Have It Your (My) Way

I have a very weird relationship with food, and it's all my mother's fault. I didn't have one of those moms who would make you eat it if you didn't want it. She made you something else. Other people reinforced this. I can remember being at daycare and eating peanut butter and grape jelly every day while the other kids ate meat and vegetables, you know, balanced meals. I don't eat onions, so my mother still strains my gravy (it's a habit) or makes me a separate casserole with no onions or peppers in it. My mother cooked two meals until I was old enough to heat up my own food if I didn't like what she was making.

I cook the same way for myself. If I make cheesy chicken spaghetti, half of it will have onions, peas and mushrooms in it. The other half won't. That's my half.

When Corey and I married, he made a point to say that he was terrified that his kids would be eaters like me, and that we weren't doing that in our home. The boys will eat what's on their plates, or they won't eat. They must take a bite of everything. If they hate it (as Landen does with most vegetables), they won't be given it again. Both of them have things they refuse to eat, and I don't serve those to them.

So the peccadillos I keep track of in my house include but are not limited to:

1. Landen and I hate onions. We hate the texture. If we bite into an onion, we can't eat any more of that food. Ever. Corey could eat onions raw. Jake doesn't mind them when they're cooked.

2. I don't eat ground meat. I will occasionally cook it. But this means that we don't eat Hamburger Helper, hamburgers, chili, spaghetti with meat or meatballs, tacos....unless I cook it with chicken, or in the case of spaghetti, someone else cooks it for us.

3. Corey doesn't like bell peppers. It's the only thing he will pick out or leave behind on a plate of food.

4. Jake doesn't like things that are mushy. He doesn't eat mashed potatoes, grits, oatmeal or anything once it's soggy. The other three people in this house could eat mashed potatoes every day.

5. If you asked them, both boys would say they don't like potatoes. Then you get to make them feel like big jerks by reminding them how much they love chips and french fries and tater tots and hash browns.....all POTATOES!

6. They will eat macaroni and cheese, but not shells and cheese. The concept of a food with the same ingredients being cooked in different shapes and tasting the same is unfathomable to them.

7. Corey loves vegetables - cooked or raw - and salads. I hate vegetables - all cooked, most raw - and I love salads. Jake loves some vegetables - cooked, no raw - and loves salads. Landen does not eat a salad or a vegetable.

8. Jake has it in his head that whole milk is the only real milk. We give him whole milk because he needs the extra calories. Whole milk is 3% milkfat. The rest of us drink 2% milkfat. In the rare instance when we're out of whole milk, you would think that the difference between "his" milk and "our" milk is like milk and apple juice.

9. 75% of the people in this house do not like pulp in their orange juice. Majority rules.

10. We can never run out of ketchup. As in, calamity reigns if we are caught without ketchup here.

I plan my meals for the week on Saturdays. I grocery shop at two different stores on Sundays. I have no idea what in the shit I am going to do when I will do this every week. Shit's going to get a whole lot less organized.
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Change of face

I have decided that when Corey gets home, I'm going to change this blog. It's not really "Nell and Corey," because the latter has refused from Day One to contribute content to it. Life is going to change a lot when Corey comes home (no later than December 22, allegedly) and I think I need to transition this blog to something that reflects my multiple roles in life. I'm going to maintain the content. I'm just going to change the pictures and the name.

I love this blog. I love that 52 people read every post. That's not a made-up number. And that doesn't include the 10 people the blog emails directly every time something gets posted. Half the readers are just checking on the boys, and that's great! They change so much from week to week, I couldn't possibly keep everyone who cares about them up-to-date individually.

So, I need a new blog name. It needs to be three or four words. And I would like to keep my married name in the title somehow, because I already bought the domain http://www.allbrittons.com/, so if I could not have to buy more than one, that would be ideal.

I mean, next year we're full-time parents. We haven't been full-time married people in a year. I already have our therapy appointments scheduled. I haven't been a full time parent EVER, and I really like to sleep late. Most of the things we want to do (as two people who've never owned a home before), we want to try for ourselves before we call in a professional. We may get another dog. We're NOT having a baby yet. Cydney Wilson is supposed to graduate from college.

When Corey comes home, the inspiration for these little posts I write are sure to expand. If the last three years have taught me anything, it's that my adventure never slows down, much less stops, no matter how very, very hard I try.

I'm about to spend the rest of my life loving and raising this foolishness right here:

There will NEVER be a shortage of material.
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Open, sesame. I said OPEN, DAMMIT.

One of the things that was Too Good To Be True about this house is the electric gate in the middle of the driveway. If we had no dog, that would be unnecessary. But since Murphy's idea of a hot night on the town is barreling down the driveway and out the gate and around the corner up the street, this gate made my heart sing when we were looking at the house. Once we finally got the post moved to where it lines up with the closed gate (thank you Randy), Murphy could no longer get out of the driveway and I could open the back door and let him roam free without worrying about the dangers of his streetscapades.

One day when the boys decide to go play outside, it's going to be good for keeping them in bounds too.

However, this gate continues to be quite the source of consternation for me.

There are three remote thingies that open the gate. One for my car. One for Corey's car and one for the kitchen window. Or Cydney Wilson should she decide to commandeer it, which she is prone to do. There is also a keypad by the back door where you can, allegedly, enter a code and have the gate open. I'm not going to describe to you the different scenarios whereupon a working keypad would save steps in the process to get down the driveway, either by vehicle or by foot if you are rolling the garbage cans to the street.

Yes, I know. Poor little girl can't get the keypad to her luxurious electric driveway gate to open. Screw you. When you are bitterly functioning as the head of household while Uncle Sam hijacks your husband and deposits him in distant lands, it's the success of small things that keeps your spirits up.

First, I had to locate the owner's manual for the keypad, much like how I had to find the directions to operate my computerized thermostat. Thanks, Google. Then I followed all the directions in the manual - making sure the dip switches on the control box and the remote controls match the dip switches on the keypad, resetting the whole box because the previous owners didn't leave me shit least of all a 4-digit code to work the bastard, entering the factory master code only to have sassy keypad spew hate-filled beeps at me clearly indicating I'm an idiot and am doing it wrong - and the gate remains closed. I called the 800-number on the keypad (by the way, the company is GTO, which stands for GATES THAT OPEN! Douchebags!) and the automated lady told me I have to go online to get 24-hour technical assistance. That directs me to the same GD set of instructions that did not work, no matter how many times I've repeated the steps in the last five days. If those steps don't work, you can fill out a trouble ticket and someone will get in touch with you in 24 hours.

I swannee.

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Ah-ah-ah! Don't look down. Look right here.

I have a dear, funny, fantastic friend who has just begun her struggle with breast cancer. I cannot sleep tonight thinking about her. She’s married, and she has two young boys. Younger than mine. She came into my life right about the time when we knew the boys’ mom was terminal. She spent almost every day of that journey with me, and she would often tell me how she, as the mother of two boys, would be feeling if she were in Erin’s shoes. She would talk about what she would do, or what she would want, and very often, she would help me see what I should do for Erin and for the boys. And now, after all those conversations we had, I am up at this ungodly hour and I can somehow feel her terror.

My dad has cancer. That’s the second time I’ve said that sentence in a month. It does not roll off the tongue. It’s only going to cost him a kidney. There’s one tumor, malignant but non-invasive, and he is not a candidate for chemo. The option that will lead to the most success is to remove the tumor and everything associated with it, specifically the kidney. It’s a lifestyle change, not only for what it will mean for his bodily function for the rest of his life, but he’s more likely to develop bladder cancer now, so he will have to be screened regularly. We haul off to Houston to bid adieu to the kidney next week.

If there is anything more frustrating than a child’s grades, I can do without that flipping introduction. Landen has a D in English for the first nine weeks, and he’s the child adapting the best to all his forced life changes. Landen reminds me very much of myself. He lives his life by a simple creed: I don’t want to. And he doesn’t give a shit what I want or the teacher wants or his brother wants. If he doesn’t want to, he’s not going to…or being that he’s a minor and our house is not a democracy, he’s not going to easily. He doesn’t do things because other people want him to.

Case in point: we get these English tests back where he’s missed matching every vocabulary word to its definition. We studied this last night and this morning over breakfast. I know that YOU KNOW that a desert is not clothing that protects you. When you force him to read the definition first and pick out the word that matches it, he gets every one of them right. What’s the catch? It would seem that the boy does not want to read. He cannot be bothered to read on the test. If he doesn’t recognize the word upon first sight, he has no desire to sound that bitch out, which he’s perfectly capable of doing. We got through the phase of him putting his head down on his desk and refusing to do his work.

Homework is the bane of my existence. I doubt that fourth graders and second graders need to bring so much f*cking work home. I resent that the time I have with my children between my getting off work and them having an early bedtime must be spent standing over an ADHD kid whose medicine has long since worn off or having a stare-off with my oppositional child over whether he’s going to read what’s on the damn page or not. Impatience really shoots your togetherness to shit for the rest of the evening. This is not the kind of time I want us to have together. And it’s the SECOND and FOURTH grades! Eventually we won’t have to walk them through every item of it, although Corey Daniel Allbritton used to sit unsupervised at a table and goof off before closing his books and declaring his homework completed. But by the time they are old enough to do it themselves, won’t there be so much of it we won’t see them but for dinner?

One of my favorite movies is Parenthood, with Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen. They have a very anxious young son that they struggle with throughout that movie. They lighten it up with humor, but I need some writers to come punch up my material because I have yet to find something to giggle about having a high-anxiety child. Jake’s anxiety – created by a toxic combination of ADHD, unbelievable grief, being without both parents and the shuffles in living arrangements that has created for him this year – causes a lot of aggression and uncontrollable anger. Both boys see a wonderful psychologist and he has a great pediatrician who is really working with us to adjust his medicines to give him some relief of this. But how do you explain to a nine-year-old what I still struggle with as a thirty-year-old – that there’s only so much doctors and medicines can do to help you and eventually you have to make the choice to not feel like shit, that how you feel is not permanent and slowly, slowly, you can be happy again?

All this brings me around to accepting what my own therapist is trying to get me to understand. There is no calm. There will always be sick parents and bad grades and shitty job assignments (not mine!) and poor health and loss and sadness and trials that test our confidence, relationships, resolve and faith. The choice is whether to get bogged down in it or to put one foot in front of the other and march undeterred toward the resolution.

Enter the part where I am doing a simple routine thing – unloading the groceries from the car, driving home, putting the sheets on the bed, packing the lunches for tomorrow – and I am seized with panic that there is no one there. That hole in my heart why that cute drummer lives sends a shock wave through my whole body and I feel the magnitude of this life and this responsibility. It fills me with so much sadness I lose track of time. Who do I look at so that I don’t lose my balance and fall into the deep water with the man-eating reptiles circling beneath me? How can it be so painful to have so much love in my life?

Don’t look down. Look right here, at me, and keep moving. Everything that the boys have been through this year, my message to them has been that. I wish Eminem was appropriate for small children, because the song he came out with earlier this year has a chorus that goes “We'll walk this road together, through the storm / whatever weather, cold or warm / just let you know that, you're not alone.” Nothing feels sane or safe right now. But I’m here, and I’m walking this with you, and one day we’ll find normal. It won’t be the normal we thought it would be, but it will be a new normal, and we’ll be okay. When I look back on this year, arguably the worst year of any of our lives, but for the purposes of this post, mine specifically, I’m going to know that my anxious child and my oppositional child, my wee motherless sons, made a fighter and a mother and a head of household out of me. We wobble and we thrive and we wait.

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Homeownership - A list

1. Do you think it pisses my neighbors off that the garbage man came on Monday and my can is still sitting in my driveway? In my defense, I left Monday morning to go to Nola for work and just came back tonight, but they don't know that. There's a bitty who lives a few houses down and I'm sure if it's still there when she walks her homely dog tomorrow evening, she'll come knock on the door.

2.  Can someone remind me how to get dog poop off the soles of tennis shoes?

3.  I bought these potted purple mums to put on either side of my front door, KNOWING that I once killed a cactus because I didn't water it enough. Those assholes are trying to leave me. I water them and I pull them out in the partial sun and they very clearly don't want to live here. The mum were the culprits responsible for my original dimmer switch purchases to be left in the buggy at the Home Depot, so if they have to sit out there and decay, they're not leaving. They owe me. Bitches.

4. The previous owners of this house left no instruction manuals. We froze our asses off in here the first few days because I couldn't figure out how to get the computer thermostat thingy to give me a comfortable temperature. I was able to Google the user's manual for the model we have and now we're golden.

5.  We have a keypad by our backdoor that is supposed to control our driveway gate. OF COURSE no instructions were left. These were probably the kind of people who don't worry about change management when they leave a job. So again, I Googled the manual and followed all the directions and that sucker won't work. There's an 800-number on it, and I'll devote some time to Gates That Open (that's really their name) trying to get it to work tomorrow.

6.  I have no one to assign these tasks to. I have started exchanging chores with the boys when they're here. They now feed the animals, clean the dining room table and help unload the dishwashers. I can't WAIT until they can do laundry and mow. And water the plants.

7. I found my first bug in here today. Orkin, here we come.

8. I'm not happy with my bedroom. I am making an Ikea trip while in Houston for dad's surgery.

9. We're getting a brand new washer and dryer this week or next. Corey pushed me to retire my Budget Appliance very used laundry systems for energy-efficient appliances.

10.  My favorite thing to do every day is my before-bed ritual. Locks, alarms, lights, dishes in dishwasher, Murphy's final potty and kennel, boys final check when they're here, towels hung, doors closed, cushions straight, pillows fluffed, dog toys gathered and put away. It's my delight.

11. This is unrelated, but people want to put ads on this blog.

12.  I alternate which side of the bed I sleep on in this new king-size bed. I don't want one side of it to be flatter than the other when Corey comes home.

13.  I successfully ended the codepency and moved Murphy's kennel out of my bedroom. It was harder for me than for him, and I'm not ashamed of that.

14. I'm already seeing the need for an outdoor freezer.

15. The marketing of this as a two-car garage is a joke. Only one vehicle can make that big swing in and fit.

16. I checked the mail on Saturday. Then I left town and checked it again today. Each block has it's own set of mailboxes. When I went to check it today, my keys were still in it. WTF was I thinking? And how nice of my neighbors not to steal my shit!
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YAY! I got a picture of ostrich shadoobie!

My sister is always bitching at me about not doing more outdoor activities with the boys. I personally don't see where anything more than "go play outside" is necessary, but she does. And it's her major, so whatever. I decided early in the week that we needed an outing. We needed to go be fun and forget how much we have to dislike about life right now.

When I woke up this morning, I decided we were going to Global Wildlife, which is riding around over 900 acres of land looking at and feeding wild, non-carnivorous animals. It's about a 50 minute drive, so we Skyped dad, got dressed and left the house about 11. This is what the car ride looked like when we stopped in Hammond for lunch:

Once we got to Global Wildlife, in Folsom, La, I paid $86 of Corey's hard-earned combat pay on tickets, a bucket of feed, two disposable cameras and two soft drinks. We had about an hour to kill, so I picked a spot in the shade and told the boys to stay where I could see them.

I know they spent 45 minutes playing around this flower bed.

Look, he doesn't take great posed pictures. You need the element of surprise to get a good one. But he's devilishly good-looking in person.

THIS ONE, however, is always camera-ready.

Two-headed giraffe.

In the waiting-area, they have a big catfish pond and some enclosed areas of goats, donkeys and kangaroos. One of the kangaroos was accompanied by a younger one that was apparently still nursing, and Mama Kangaroo was lactating something serious. She drug the ground. One of the (male) kangaroos (and I know this because I had to have a conversation with the boys about WHAT THE HECK that was) was relaxing by the fence, and he actually let the boys pet him.

The best part was after about ten minutes, when I told them we needed to move on so other people could pet him, they stood up and started jumping and squealing in excitement that they had pet a kangaroo and this was the best day and then they hugged each other while continuing the jump. Then Jake said "I love you Landen!" and Landen said "I love you Jake!" and it made me not might the back sweat I felt roll down at that very moment.

So here's the deal with Global Wildlife: you ride in buggies pulled by tractors that go 2.5 miles an hour. Little deer that look like this follow you the entire time because they're smart like dogs and they know that those big trucks have the food, and they're coming for it. They aren't tall enough to hand-feed, so you just drop it on the ground. Also, these deer are native to Iraq and Iran, so we had "Daddy deer" following us around our entire 90-minute safari.

Now, wild animals being the indiscriminate beings they are, one of these little darlings happened to take a poop right while we were feeding him. This inspired a level of interest in animal excrement that was unexpected and uncontrollable. Each of them had a disposable camera, and I bet one-third of the photos on each camera will be of many varieties of animal shit. You can think I'm crazy all you want, but when Jake yelled "YAY! I got a picture of ostrich shadoobie!" in earnest delight, I couldn't bring myself to tell them to stop taking pictures of shit. I could see Corey sitting next to me and bursting into abrupt, face-squinching laughter, and I had to let them pursue this new interest.

This was the first feed of the "Daddy deer."

We identified one major issue at this first feed. They wanted to fill their cups up to the brim and then toss the entire cup out into the deer. In doing this, they would often throw the feed on their neighbors who were leaning out of the truck to feed the deer also. So they were instructed, for the first of what would be 100 times, to use their hands to toss the feed. Oh, and they called it "bait."

Feeding the camels was my favorite part. These giant bastards with lopsided humps and the biggest feet I've ever seen would toddle up to the wagon and eat out of your hand or your cup. When we ended the tour, the boys didn't want to wash their hands because they were proud of their "camel snot." They totally did wash them.

You have to be very careful when the zebras come eat. The zebras are apparently the only horse-type animal that has never been domesticated. If they like you, they bite you. If they hate you, they bite you even harded. They also stick their heads through the side flaps of the buggy and bite at your feet. So you're supposed to stay seated and throw the feed away from the wagon.

Thus identified our second issue on safari. We get too excited and we forget the rules of how to not get hurt. We ended up getting that worked out, though.

My mother loves cows. So here, mama, some cows for you:

That's a bison, not a buffalo.

They told us to feed the cows through our windows and not the doors because these cows with these giant horns would get themselves stuck in the doors and it takes hours to get them out. My children were not permitted to feed the cows because upon their first attempt, they stood right in the door, as if the instructions had not come over a speaker above their heads seven seconds before. It was funny to watch the cows eat because they would just walk up to the wagon, open their mouths and stick their tongues out to the side and wait for you to pour your entire cup of food in their mouths.

They were also covered in flies. Wassup with that?

We also saw two red stag with huge horns get in a fight. It was awesome.

All this talk about horns reminds me of a story my dad tells about how his dad used to order steak. "Lop off the horns, wipe its ass and run it out here."

You're allowed to feed the giraffes from your hand, but they did not get close enough. They've had two babies in the last month, and giraffes are apparently very protective. So they won't come near the wagons while the babies are young. Giraffe babies fall out of their mothers wombs about six feet to the ground and land on their heads. They also gestate for 400 days.

Speaking of gestation, I forget how long zebras gestate for BUT a mama will hold that baby up in there if she doesn't feel the conditions are right - not enough food or water, threats from other animals, weather....

They don't have elephants at Global Wildlife because elephants are afraid of things bigger than them, which the wagons are, so they would likely charge the wagons and hurt some people. They had a monkey once, but he caused the facility's first and only stampede, so he had to go live somewhere else. No animals that eat other animals are allowed, because there's too many Iraq deer for them to feed on.

They also have the fattest geese I've ever seen. They weren't brought in, they're squatters. The flew in for a winter and the eatin' was so good, they never left.

I can't wait to see what Jake and Landen's pictures look like. I'll put up a slideshow as soon as we get those back.

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Bitchfest - A List

A synopsis of the week ending October 8, 2010:

1.  The boys have strange spots on their uniform shirts, which are white, thank you STA. This is really just a small example of a bigger question - where the hell do little boys find all this schmutz to get all over their clothes?

2.  I can call Murphy until I'm hoarse and thoroughly embarrassed in my new neighborhood and he acts like he doesn't hear me, but Corey can whistle from any distance and he'll come.

3. Last night I was cooking dinner and trying to get Jake to finish his math homework. Then after dinner both boys had to study. I paid my sister $20 to clean my kitchen. And I fed her dinner. Don't you want to be my sister?

4.  I did three loads of laundry yesterday. I slept in the bed with my three loads of clean, unfolded laundry last night.

5. Landen's bed got broken, in a completely humiliating event whereup Landen and I were bouncing on it and it broke. So I had to disassemble Landen's broken bed, the pieces of which are still sitting in the hall waiting to be taken down to the trash. Because both bed needs to match, Jake's bed was also disassembled and the intact pieces stored in the attic. The new pieces of both beds will be delivered next Thursday. I can't wait to put that shit together, by myself.

6. Lily has decided, in her advanced age, to become an outside cat. She goes out when Murphy goes out, only she stays much longer. This scares the shit out of me because I don't know if she's safely in the house when I need to leave. And then what if she can't get back in?

7. I need a really tall ladder to put the light bulbs in the flourescent fixture in the carport. I also need another set of hands because I don't understand how those bastards plug into those holes up there.

8.  I haven't gotten to sit on my front porch and drink a glass of wine yet because my dog will scratch at the dining room window in a panic to come outside, which he can't because he runs away. A scratching, whining dog prevents any serenity and relaxation.

9.  I can't believe I've made it so far through this year without developing a substance abuse problem.

10. We had a lesson in our house about pinworms this week. I caught one of them not washing his hands after a pre-dinner shadoobie, and the proverbial shit hit the fan. I waited until everyone's food had digested before we had a full lesson on the perils of walking around with even a smidgen of poop on your finger, which ends with worms literally coming out of your butt. There were Google images involved. We don't take this lightly.

11. When you have major hyperactivity and oppositional behavior spewing out of your backseat and your little fried Friday-afternoon self wants to take them to a restaurant instead of going home and cooking, if there is a little voice that you can hear amidst the constant talking and indignation in the backseat warning you not to take these children in public, LISTEN TO IT. Seriously.

12. I made a poor decision of sunroom rug. It's on the path into the house from the door we all come through and it's not going to hold up very long. I'm going to have to make a financial commitment to a durable rug. My newfound cheapness does not feel happy about this.

13. And all this really started because I got all stupid over a really cute drummer in high school and couldn't shake it.

But on the bright side, Landen came home with the Scholastic Book Club order forms this week. I used to live for the book fairs and the book order forms in elementary school, and Cydney and I went all ridiculous over the book shopping. Landen picked sharks, Scoobie-Doo and monster plants. I picked some other shit for him, in addition to the books he wanted.

Jake is a werewolf this week. His reward for finishing his math homework last night was my acquiescence to his request to drink milk from a bowl. Whatever works. These are not your children.

I love, love, LOVE listening to Jake and Landen upstairs, giggling and playing in their big room in their own house. They asked if we could slumber party in my new big bed. I pretty sure that the days of them actually asking me to do things with them are numbered, so even though I really don't believe in children sleeping in their parents' beds, I can't say NO to a slumber party invitation. Or any invitation. I understand they are limited and we must carpe diem them.

Having children is not unlike waiting for the cute boy or the most popular girl to ask you to sit with them at lunch.

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"Mow Grass"

I got this email from my dad.

Hey:

Your Mom and I were talking about your mowing experience, and we both recalled when you were about two or three, you had a little plastic lawn mower that made noise when you pushed it. You called it your “mow grass” (You generally named things based on their function). When I would mow the yard, you would come out with your mow grass and help. You would make two or three passes, and then go sit in the Breaux’s swing and watch me mow.

When I got on the hill, I would run back and forth with the mower (I was much younger then) and you would kill yourself laughing. “Do it again”

It’s kind of funny how what goes around comes around. Now you have a real “mow grass” of your very own. The next thing you need is a sprinkler; then I can tell you the story about the “binkle binkle”.

Love,


Dad

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Murphy, where's your ball?

This is Murphy's favorite part about owning a house. It it his favorite activity. He wants to do this morning, noon, night, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs...It is best to do this before you want him to take a nap.

He is my eternal toddler.

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Dim This: A Reality Check

Two of my neighbors have a house full of dimmer switches. I appreciate the necessity of overhead lighting, but it can be kind of cold. My neighbors' house is full of ambiance and is very warm, despite all the overhead lighting. They said installing dimmer switches is "super easy."

Feeling bold and confident after my success as a landscaper, I Googled "how to install a dimmer switch" and came up with this animated tutorial. After reviewing it, I had no doubt that I could successfully install the apparati necessary to alter the lighting in my dining room and on my porch. I skipped off to my Home Depot (we prefer Home Depot to Lowe's for no reason whatsoever) and purchased the following:

• four 48-inch flourescent light bulbs (we have a fixture in our carport and my contractor located the switch for me)
• two big purple potted mum plants for either side of my front door
• three cans of spray paint
• two ivory dimmer switches
• one roll of painters tape
• one bag of dirt

At the check out, the man put the switches, the paint and the tape in a bag under the buggy because there was no room in the buggy. He specifically said "I am putting your bag under your cart" to which I responded that I was glad he told me that because I would certainly forget when I got to the car.

Once I got home, I got all my tools out and got the computer set up to tutor me while I stood in front of the switch so I could do as instructed. The bag was nowhere to be found. I left that motherf***er under the buggy at Home Depot. Sonofabitch.

I called. Nobody had turned it in. Not wanting to wait, I ran up the street to Chenevert's Ace Hardware and bought two more switches.

Starting with the dining room, I followed the step-by-step instructions and once the breaker was cut back on, the dining room dimmed as directed. I shouted jubilant to my assistant, Murphy, and we moved on to the porch light.

Upon removing the plate, I could tell before I touched anything that this was not wired like the animation. Nevermind that the porch light occupies the same spot as another switch that controls nothing. I could tell that the porch light switch was hooked into the pointless switch. I replaced the plate and turned the breaker back on. The ceiling fan in the living room did not resume its activity. The porch light did not turn on when instructed to do so.

The dimmer switch in the dining room still worked, though.

I should have accepted the sign from above when I did not make it home with the dimmer switches.

I called my life-saving contractor, who does not do electricity, but the guy who works with him does, and he came over the next morning. I'm aware that this scenario plays into the whole "women can't do what men can do" thing, but I KNOW that my husband would not have had more success with this dimming bidness than I did.

You see, at some point during the history of my 26-year-old house, people cut corners with the wiring. There are two switches in the living room, one of them being the one next to the porch light, that controlled the ceiling fan and light once upon a time, but when the ceiling fan was installed, they bypassed the switches. Those switches control nothing. The ceiling fan is controlled by the two cords dangling from it. For some reason the ground wire to the whole thing is hooked up to the dining room.

Once the ground wire was disconnected from the dimmer switch and left hanging to nothing inside the wall, all worked as it was supposed to - the dining room light dims. The ceiling fan in the living room turns. The light comes on. The porch light dims (after the contractor installed the dimmer switch for it). It only cost me $50 for the contractor and FOUR dimmer switches, and them shis are expensive.

I've had the boys this week. I bust ass to keep the kitchen clean (tonight I paid my sister $20 to do it) and keep us all in clean underwear. There are no home improvement projects planned for a while. October is pretty busy. I had thought before I bought this house that I was going to be a total DYI-er and my first big project was going to be painting my dark bedroom. I am bored halfway through the changing of a light switch, so if it's not something Corey is going to be interested in improving, someone will be brought in to do it. I'm all about managing expectations.

Someone's name is Randy Broussard. Our goodbyes are brief because when he leaves here, he knows he'll be called back here in no time.

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