Debt Ceiling

All this talk about the debt ceiling has got me thinking, about our kitchen ceiling.

See, it's not that I don't want to be interested in the political ramifications of the nation having our rating lowered and interest rates rising and other terrible shit happening-- I want to be interested in that. But it's a little too... I don't know... macro for me.

I'm not a macro kind of guy.

I'm more micro.

Remember Micro Machines? They're more my speed. I could fix a Micro Machine if it broke. If, say, one of its wheels fell off, I could deal with that. If my big-boy car broke, 9.9 times out of 10, I couldn't fix that.

Why?

Because that's a macro machine. Mac. Roe.

Macro things are so much harder for me to conceptualize because, I feel, I don't have the appropriate tools in my toolbox. Actually, I'm not even sure I have the toolbox. In fact, let's be honest-- I don't have the toolbox. I just have a hammer and a wallpaper scraper and a couple of other shit tools kind of just strewn about in random places in my brain. And you can't do much on the macro level with a hammer and a wallpaper scraper and a couple of other shit tools kind of just lying about.

You certainly can't accurately grasp all of the key concepts of the current debacle revolving around the nation's debt and the geopolitical consequences that are both imminent and far-reaching should we really boehner this up.

So I retreat inward. To the world I understand. To... my kitchen.

We've got drop-ceiling in there, and God is it fuckall awful. Drop ceiling is wretched in church basement daycares and soul-violating cubicle-farms. It has no business being in houses. Residences. Places where people are supposed to enter and be moved.

Mark Twain said of his Hartford house, "We could not enter it unmoved."

When I enter our kitchen and look upward, I want to move my bowels. But I wouldn't do that, because my wife and I painstakingly laid down cork flooring all by ourselves (okay, with some help from her father) and I wouldn't dream of befouling said flooring with my arse-leavings.

But all this talk about the debt ceiling on NPR and such has really solidified the fact that this ceiling's got to go. Otherwise, there will be consequences, and consequences that I can actually understand.

Those consequences are, but are certainly not limited to:

* feeling the continued urge to move my bowels upon entering our kitchen and looking up

* feeling like I'm in the film "Office Space" when I enter our kitchen and look up, you no-talent ass-clown

* feeling the urge to cut myself, bang my head against the wall, burn myself with a cigarette, swallow a toothbrush, rub Brillo pads against my wrists, and engage in other self-destructive behaviors when I enter our kitchen and look up

* feeling the urge to prevent, at all costs, people I love and/or care for and/or respect and/or can see from entering our kitchen and looking up

* feeling the urge to smear peanut butter and deer viscera all over the drop-ceiling and unleash thirty wild brown bears clamor all over each other for the honor of being the first to eat significant portions of said drop-ceiling

* feeling the urge to invite over local clergy to exorcise the drop-ceiling

* feeling the urge to move my bowels while I blog (guess I should be doing this on my smartphone)

Just remember, kids: though the debt ceiling is important-- probably-- there are other ceilings to consider. Like mine. And that thing Michelangelo did or whatever.

I hate our ceiling. You can't come over to our house and play.

Ever.

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.