Parting is Such Sweet, Sweet Sorrow, 2010:

And I mean, that.  The sweetness of your departure cannot really be amply expressed.  It's the 365th day of you, 2010, you wretched beast of a year.  The very last day of what seemed to be an endless hit-parade of trials and tribulations.  The best I can say about you in retrospect was that you were unerringly efficient - with just 12 months to work with, you managed to pack a veritably bruising punch.

You took great delight in raising my hopes by delivering a price drop on the house I'd been pondering, and by the end of February, I signed on the dotted line.   And while all that was very exciting, you jerked the rug out from under me before I could get a stick of furniture moved in when Kudzu got sick just a week or two later.  That was a long and winding and emotional road to Tragedy Town.  Hours upon hours at the vet hospital.  Tests with bad results.  With no results.  With murky results.  The hope that he was getting better; the realization that he was not.  By the time Kudzu slipped away, I'd very nearly lost my mind.  His death left a terrible hole in my heart.

But I had to go on.  And you went on, too, taking another dear friend just weeks later.

There were less drastic measures in your arsenal - the 14-hour trip to San Diego and the $800 water bill from the running toilet at the house I didn't live in.  The occasion upon which I was mistaken for a pregnant co-worker.  A mistake that could arguably have been caused by my weight that yo-yoed between grief-stricken skinny and grievously chubbed.

Nashville nearly burned us to death.  And the burning question on everyone's mind was why, oh, why don't you live in your house yet?  At first, I was bothered, but as the year wore on, I became so accustomed to being asked that my hide toughened to the point that I had a pachydermal tolerance for it.  And I decided I didn't give a fig what anyone thought.  That's right.  I'm crazy - so what?  I do plan to finally move into the house, but that's to be filed under resolutions in a letter to a different year.

We started demolition on the kitchen in November - a process that seemed like it would be seamless enough.  But you, 2010, have managed to muck that up, too, and even as we speak, there's still work to do.

In addition to those things happening to me, you attacked the periphery - dear friends who lost brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers in sudden and terrible ways, leaving chasms in other hearts.  There were near misses, too, thwarted by surgical precision and medical miracles.  But at every turn, you were certain to point out to me that life is a desperately fragile thing.

You broke my heart, 2010.  In so many ways.  And so I find myself on New Year's Eve - chubby, single, cat-less and crazy.  You broke my heart.  But not my hope - I will ring in the New Year, a toast to your departure, filled with anticipation that your successor will bring better days.  Thanks for setting the bar so ridiculously low it's very nearly subterranean.

Good riddance,
Ash

The Kitchen Pit: An Update

For the record, we're 50 days into the yet to be finished project.  And while we've made some progress - a floor! a refrigerator! an island! - it wasn't smooth sailing.

The Domino Effect - Everything depends on everything else.  Which is why the cabinets had to be installed before they could measure for the countertops and the countertops had to be put in before the sink.  And it's also why when the cabinet above the microwave failed to arrive with the rest of the cabinetry, the microwave couldn't be installed as scheduled and sat in the kitchen floor for a week. 

The Focus Effect - Not one of the installers is a multitasker.  That's why we've had different workmen to install the cabinets, countertops, appliances, floor and backsplash.  And why the kitchen sink was installed but not able to produce water until someone else came to make the magic happen.

The Second Guessing Effect - With a little extra time and anxiety at work, you second guess everything.  Which is why Mom picked three different floors and two different backsplashes.

The Murphy's Law Effect - Whatever can go wrong will.  Which is how the plumber got called to fix the water spewing from the old dishwasher connection.  And why the cabinet above the fridge has no doors because the ones they sent were the wrong size.  And why the stove isn't flush against the wall because it requires some mysterious plug that - you guessed it - the installer doesn't do.

The Nervous Breakdown Effect - This occurs during the later stages of the process when your bedroom smells like coffee all the time and you've eaten six weeks' worth of meals on a tiny coffee table and you sawed your way through broiled porkchops weakly seasoned in barbecue sauce because you could find neither a pan nor appropriate seasoning and when you have to make ONE MORE decision about whether to move the island two inches toward the refrigerator or one inch toward the table and then you discover that the brand new sink is leaking in almost precisely the same way that started this whole thing.  And that's when you start drinking.

So when will we be done?  I'm guessing two weeks.

Why BuyLife is a Dead End

Ryan Seacrest, Alicia Keys and Kim Kardashian are dead.  And I'm not sad - I'm a bit disgusted.  I wrote a guest post for the Jackson Spalding Thinkstand on why this week's BuyLife.org promotion for World AIDS Day is a grave misstep.  Please enjoy this little bit of shameless self-promotion - unlike the celebrities mentioned, I won't make you pay $10 for it.

Terra Cotta's Gotta Go from Walnut Grove

When I was looking at houses, I passed over the one I bought a couple dozen times because I hated the shutters.  I know what that anonymous eponymous they say about getting hung up on paint colors that can be changed.  But this paint color gave the house such a repugnant drab watery look that I couldn't get over it.  These terra cotta shutters destroyed the whole house for me - so much so that it took a little convincing from my real estate agent to include it on the caravan of listings we were scheduled to see in the neighborhood.  Once I saw the inside and - let's face it - the towering trees in the backyard, I was sold.  Suddenly the odious repulsive shutters seemed like a small obstacle standing between me and home sweet home.  (We need not return to the list of much larger obstacles that have presented themselves since then.)  But back to the vile shutters that looked like this:

There's something so...old about those boring brick-colored shutters that do absolutely nothing for the brick color of the house.  It all melted together in one awful conglomeration of blah.  And I may be many things, but blah is not one of them.  As such, I decided to leave Terra Cotta Town for the olive-toned territory of Walnut Grove.  Behold the great greenness:

It's like a new house.  Like I left behind moth balls and knitting nights for swinging 21st century living.  Or something like that.  Also, I clearly need to spend some time admiring my new shutters while raking. *Ahem*  And while I was at it, I had the deck stained to better match the house, too.

Perhaps part of the moving problem had to do with the atrocious exterior - the dated ill-chosen shutters that made me feel like I might be learning macrame and hanging velvet paint-by-numbers inside while wearing orthopedic shoes and sporting shapeless day dresses.  But now that we're in Walnut Grove, I think that I have found a befitting haven for my stilettos, pumps and flats that is retro chic instead of retro shack.

Adventure Monkey: Tallulah Gorge

Appetite for Destruction

In the 27 years we have lived in this house, a lot of things about it have changed.  The county renumbered our street, taking our original 255 house number.  The carpet in the downstairs changed twice before getting the hardwood treatment.  Wallpaper stuck up and then stripped down off walls now layered with paints of many colors.  But aside from the avocado green and Gulden's mustard yellow fixtures in the bathrooms, the kitchen is probably the most constant.

The cabinet doors, once a depressingly dark wood, received a whitewash some time in the 90s.  But other than that, the white freckled formica counters and the pantry with the squeaky door and even the totally retro shelf paper have stood the test of time.  That is until a leaky sink led to rotted cabinets and the need for some serious kitchen aid.

Yesterday morning, I let a guy in who demolished those 30-year-old cabinets, stripped out the pantry with its squeaky door and pulverized those plastic-topped counters.  And now, we find ourselves inhabiting a house in which the following are true:

- The stove is in the garage.  The kitchen table is in my bedroom.
- When Dad put the utensil drawer under the table, he said to Mom, "Be careful when you pull out that drawer that you don't tear the carpet."
- I wash dishes in the bathroom.  I put them away in my bedroom.  My sister's bedroom.  And the dining room floor.
- The microwave is in my parents' room.  So is the coffeemaker.
- The poor cats are so distressed.  Last night I found one of them sitting in the bald patch left behind by the pantry.  He's since taken to sleeping in a cardboard box at the foot of my parents' bed.
- Half the contents of our refrigerator are at my house.  The essentials - creamer, for example - are in the tiny microfridge I had in college that now resides in our bonus room upstairs.
- Likewise, my mother carefully located the box of Splenda like she was transporting the Ark of the Covenant.
- You may be asked, "Do you know where the salt is?"  And the answer may be, "In Ashley's room."
- Yesterday morning, I was putting on makeup during the demolition, as the various lights in the room blinked on and off while they worked with the circuit box.
- Paper plates are dispensable.  And therefore, indispensable.
- We will not be hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year.

Just as I was about to post this, I knocked over my water glass.  I headed toward the kitchen to get a towel.  And of course, all I found was rubble.  And so it goes.

Introducing the New Guy in My Life

A few weeks ago, I was on a whirlwind tour of five states in five weeks.  I went from D.C. to the hills of northwest Georgia.  Then west to Texas, north to Indiana and east to North Carolina.  Along the way, I acquired a new companion.  A lone Barrel of Monkeys monkey got mixed up at a bar with a bunch of Jenga pieces.  Who could leave such a poor bereft creature behind?  Clearly, he'd broken free from the confines of his barrel, consorted with a bunch of wooden blocks of questionable stability and made his way into my life.  And so following that night at a Dallas pub (in which the rickety Jenga blocks failed me several times), Adventure Monkey joined my travels.

As noted before, I am not a particularly fine traveler.  Adventurer in heart but trapped in a definitively homebody, I don't even have my passport.  But perhaps, with the help of a swinging monkey man, I can find my way to a few more adventures in life. 

Adventure Monkey is Born

Adventure Monkey takes on the Texas State Fair

Adventure Monkey in Kokomo, Indiana, City of Firsts

Adventure Monkey explores the cornfields of the Hoosier State

Rocking goat at the Valle Crucis Fair

With a little help from Dad, Adventure Monkey takes in the Valle Crucis view

Mama Harp joins in the Adventure Monkey game.