Domestication

“Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.”
~ Edward Gorey

Things are beginning to settle a bit here in Dayton, Ohio. Well, more specifically Kettering, Ohio, but the weird thing is . . . I live in Kettering, but my street and like 5 or 6 more around me are incorporated with Centerville and my mailing address is a Dayton address. Whatever. They do things differently here.

The house is starting to come together again. You want the story? Ok . . . you all remember scam-artist "Steve" right? Well, he had two subcontractors, Sam and Dave, in our house doing all the real work and these guys were good guys who did good work. On Friday Steve calls these guys to his house and demand that they give him the money back for the work they did at my house. Again . . . I am not joking. This guy is a piece of work. Sam told him to go fuck himself - nice. Ok Sam would never say, "Go fuck yourself," he's not that kind of guy, but the message was the same and they told Steve they would never do any subcontracting work for him again. They guys had told us when they were done they would come over and rehab our livingroom walls (wallpaper over paint which is over wallpaper which is over paint - classy!). Well since Steve can go fuck himself, they're going to start work today and have given us a good price. It is interesting because they tear off the big pieces of wallpaper, and then paint over everything with a special primer paint call Kilz, over the top of this they place mud, then sand, then they mud again, and finally finish again with sanding. This makes the walls basically like new again and no one has to strip the old shit off - nice.

As for myself around the house I have been cleaning tile floors of grout - sucks - hands and knees kind of stuff. Wasn't I supposed to be on "vacation" prior to beginning residency? Not if you buy a house. My Dad was right, there is always something to do, but he thinks I needed this experience. And he is probably right . . . kind of like if you see someone going toward an outlet with a paper clip. Stop them? Nah . . . they'll learn. HA! But the scrubbing has been quite Zen, gives me something to do instead of climb the walls. BTW if you have porcelain tiles (notice the italics because there are three major types of tile porcelain, ceramic, and natural stone) you can use a wiremesh to crean the grout off of the tiles with simple warm water - warm knife through butter - spent two days using a regular sponge and mild acid solution and that blew more than a prostitute when the fleet is in town (was that too crude? YES! It has been awhile . . .)

Also I am battling this Locust tree in my front yard. Well . . . more specifically what is left of a locust tree. You see the previous owners basically jerry-rigged (no offense Jerry - don't mean you) everything in the house. Seriously. Everything is a cut corner, and basically they did not do a good job of getting this tree out of the ground. The tree is gone but from every little root stub is a new growing tree! It's like the sorceror's apprentice - used to be one, now there so many I do not know what to do about it. Well . . . it's WAR and the tree is unfortunately winning. I used a weed tool to dig one little plant out, maybe 3 inch tall sapling and I dug back the root - it was all very surgical, extending incisions and retraction to follow the anatomy back to origin. This root when in about 8 inches deep and back over to the side 12 inches. I am NOT going to dig out every plant unless I have to and but I will to win the war. So my strategy now is round-up - some stuff for tough scrub - and well see what happens. I had to spray some of the grass in order to get everything - the grass will die - but that's all just collateral damage.

I just realized it . . . this is a fucking boring post. You may all disreagrd it.

I still need to talk about the moving scam . . . maybe tommarow.

Peace.