Don't Look Up

If you come over to visit us, chances are you'll end up in the kitchen. That's where my wife's family does a lot of their entertaining and socializing. I don't know from this myself. In my parent's house, that sort of thing was done-- well, let's face it: it wasn't done. My family is not the entertaining/socializing sort. As a family, though, we gathered in the living room and the dining room. The kitchen is a place where you are uniformly ushered out of so that my parents can fight with each other about when to make the rice, who burned the bread or why there is so much goddamn shrimp sauce.


When we have people over, we tend to end up in the kitchen for generalized, pre-dinner chit-chat. I don't know why-- our kitchen is easily the ugliest room in our house. The living room is undeniably cheerful, with beautiful walls of both sunny yellow and luscious lavender. The dining room is a rustic, burnt orange/red, a white chair rail, and then a soft, buttercream. We've finally managed to get our act together to hang pictures in the dining room, and it looks quite fine. There's even a lovely, cheery tablecloth from Provence that was given to us as a gift by people with actual taste.


But, like I said, we usually end up in the kitchen. The floor is sheet vinyl, and it is, as my wife has often put it, the color and texture of freshly vomited-upon cobblestone. The cabinets are a terribly ugly and depressing dark wood with thick, chunky, off-putting handles, the oven (which we are trying to convince the home warranty people to replace) is from Gerry Ford's days in office and above, just like in your office, there's drop ceiling.


Oh, and a fucking hole.


When I came home from work yesterday, I noticed moisture on one of the drop ceiling tiles.

"Hmpf," said I to myself, said I, "moisture belongs on the outside of houses."


I moved the ceiling tile in question and this is what I found:





Pretty awesome, yeah?


Now, this house was built in 1929, so please know that I'm not here to cry and moan and be all stunned as a stoat and shit and bitch and sob to you about how unfair and unpredictable life is, and woe betide me, the new twenty-something homeowner.


No.


I'm writing because I'm motherfucking pissed off, because this roof was 6 months old when we bought the house in February. That's right. There's a brand new roof on this bitch.


Unfortunately, this new roof was installed by some moron who doesn't know slate shingles from syphillis. I can remember talking to him on the phone during the agonizing, three-month-long closing process.


"Actually, I'm more of a handyman than a roofer."


Oh, well that's comforting.


Comforting or not, it's certainly a comment that goes a long way to explaining his inadequate, shoddy workmanship, and it will certainly go an even longer way when we get our act together enough to sue the motherfucker, his insurance company, and the township that approved his work. Really, though, I don't want to sue anybody-- that's just ballsy blogger talk. I just want my goddamn roof fixed, keeping moisture on the outside, as opposed to inside. I don't have time to go to court, I don't have money to hire a lawyer. And I don't have the goddamn mental energy to deal with incompetents, liars, bullshit artists, insurance companies, and holes in my ceiling that get bigger and bigger and, eventually, moldy and cheeselike.

I will be making anonymous, heavy-breathing telephone calls to the roofer's (sorry-- handyman) home, though. Just for shits and gigs. In the meantime, come on over to our place. We'd love to have you over for coffee and a chat in the kitchen. Just don't look down on us, or down at our cobblestone throw-up floor.

And, for the time being, don't look up either.