him to light one up over a chainsaw at the tender age of
sixteen. He’s not one of those people who has one hanging out of his
mouth at every moment and actually has to speak around the massive
butt, but he likes them. He probably smokes one or two a week. And he
especially likes one when we walk around the lake: since he no longer
drinks, this is his equivalent of a relaxing cocktail at the end of the
day. Some people seem intent on ruining this for him, however. Now, the
last time I looked, there was not one law in the Minneapolis province
of the People’s Republic of Minnesota that specifically prohibits the
smoking of tobacco in the open air. But, I’m sure these people who
keep coughing loudly whenever they pass us would like one to be in effect. In fact, some of them have even said as much, loudly as they walked or ran past. God, they should really do something about that…it’s disgusting .
We had a group of mommies with babies in strollers do the coughing bit
yesterday. Here’s what I have to say about that: move to Mesa,
Arizona, if it bothers you so much. According to the in-laws, who live
down there, there is no smoking anywhere
in Mesa. You can’t even do the polite thing and go outside to fire up
because it’s illegal. There’s absolutely no smoking there. So, that
should be where your fat ass should reside if you don’t want to deal
with smoke. It’s quite simple, actually: nonsmokers have an option:
they pack their IKEA shit up and MOVE.
Now, I know cigar smoke can be cloying and overwhelming to people who
are not used to it. I only allow the husband to fire up cigars inside
the house when going outside is not an option. And I smoke cigarettes,
so believe you me, I don’t have a freaking leg to stand on in this
regard, but it still bothers me. But, in closed spaces without adequate
ventilation, cigar smoke is a nasty thing and the husband knows this
and is considerate about it. I also don’t mind removing to the bar
for such an activity when we’re out. Like Anthony Bourdain, if I’ve
paid a lot of money for a good meal, the last thing I want interrupting
my taste buds is smoke from someone’s butt. But this insidious all smoke is bad so I’m going to socially
shun you and shame you into giving it up so my airspace smells like
nothing but the dog shit someone hasn’t picked up attitude is childish. Because that’s the real reason it offends them: it smells
bad. No one is going to ever catch lung cancer from passing a smoker on
a pathway. It’s just not going to happen. I’m sorry if you
disagree, but I would ask you to apply common sense to the matter. The
minute you’re past the husband and I on the walking path at Lake
Harriet, your risk level has dropped from the nano-percentage region
into the odds-of-a-snowball-surviving-hell numerical range. It’s the pee-eeew factor at work. It stinks, you don’t
like it, so you act like a seven-year-old who’s just gotten a whiff
of their baby sibling’s overflowing diaper. And much in the same
manner of a seven-year-old, you cough loudly, make gagging sounds, and
then move on, because you don’t want to have to deal with it and you
think you’re clever because you’re getting your point across in a
non-confrontational manner. You feel good at the end of your coughing
fit. You feel as if you’ve defended your hearth and home against any
and all threats against it. It doesn’t matter if that threat was a
quickly dissipating wisp of cigar smoke: for a brief second it was
invading your space, and in the manner of all things that
invade your space, you feel you have to take a stand against it. Fine.
Whatever.
I hesitate to mention it, but if you actually worked up the brass to
approach the husband and asked him politely to put his cigar out
because it offends you, you might actually have a chance of getting him
to do so. He’s a polite man: he strives not to offend. But that’s
only if you word your request correctly and are not obnoxious about it.
But you don’t do that, do you? You cough, you pretend to gag, you
make snide comments you think he can’t hear, but you never bother to
open a discussion. Why, I have no idea. Maybe you don’t want to be
seen talking to a smoker, because it would hurt your reputation. Maybe
you just assume that since he’s already doing something so obnoxious
as smoking a cigar, he really doesn’t care what you think and
wouldn’t do anything anyway. Maybe you already know you don’t have
a leg to stand on because he’s doing nothing illegal. I don’t know
what your reasoning is, but the point stands: you never bother to be an adult about it, so why should the husband treat you like one?
Ironically enough, when this happened yesterday, the husband knew
people were behind him and he didn’t take a puff. Especially because
he could hear the wheels of the strollers over the wind: he doesn’t
smoke around children---ever. Yet, these women coughed loudly and
passed us quickly, as if we both were plague-carriers, and the
husband’s cigar, which he had labored to keep lit all the way around
the lake on a blustery day, went out. Which also means that they just
objected to the idea that someone was smoking a cigar: the cigar
wasn’t actually emitting any smoke, so how could they have possibly
be offended by the smell---even if it wasn’t as windy as it was
yesterday? He didn’t bother to relight it. What was the point? The
whole experience was shot to hell for him because of adults who acted
like children.
--- This, understandably, put the husband in a poor mood yesterday
afternoon. So, around a quarter til five, he asks if we want to fire up
the movie we rented the other day: Gangs of New York.
We get about an hour in, Cameron’s dancing with a very greasy
Leonardo and---bleeep---the TV shuts off. It’s always interesting
when the power goes off in the daytime and we’re not in the office:
it’s a confusing experience. Sure the computer went down, but did we just trip the circuit breaker somehow? The wiring in this house sucks, after all.
It’s the same when you’re just watching TV, because that’s the
only thing that’s not working. It’s easier when it’s full dark
outside and suddenly everything’s dark. There’s no light
coming from the neighbors, there’s no light on the street, hence the
power went out. But when it’s still day time, it’s a wee bit
discombobulating because you have no handy references on which to base
your assumption. I went down to check the circuit breaker and didn’t
even get that far. There was no light in the basement hallway, which is
on the downstairs neighbor’s breaker, so I knew it was time to call
the power company. The husband was pissed and started to work on
cooking dinner, because, fortunately, we have a gas stove. I used the
husband’s cell phone to call the power company. His phone always
confuses me, and after several tries to dial the number correctly, when
I finally got it done properly, there was a busy signal on an automated
1-800 line. I knew this was not a good sign. Three more redials and I
finally got through; entered in the house phone number and the
automated system said it expected the power to be restored at 7:48 p.m.
So, we eat dinner. We chat with friends on the Minneapolis side of the
border: they have power. I comment in a complimentary fashion that
isn’t it great that instead of sitting on hold for forty-five
minutes, like I have in the past, Xcel has an automated line that will
even spit out an estimated time of restoration. Isn’t that great? I
think that’s great. The husband was grumpily unimpressed. Since
it’s getting darker outside, we pull out all the candles we can
muster and start lighting them. And just when we get settled in…voila,
the power comes back on. Just my luck. I was prepared to deal with a
few hours of darkness, but nooooo, for once the power company actually
has its act together and gets the power back up and running ahead of
schedule. I state this to the husband and he chuckles, but says
nothing. Went around and blew all the candles out and sat back down. As
the husband cued up the DVD to the place we’d left off, he comments
that the power company has all of this wonderful technology that allows
its automated line to spit out an estimate of power restoration and yet
they forget to change the system to Daylight Savings Time.
Huh? He elaborates: the power went back on at precisely 6:48 p.m.: they
forgot to roll their clocks back last April. This, my friends, is why
he gets paid the big bucks and I don’t.