The Sawdust Did It

There is a fussy German frau living inside this haphazard housewife. Some days I can let the dust and the mystery ick in weird places go, others not so much and today was one of those days. I found myself mentally shaking a fist at the people who live here because they splash dishwater down the front of the cabinets, leave finger prints on light switches and the ‘frig; allow dust to build up on bathroom counters and splashes accumulate on the mirror. How could they do this to me? I have a laundry room to decorate: with paint, tile and hardware to select and wall art to create. I clean on Tuesday’s and it didn’t go so well today because I would rather be looking for tile and paint. So I half-assed it because I’m sick of doing it. Which will piss me off next week when the house is doubly hard to clean because it was half-assed to begin with. The truth of the matter is I love to clean but lately it’s become a big fat ugly chore. A chore like cooking is a chore. A chore like balancing the checkbook is a chore. A chore like anything-I-should-do-but-I-don’t-care-to-do-in-the-moment is a chore.

I blame the sawdust.

For a couple of weeks The Girl has tirelessly been building cabinets for the laundry room. So there has been a lot of sawdust scattered through the house. It’s driving me crazy. Our house was a blank page when we moved in almost two years ago to the day. A foreclosure, the realtor/developer came through with a paint sprayer coating every vertical surface with white paint; "updating the floors with the crappiest carpet and vinyl flooring imaginable.

If we had only looked at this house a week earlier undoing what "Ladies Man" did in an effort to move the house from 1969 Suburban Chic to 1990’s Slum lord would have been one of those bad daydreams you brush away with a shudder. Every goddamned room in this house needs or needed work. (to clarify, we nicknamed Fannie Mae's realtor "Ladies Man" after this character)

I thought any minute he was going to invite us over to his place for some Courvoisier so we could “discuss further the ramifications of my highly esteemed organization replacing the furnace that may or may not be faulty.” To say this guy pissed me off is an understatement. Thinking about him still pisses me off and raises my feminista hackles . But I digress.


It must be the sawdust.

Today, after I finished damning my family to a level of hell where they see the menace of dust but aren’t allowed to do anything about it; I started ruminating over the latest neighborhood I discovered in our Next Town; the place we will probably move after Beav finishes high school. One of my time sucking hobbies is partaking in real estate porn cruising houses on Realtor.com. The city we are looking at is considerably cheaper so it’s fun to do a dollar to dollar search. Next Town is in Bible Belt and people sort of freak out when I tell them where we are considering making a home. It's also my home town and a place I vowed never to return. I am choosing to egnore warnings it could be Redneckville and we won’t be greeted with open arms and a basket of muffins but something akin to: “Y’all sisters?…or what?…” cue ominous sound of a shotgun being cocked But really, who cares if Billy Bob and Dar Leene hate us because Jesus hates dirty homosexuals! We can afford a lovely house with a pool! Yeah! The pool will not only refresh us in the southern heat but will make a great place to extinguish the burning crosses. The unhealthiest part of the obsession with House Porn is when I dial down the price and discover the fixers in the same neighborhoods. I find myself swoony over the footprint and the bones of certain houses. Nightmares even more nightmarish than the one I live in. “Oh look at those cabinets they just need to be refinished. . .I bet that has hardwood underneath it. . .I could take that window out and put a door to the patio. . .a little paint would be perfect. . .and it’s so cheap we would be able to just pay cash and fix it up for next to nothing!” I found another one just the other day. It has an interior atrium to die for and a kitchen in such bad shape TG would jump off a cliff before she agreed to this house.

Oh. My. God. I need a twelve step program. Best friend Ms. A has a friend, Pilot, who came up with the idea of creating a Flippers Anonymous Program. Pilot has it bad, too. In the last three years he has done two houses. And he lives in them while he renovates. Sick, sick man. But I totally get it. I blame being a control freak. I have to make everything my own; put my mark on it. Like Kipper, only it’s paint not pee when I mark things. This also explains why (as hard as this is going to be for TG to hear) the idea of a turn key ready house is a terribly boring concept to me. I hate boring.

Which is probably why I’ve never had a proper laundry room (or adequate closets for that matter) because I am usually drawn to quaint little houses with big souls? The closest thing I have come to a laundry room was a designated area in the basement of Mrs. Ward Cleaver’s Fabulous House in the Suburbs. But it wasn’t a proper laundry room; it was where the hook ups were in the basement. A special room designated to cleaning clothes makes me feel terribly grown up. I think this grown up feeling is why, when we discussed redoing the laundry room one of my first questions was: “Can we have a chandelier in there? I think it would be a pleasant surprise to see a chandelier in the laundry room.” And wouldn't this fixture be adorable in a peach oned laundry room.

I wish I could blame the sawdust.