Home Sweet Home

All right, I’m just going to skip all the usual, “Sorry I’ve been away, blah, blah, blah” bullshit and get straight to it…I BOUGHT A HOUSE! Well, we, my boyfriend Steve and I, bought a house. Together. To live in for, like, longer than a year. I KNOW! I crapped my big girl pants, too!

It all happened really fast in the slowest way possible. One day we were carefree renters and the next we were homeowners, give or take a few months. The process of searching for a house was not what I expected. It was a lot like shopping for jeans, you think it’s going to be fun because it’s shopping, but somewhere around the tenth pair of muffin top-inducing denim and the salesperson’s rude “Can I get you another size, ma’am?” questions that sound like, “Can I get you another doughnut, fatty?” you decide to boycott jeans and invest in more pants with elastic waistbands. Every house we looked at I found a problem with, whether it was location, size or the way the air inside made my skin feel weird and jumpy. People kept telling us, “Don’t worry, you’ll know it when you find it.” Know what? I wondered. “You’ll just walk in, and you’ll know that it’s the one,” they said. Once this was in my head it made things even harder. I walked into every house we looked at expecting to have an epiphany, but I never did. In the end, the house we bought was the one with the least problems, the best neighborhood, the greatest value, and the fewest weird smells.

Once we put an offer down and signed the contract, we spent two months wondering if we had made the right decision; I still didn’t have that feeling, I didn’t know if it was “the one.” We moved in on the hottest weekend in June. After a day of hauling boxes and sweating on everything we owned, Steve and I took a break and stood in the front yard, looking our new home in the face. It had been sunny all day but suddenly the sky was tornado green and the temperature felt different at my knees than it did at my shoulders. Steve grabbed my hand.

“This is our house,” he said.
“I know. It’s so…adulty,” I said.
“Yeah, but, adulty in a good way, right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I hate it when you say “sure.” “Sure” never means sure when you say it.”
“Sure?”
“Look, we can put a beer pong table in the front yard…and Bob Marley posters on the walls…and never do the dishes…will that make it less adulty for you?”
“I don't know. I feel like the owners of this house should wear snazzy pantsuits and carry briefcases and play in the stock market and have well-trained dogs,” I said, glancing at the front window where I could see our dog Bear chewing on the curtains.
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” he said.
“Well, don’t you kind of feel like we don’t go with this house?”
“I think it’s our job to make this house go with us,” he said. In that moment I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to smack him or kiss him, but that’s usually how I feel when I know he’s right.
“Good. I hate snazzy pantsuits,” I said.
“Me too. Let’s go inside before it rains on us.”

What followed was a week of torrential downpours. Streets were running rivers, yards were flooded pools and everyone with a basement had water or sewage coming in, everyone except us. Since the house we rented last had a lot of basement issues, we were keeping a close eye on ours, going down there every day to check for leaks, but despite the record amount of rainfall it remained dry. That’s when we heard it…drip…drop…drip, drip, drip…drop.

“I think it’s coming from the attic,” Steve said. We grabbed a flashlight and opened the secret passageway-like door that’s in the back of a closet and climbed into the attic. The dripping noises got louder, I held my breath and Steve held the flashlight.

“What. The. Hell. Is. THAT!” I said, pointing to a dark, spreading puddle where the roof meets the ground.
“Shit! Okay, no big deal, no big deal. We can handle this,” Steve said.
“By handle, you mean call someone to fix it, right?”
“Well, yeah. But for now we are going to have to fix it ourselves. Go get me some pots and pans. And some towels. And a hammer—no, a screwdriver, Phillips!”
“I hate everything about what you just said.”
“I’m not going to do anything major—I’m just going to try to keep it from leaking through ceiling,” he said.
“IT CAN LEAK THROUGH THE CEILING?!”

We’ve called roofers and contractors and they all say the same thing: we need a new ruff. I don’t know what the hell a “ruff” is, but apparently it’s going to cost us our savings. We’ve had other disasters pop up along the way, but that's all part of what makes being a homeowner "fun," according to the sarcastic assholes we call friends and family. Sometimes I think of it as getting to know a new person who has a lot of weird quirks, but sometimes I’m sober and I think of it as a monster trying to eat us. One of my friends said, “buying a house is like marrying a pickpocket,” which seems pretty accurate. Although, in our case, I think it’s more like Steve and I married a golddigger that just happens to be a 1,400-square foot Cape Cod.

It's no secret that becoming homeowners has been most gratifying for our parents, who, after years of not knowing or understanding anything, suddenly have all the answers. When something goes wrong, they are the first people we call.

Voicemail 1:
Hey, Dad! It's me...listen, when you get a chance, give me a call. We have these holes all over our yard...like, crittery rodent holes. Anyway, yeah, I don't know what they're from, but when you get a chance just call me. Okay, bye!

Voicemail 2:
Hi, Dad, it's me again. Just wondering if you got my last message. Oh, also, our kitchen sink is leaking. Should we just get down there and tighten some pipes, I mean, can you even tighten pipes? I don't get it. Okay, call me!

Voicemail 3:
Dad, it's me, where are you? I've found, like, ten spiders INSIDE today! What do I do? Exterminators are too expensive and all those sprays are toxic. So, yeah, I don't know where you are, but call your daughter back!

Voicemail 4:
DAD! We bought a desk and it won't fit through the door! Should we try to put it through the window? It looks bigger than the doorway but it's really heavy—oh, CRAP! Got to go! Call me!

Voicemail 5:
ARGHHHHHHH!

"Hello?"
"FINALLY! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? DID YOU GET MY MESSAGES? WHY HAVEN'T YOU RETURNED MY CALLS?!"
"Quinn, I was in a meeting. My phone was off for an hour, you left five messages. What's wrong?"
"Oh, an hour? Huh, well it felt like a lot longer than that. Anyway, I need your help..."

I wasn't prepared for this sudden role reversal. Now they are the ones avoiding our calls and coming up with excuses as to why they didn't call us back. Sometimes my dad even does the whole hanging up while saying goodbye thing because he can’t get me off the phone: “Yeah, okay, yep, right…okay, got to go, yeah, love you too, okay, really have to go now, uh-huh, all right…bye!” But that’s usually only after the tenth or eleventh time I've called him that day, or hour, whatever.

We’ve been living in our house for a little over a month now, and sure, sometimes it’s a monster, but everyday it becomes a little bit more our monster than it was the day before and there’s something endlessly satisfying about that. I spent eight hours working in the yard yesterday; by the end of it I was covered in scratches and bite marks, so I guess it’s debatable who worked whom, but the important point is: progress was made. At first I was trying to figure out what every plant was before I did anything but then I just decided that if I didn’t like it, I was going to pull it out, because it's my house and I can do whatever I want! Six huge bags of yard debris later, our front yard looks…clean—okay, maybe I got a little carried away and now there are some bald spots, but no big deal, I’m totally going to plant some new stuff that will look WAY better than that stupid, fancy, sharp, spiky grass that was popping out everywhere. Besides, this homeowner thing is a learning process, and sometimes I just have to figure it out as I go along. Of course, “reorganizing” $3,000 worth of landscaping the previous owner did was an expensive lesson but at least I learned something...like, that I'm still definitely allergic to poison ivy.

She take our money, well we’re in need
Yeah she's a triflin' house indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over time
That digs on me…

Bathroom Politics

There is a certain amount of decorum expected when you walk into a ladies’ room, perhaps only because it says “Ladies Room” on the door, which seems to establish an atmosphere where ladylike behavior is expected. Based on my experience, I can only assume that the men’s room is an entirely different situation. Generally, I imagine groups of men peeing their names on the wall while others stand around the urinal as if it’s a magical fountain, talking about sports, plucking nose hairs, adjusting themselves, high-fiving each other, exchanging germs and doing other male-tastic things. I don’t get the feeling that there’s any unspoken sense of etiquette in a men’s room, other than to avoid looking left or right while “painting” your name on the wall. But in the ladies’ room, things are very different. For instance, we have stalls with locks—that’s our one option and there isn’t an alternative, such as an open trough, in which to relieve ourselves—and depending on the ladies’ room, sometimes there are little indulgences to be enjoyed, such as candles, Glade Plug-Ins, extra toilet paper, scented lotion and the seats are always down.

Of course, one of the drawbacks to this effort to maintain decorum in the ladies’ room is the propensity of passive aggressive behavior, which actualizes itself in the form of notes. There are notes on stall doors to tell you what to do with your feminine waste, notes above the toilet to remind you to ensure that all of your waste does in fact flush from sight, notes on the mirror to remind you to wash your hands, notes near the wash area to remind you to dispose of your paper towel in the appropriate receptacle, and notes on the door as you exit to remind you of your personal belongings in the event that you should be stupid enough to leave them in the bathroom. Despite always paying attention to the notes in every bathroom I’ve ever been in, I have never seen one as featured in Figure A below.

Figure A:

What kind of crazy pee-bandit instigated this type of note? When I read this, which is at least once every single day, I always think about the vague wording and how it’s strange that other women automatically know what this means while a man might look at it and think we were smearing poop on the walls. Basically, there’s a squatting sprinkle queen in my office building that is assaulting this one particular bathroom “DAILY! (sad face)” and what better way to encourage them to cease their pee-bandit ways than to post this handwritten note?

How many notes are in the men’s room? Probably none. Want to know why? Because they can pee standing up (incidentally, I’m amazed by how many things in life seem to come back to this one glaring disadvantage) and their tolerance for filth is exponentially higher in most cases. I know how women behave in a public restroom, and while I’ve experienced moments that left me genuinely disgusted and horrified, it’s a generally pleasant and polite atmosphere. However, I never really thought about what the men’s room must be like until I started sharing a bathroom with a man.

My boyfriend used to be responsible for cleaning the bathroom, I do my fair share of cleaning, but he was responsible for this one tiny room in our house because of his atrocious lack of ladylike behavior concerning the bathroom. I’ve come to realize that appropriate bathroom etiquette is an issue for most men, not just Steve, which only reconfirms my childhood belief that all boys are dirty, smelly dumbheads.

There is nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and dunking your ass in cold, dirty toilet water because the lid is up, and I think most women would agree with me on this specific type of unpleasantness. Steve and I have had many disagreements on this topic.

“If I have to lift the seat up, then why can’t you put it down?” Steve says.
“Because the seat and the lid should both always be down unless you are using the toilet!”
“But if men and women are equal, like you always say, then you should do your part in terms of lifting and lowering the lid of the toilet, right?”
“No! That’s not—no! This is a totally different issue. I’m not arguing about this anymore. Put the damn toilet seat down or I’m never making fried chicken for you ever again!”

When you share a bathroom with a man there is also the constant dusting of facial hair debris covering every surface, the dirty, discarded boxers and undershirts piled in the corner, once white bathmats are now beige because of carelessly muddy feet tracking dirt in, and don’t even get me started on replacing the empty roll of toilet paper with a full roll (not just setting it on top of the empty roll – this does not count). While my complaints are many, I never really considered the torture I was inflicting on the bathroom until the day the drain clogged.

“Um, so, I think there’s something wrong with the shower…” I said, drying my hair with a towel.
“What do you mean?” Steve said.
“Well, it just filled up with water while I was in there,” I said.
“The tub?”
“No, I was showering,” I said.
“Yeah, I get that, but the tub was filling up with water?” Steve said.
“Oh, yeah, the tub, like, it wasn’t draining,” I said, scrunching up my nose in a way that means I’m not dealing with it.
“Alright, I’ll fix it,” Steve said.

Steve grabbed some tools, went into the bathroom and closed the door. He had to close the door in order to keep the dog out—Bear likes to jump in the tub and lick the shampoo bottles (yes, we are really proud of how our dog is progressing)—but watching as he entered the bathroom with such conviction, tools in hand, ready to face the challenge, made it seem like he was embarking on a serious mission and the only thing missing was a plunger resting on his shoulder like a rifle. A few minutes later I could hear him.

“Oh my god—ugh! Sick! Ewww!” Then I heard the sound of draining water.
“Did you fix it?” I yelled from the couch. Steve walked out of the bathroom with his tools and into the kitchen.
“Uh, yeah.” He was washing his hands.
“What was the problem?”
“Well, I used an old pair of tweezers to reach down and clean out the drain and, yeah…I pulled out a bunch of hair and other shit I don’t know about.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So, it was really gross—it’s still in the trash if you want to see what I pulled out.”
“Ew, no way! Unless it was a beautiful baby unicorn or dinosaur artifacts, I’m not really interested,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘ew’? It’s your hair, your…stuff!”

After this event I began to realize that perhaps I contribute to dirtying the bathroom in a more subtle (er...ladylike?) way that I wasn’t aware of. I mean, it’s not like the glob of long, mangled blond hair that came out of our drain could have belonged to Steve. And I guess, maybe sometimes, I leave the counter (which isn’t really a counter, but rather a sink with a ledge) full of hair products and “other shit [he] doesn’t know about.” Okay, I will also admit to occasionally creating hair art on the shower walls, but only out of necessity and never out for fun. And sometimes I get a little sloppy with toothpaste, especially when I’m in a hurry (in my defense, the toothpaste usually ends up on me rather than caked on the sink).

Shortly after this drain discovery, in a moment of weakness, Steve caught me breaking my own rule of not immediately replacing the empty toilet paper roll. Yes, he caught me setting the new roll on top of the empty one, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes light up in the same way since. Now we share the duty of cleaning the bathroom, and I feel even more strongly that boys are, in fact, dirty, smelly dumbheads. As a result, I will sometimes leave a passive aggressive Post-It note on the mirror that is expertly disguised with loving wit and charm (and therefore harmless, and also surprisingly effective):

Hi honey!
The toilet is too gross to shit in.
Just FYI. K?
I love you SO much! :)
xoxoxxxxxxx
<3,
Me

Luck Is Such An Asshole

Luck is like a bad boyfriend.

It comes and goes as it pleases with little concern for your feelings or needs. When luck is around, everything seems wonderful, which causes your mind plays tricks on you and you think that “perfect” really must exist because you are living it (only you’re not because your idea of perfect has morphed into luck’s idea of perfect, which is really more like perfect shit). But then, without warning, it just picks up and leaves. It doesn’t return your phone calls, it doesn’t listen, it cheats on you with your friends, and it makes you think you must be crazy for expecting more. So, WTF luck? Why you got to play me like that?

Much like men, I think luck comes in floods and droughts. Sometimes you’re rolling in it and you have several prospects to entertain, all of which vie for you attention in equally satisfying ways. For instance, I can recall a time four years ago when I was flooded with luck—so much luck, it practically created a mold problem (I’m taking this analogy too far, aren’t I? That’s too bad because I can’t stop now). I turned 21 years old and could finally do what I had been doing for the previous four years legally, I landed an amazing internship I never thought I would get, I started dating a cute guy and had just declared him my official “boyfriend” (after four years of not having a boyfriend at all) and, yes—and, I got a brand new car which happened to be the car of my dreams—this all happened in one week, like a severe luck storm warning that might flash across the television and drown out a crucial part in your favorite show. Or maybe it was more like the pipes had been frozen for years, but then, all of a sudden, they burst and lucky sprayed everywhere, causing irreparable damage in the form of uncontrollable awesomeness. This luck lingered for several months following my one-week of intense flooding; it didn’t die away immediately or get up in the middle of the night to leave while I was sleeping. Instead it was a gradual decline, but I wouldn’t say it led to “bad” luck right away—I was just forced to lower my expectations, much like you do with bad boyfriends. Eventually, you’re expectations are so low you find yourself flushed with joy when you win a dollar playing Powerball—or, rather, you’re flushed with joy because he remembered to call you and tell you he wouldn't be able to hang out tonight because he had to study with that cheerleader from his Stats class.

The drought strikes as soon as you realize you’re too good to be tied down to such a lose-lose (loser) situation. At first you think you’re prepared for the drought, you know you’re going to be in it for the long haul and you brush off the concern of others because you’re completely capable of handling this all on your own, or so you think. But then something bad happens: You find out that your parents had to put your childhood dog down. And then another bad thing happens: You get two speeding tickets in two weeks. And then another bad thing: Your landlord refuses to return your deposit. And then an even worse thing happens: You lose your job. More bad stuff: Your friends move to different, cooler cities. But we aren’t done with the bad yet: You have a constant case of hives that have spread to your face making it so that you can’t leave the house without feeling like people are staring at you and your incessant itching. This is like when you find out that all your used-to-be prospects from the previous flood now have girlfriends and consider you their “pal,” and the only men you seem to attract are the ones with glaring abnormalities—they have horns instead of ears or they have an unusual obsession with madras print shorts.

Once you’ve been living in the drought period for an extended period of time, your thirst is so extreme that you’re willing to drink anything. You look back at that one week of uncontrollably awesome luck with bitterness, nostalgia and chest-searing pain, and wonder if you can create your own luck given that you’ve sort of created your own boyfriend (so what if he lives in a drawer next to your bed, at least he’s there for you when you need him, right?). But luck doesn’t work that way. Like a bad boyfriend, luck makes you ache for something you thought you had but never really did—you think you had something great because now that things are so bad, you can’t help but build up that sort of good, but mostly delusional, part in your own mind. Now you consider yourself “lucky” if you break a mirror and manage to avoid cutting yourself and a trip to the hospital.

Just when you’ve resigned yourself to being the poster child for Murphy’s law, something lucky—not fabricated lucky, but truly lucky—happens to you. So, after months of not calling, your bad boyfriend decides he wants to patch things up with you. He’s sorry about all those times he cheated on you with that whorish cheerleader from Stats class. He can’t stand the thought of not being with you, he needs you, he wants you. He promises to be the boyfriend you always deserved—the kind that buys flowers for no reason, leaves notes on the mirror, showers you with compliments and cooks you dinner because he knows you’re hungry. And luck does the same thing—after months of mourning the loss of luck, wishing for it to come back and then finally accepting the fact that it hasn’t, and may never, come back—you find yourself bombarded with it.

Currently, I think I’m riding out a lucky streak. It took a lot of luck to get the job I now have—so much luck that I can’t help but feel like I stole it from someone. But I’m older and wiser now. I know that luck is a one trick pony, no-talent asshat with nothing to offer but maybe a venereal disease from that whorish cheerleader. So I refuse to get attached. The longest drought in the History of Quinn just ended, and I survived, so I don’t know if I believe in luck anymore. Of course, these summer luck storms might produce flash floods, but I won’t lose my head this time. I know luck is a bad boyfriend that I’m better off without.



(Note: I am not personally familiar with most of the bad boyfriend traits discussed above because I have been fortunate enough to have an extremely awesome boyfriend for the past four years who tolerates my nonsense and understands more about me than I ever intended for one person to understand. Sorry, I don’t mean to brag, but he is really awesome. This doesn’t mean I’m not familiar with the bad boyfriend traits that make this analogy work—I have many girlfriends who have been the unlikely victims of such a bad boyfriend. Oh yeah, and I watch lots of romantic comedies because I just can’t seem to help myself from falling into that all too enticing female-centric demographic. And yes, these things totally make me credible.)