Just Wandering

“Its Frank !” and so I dumped the Foam Brush wand into the back of the pick up and dashed out into the open air where I might hear Frank better. The worthwhile phone call turned out a little long and so its end coincided with the life expectancy of the six bucks worth of quarters. Have you ever seen six dollars worth of soap suds in the back of a pickup?…..they droop well over the sides and stand a full three feet over the roof of the cab. And if you are at all like me, its at this time you will make the discovery you just simply don’t have enough cash on hand to perform the necessary rinse.

So there I was….heading down the main road with large billowing gobs of foamy cleanliness wreaking havoc with the traffic behind until I desperately sought a quieter route home. Said chosen route, however, turned out to be inhabited by a large group of kids who all took great pleasure in chasing after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float that stumbled into their domain, all of them calling out and laughing…….

I think those six dollars were well spent …..not just for the kids pleasure….but who the hell would ever remember a decent car wash a year later ?

I misplace shit. I mean I misplace shit a lot. I can stand at my workbench and not move my feet and suddenly lose a tool I was just using. Funny thing is, even without moving my feet that bastard tool will eventually turn up on a shelf or something on the opposite side of the garage.

That’s the way it was a couple of weeks ago when I finally ended my seemingly endless two week search for the tiny little allen wrench that fit the set screws on a set of vintage rifle sights.

“Piss on it….I give up” I thought as I set my energies on a different course….namely doing something about the slow leak on the front right of the Ford that has required me to seek a source of air every few days for a couple of weeks. The cost came to $24.60 but at least there was no more concern about it going flat on the way to work and as I was coughing up the payment I casually asked….

“ What was it, did I pick up a screw ?”…..

“ Nah…..tiny little allen wrench”……..

Now deep down I’m pretty certain I would never have walked outside to place my beloved little allen wrench out in the driveway…..but then again….

As it turns out the man of the house is a painter and had collected a half a warehouse of assorted half tins of paint that the lady wanted rid of along with a giant conglomeration of other items to the tune of filling my 5×8 trailer. Once the trailer was filled I parked it in my drive in readiness of the morning dump run to be performed after dropping the wife off at work.

Next morning the wife had a comment as we were about to leave…..

“ How you going to clean that shit?”….she asked while performing the nose point in the direction of my trailer.

And there it was……the glob. Evidently when I hefted an entire 5 gallon bucket of yellow paint onto the trailer my usual luck prevailed and I placed it directly over a nail embedded 2×4. This of course allowed the evacuation of said 5 gallons from my trailer to their new home…..my driveway.

You may or may not be aware so I’ll tell ya ……….

Five gallons of bright yellow on the driveway really sucks…….

I’ve developed a bad habit these past two years and its caused a lot of Spanish slang to be slung in my direction and though it may be well deserved….I’m fed up with it. Its to do with the amount of shit that falls off my tailgate……lunches and coolers and tool boxes, buckets and untold amounts of building materials have dissapeared lately due to my inability to remember to simply close the tailgate. I really needed to get to the job early today so that I could leave early enough to get to our place and finaly hang the new kitchen cabinets and so when “Short Breath” started whining about riding her bike to work in the frigid Florida temperatures…..I was miffed. She starts at 8:00 for Gods sake and I was hoping to start before 7 am and so told her she’ll just have to get there a half hour early. Well off we speed and sure enough, she gets there a half hour early and I jump out of the truck to unload her bicycle …..and its not there. $575 worth of bike has lept of my tailgate somewhere and now we have to back track in the slim hope we may find it. ……….all the way back to deep into New York Ave and there it is….laying on the side of the road all disheveled and looking like a well used and then abandoned blow up doll ……with a flat. ” You fucken suck” she said in Spanish………. yeh yeh yeh heard it all before.

  and in more than one language…….

As you know I’ve entered a new career position in the plumbing department of HD. Now after 35 years in masonry there are aspects of that trade in which I can definitely walk the walk….talk the talk. In fact I have been regarded as the King in a part of the country where people are very good at what I did . Suddenly….I’m a low wage noob. And so, I have no other option….. I just gotta have fun since I can‘t be helpful.

“ Ya gotta 90 degree shrub spray nozzle with a ¾ to ½ male to female adapter to go on a 6 inch riser and preferably by Orbitz?”

………I’ve got a box of em Sir” I respond with authority…………………

“ Well………where are they? “ and this is where the King shit falls apart.

“ Ain’t gotta clue….but you can bet I’m more than willing to earn my pennies helping you look……what color are they? ” and at this point I start proudly flashing my IN TRAINING badge to extremely long faces. You see, I’ve learned a lot in a week. My first couple of days were spent helping out in Garden Supply and apart from the animals in the “mulch on sale” line people who come to the garden department are content….they got nothing on thier minds but growing flowers and other happy shit….but plumbing?…man walks into a plumping department its because he’s got a fucken problem…..and frankly…..at sub $10 p.h.  I don’t give a shit.

Actual fact is that sales in plumbing have taken a healthy spike since I’ve been in the department and I’ve been more than happy to accept my share of back patting……no one has mentioned however another interesting factoid…..

As a noob, part of my afternoon schedule is to go to the returns counter to pick up the plumbing returns cart and put all returned items back on the shelves. My first day there was a half a cart….but now I have to hustle a little bit as there are three full carts a day of returns and I‘m starting to recognize a lot of them.

Its getting easier to choose a customer to help as well. They come in very distinct …..areas of need. There is the real plumbers…they know what they want, where it is and are not about to let themselves be victimized by any shenanigans from me. I like em. Then the husband / wife teams who look as stopped up as the toilets they’ve left behind at home who all but go into anxiety attacks on my floor when the need of a tool is mentioned. Sprinkler people….these are to be avoided at all cost. These are men who have spent six years running little tubes to every nook and cranny of their properties to which they ceaselessly experiment with various types, styles and brands and methods of getting water to plants and or lawns. They sometimes band together to swap info and you’d think it was an HO Train collectors meeting……and then….the inventors. These are people who want to build furniture out of PVC, people who have no idea what they want or why they want it, people wanting little valves and lines for compressed air operated sex toys for the waterbed back home…no lie.

Truth be known, I find most plumbing customers to be a pain in the ass and so spend a great deal of time being extremely helpful by leaning forward and in a low conspirital tone mention that Ace has what they need and they have a great plumber there. This always brings me a hearty handshake and a loud “Thank you, you have been very helpful”

I’m pleased to say the Manager has witnessed many of these grateful handshakes and is already convinced he’s hired a plumbing Ace…..and maybe he has

And I thought of that as I watched the news reporter make Japanese children laugh……

You may remember our story of the crap we went through getting the debit cards’ on our new Sun Trust account to work while we were back in North Carolina. …….well, the other day it started happening again. My left footedness is once more kicking in. I started to receive an odd charge to my account  $5.00 for a Special Mailing Fee on top of which the debit card started getting rejected the other day. Another of lifes overly frequent little items that have become so ingrained as to be considered aggravatingly normal

  And so off to the bank to sort it out and and while there was informed of some very interesting facts. It appears  new cards were issued to the wife and I and when they were mailed to our previous address they were sent back to the bank…. the Post Office will not forward credit cards. Thats fact one.   Fact two is…………….

Seems as though every time I get a really good idea you get to sit there and read about it. The latest greatest good idea occurred yesterday when we were heading out to choose bathroom tile. It was raining serious and I told the Magster I didn’t want to haul and unload in this. The dissapointment was huge, she likes buying stuff for the fixer upper and don’t like sitting around while its raining,  and so I thought….…..      ” Lets go down to Lowes, we can purchase them and they can have em ready for me to haul away first thing in the morning”   Great Idea she says and so off we go and ended up choosing the same tiles as the rest of the house…….only in two different smaller sizes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzi3LNedz-M&feature=player_detailpageExperienced Brick Masons needed …….that’s what the ad said yesterday morning and its the first time I’ve seen one like it…well, in years and the memory of a life long lifestyle came flooding back.

 The guest bath…good grief. Olive colored bath and a heavy non pro wall texture that had the appearance of something a blind man had thrown there. Well I did a good job of plastering the walls smooth and then used my new found wall texturing skills. Next came Maggie with her great painting skills, which were greatly improved after she did our usual three coats to get the color right.            “Ya know” she said with the tone I am only too familiar with, “Maybe we should have put in a new vanity and sink.”…….and so I knew what was on the agenda for the day. First things first and the old vanity and sink found themselves out in the garage lickity split….and there it was. A discovery so monumental it was worthy of note in an encyclofriggenpedia. One coat of texture…then a coat of paint…then a plaster coat topped with a spray on texture finished with the wifes usual three coat paint job……all applied over wallpaper.

  Ten minutes of scraping was all that was necessary to send yours truly off to Home Depot with a much better idea in mind and by the end of the day all those multitudes of coatings were coated over with freshly hung drywall……it’ll be textured and painted yet again within two days

We banked with Bank of America for years…I liked the name. I will fess up to being a little pissed when BOA made it clear a few years back that they would issue credit cards to people whether they could provide a social security card, proof of residency or not. My thinking was that it was quite possible that Lopez would max out a card at Rooms to Go and ship it all back home to Mexico. Lopez would then purchase a new ID card under the name of Mendez and start all over again. This would leave honest customers like myself feeling the pinch of 18+% interest rates to make up the loss and in hindsight…I think I was right.

                               Que?

 Its those seemingly unimportant details that snag me….” How important can that be?”  is a question I frequently ask and its usualy the preamble to some sort of glitch. It was like that when we purchased new toilets for the fixer upper.

  Whats the difference between a five star flush rated low flow toilet at $109.00 and the same rated toilet at $149.00 ?    So  on close scrutiny we notice that the lower price was likely due to skimping on details. The seat for instance was of obvious mediocre quality and the usual two little nubs that generally keep a seat off the porcelain were so small that they fail  in this task. An innocuous detail indeed with a $40 per toilet savings, who cares about a flimsier seat ….right ?    Well, as it turns out, I do. All is well until its time to wipe, and being a righty I tend to lean over the left leg. At this point I notice that the seat sits right on the porcelain because suddenly, as I lean forward, large tufts of hair are ripped from the back of the right leg where they had been trapped between the porcelan and the seat. Choices are few and simple, one is to just head on down to Ace for a replacement seat……but being really frugal I’ll likely tough it out  untill I’m bald in the back of the right leg.    Innocuous little details will get ya every  time

the good life

I live my life in a multi cultural atmosphere…..meaning, as you might know, I married a Latina. A Colombian girl if specifics mean anything and with that marriage comes all the different customs, foods, habits, idiosyncrasies…..and thought processes.We had some friends for a barbecue this weekend….Colombian friends and a good time was had by all. I’m pleased about this as there was a time some years back when this particular Gringo was somewhat frowned upon  by this particular group. I think my famous rib eyes and meat dripping off the bone ribs being the number one reason I could be tolerated after a particular incident. … I’ll try to explain.

 You see, a large gathering of the wife’s friends at our place meant total immersion into the language, the incessant music and of course a different manner of thinking. I found that copious amounts of my favorite adult beverages often made things go somewhat ….well ,smoother. It certainly improved my Spanish grammar and I was usually more than fluent come the evenings end. One particular all day rib fest I found myself out on the lanai with a large gathering of the        “Spanish Wives Club” and made great sport in instigating a rib eating contest. It was an instant success as one lady after another placed an entire rib in her mouth and attempted to be the one who could glean every last morsel as the bone was removed. A good time was being had by all and I must confess to seeing an obscene beauty in all of this.

 If Norman Rockwell was still alive we might well be viewing an entirely different concept of Americana….for sure the prices of his work would be higher. But alas the Latino husbands at the party had absolutely no concept of the new age Americana Norman Rockwell painting they witnessed…..they were pissed.

  This small incident forced me to slink off and get acquainted with one of the girls father who was here on a three week visit. We did enjoy each others company immensely…right up until they found him out at the end of my driveway singing Colombian folk tunes with a donation hat at his feet. I am pleased to say the old man went home with a memory his wife will never let him forget and pleased even more that the gang has forgiven my past….and why wouldn’t they….I’ve been a good boy…and I still make great ribs 

Well, I’ve been painting a doctors office….unfortunately its been an odd gig where I can’t start till noon and have to work till 6:30 or 7:00 but hey…could be worth a case of .22 cal. ammo . Well the other evening, the predictable creature of habit I happen to be I made the stop for adult beverages on the way home. I had  just got back in the truck when this woman on the radio started rattling off a long list of symptoms that I only half heartedly listened to while my mind was on the adult beverages in the back seat. All of a sudden it occurred to me …..