The Hellhole

Monday, April 19, 2004

I am very cute today. I have on new shoes. It doesn’t matter that my hair decided to be frizzy, that my eyes and cheeks are puffy because of pollen allergies or that my makeup is rather haphazard because of morning coming so damned early. Nope, what matters is that I have on new shoes and therefore, I am very cute today.

I purchased my new shoes on Saturday during a shopping expedition with my mom. I had to go out and spend $200 that I didn’t have on a new carpet shampooer. How this pertains to my new shoes is that spending $200 that I didn’t have was too much for me to handle all at once, so first I had to spend $75 on assorted stuff at Target and then buy a $110 pair of Cole-Hahn sandals, so as to work up gradually to the $200 purchase. See how that works?

Mom helped me assemble the new carpet shampooer, which I kind of resented. That is, I didn’t resent her helping me, I resented the fact that assembly was required at all. I mean, here I’ve had to spend lots of money that would be far better spent on more cute shoes on some stupid implement of work in order to do household chores that I don’t even enjoy - the least they could do was sell it in one piece. But they didn’t, so we put it together and after I had couched and had a Diet Coke, I felt sufficiently recovered to shampoo the carpets.

The main reason I had to shampoo carpets was to rid them of several spots of Sprocket-wee. I was emptying the waste tank from the shampooer outside because it kind of grossed me out to pour diluted doggy-wee down my sink drain and at one point, when I was almost finished, I came back in to find said doggy lifting his leg and weeing directly onto the carpet shampooer, which I suppose expressed his sentiments about the whole thing. Why do I even bother? But yes, it was great fun cleaning the outside of my new carpet shampooer with Clorox.

On Sunday the 'rents came up so my dad could re-hang my satellite dish. During some of the high winds we’ve had recently, it’s blown off-course enough that several channels weren’t coming in and on others, programs were often interrupted by the blue “Searching for satellite signal - please stand by” message. This is totally unacceptable during Stanley Cup playoffs. Mom bought me a new chimney-mount thing and Dad installed it. He climbed up a ladder and stood on my roof working, while big fat bees and mean red wasps angrily asserted their opposition to the satellite dish. My dad is the bravest man in the world.

While he was busy with that, Mom deplored the state of my rose bush and pruned it for me. Since she was being so gardeny, I asked if she’d prune the hedge along the front of my house. It’s not as bad as it sounds; I have one of those heavy-duty electric hedge clippers. She said sure and started attacking my shrubbery, which is growing exponentially in lovely, rich green foliage. If I cared at all about my lawn, the hedge would be brown and dying, but since I hate my lawn, it is getting even by thriving.

The hedge clippers were plugged into an outlet inside the garage and a long orange extension cord was looped around front. At this juncture, Dad descended the ladder in search of a Philips-head screwdriver. I had one, but it was in the house and the extension cord for the hedge clippers was stretched across, kind of blocking the door. So Dad unplugged it without saying anything to Mom. I went in, he plugged it back in; I found the screwdriver and needed to come back out so he unplugged it again. Then he stood there, with this totally evil grin on his face, waiting. Every time Mom got going really good, he’d unplug the cord and wait a few seconds. I could just picture her looking down at the clippers in puzzlement. Dad had it timed perfectly so that just before she got frustrated enough to walk around inside the garage to see what was up, he’d plug it back in.

So that was my weekend but despite all my hard work shopping, shampooing carpets and annoying my parents, I am very cute today.

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