The Golden Hammer (and the Lime-Green Power Tools)
...And, you know, a fair amount of other stuff too.
On Monday, 01 December, Athennia called out of work so that she could report our leaking shower head that had gone from a mere drip to a more steady trickle in recent weeks.
Gwen, the new woman who has apparently replaced Kayla in the leasing office, said that maintenance would probably not get out to look at it that day—and maybe not even any day this week; but then Leon showed up a couple hours later and had the leak fixed inside of half an hour... and gave us new shower knobs to boot!
Barely an inconvenience, since nobody over the age of like four tends to take many baths. But, now it's fixed regardless.
The Golden Hammer
While she was home on a weekday, Athennia got a rare opportunity to witness the sheer assholery that Riley and I have been putting up with, every second of every day for weeks now.
And that is the deity of chaos and noise that is Armani—our downstairs neighbors Keith and Rosie's grandson.
Plus, his development seems to have been massively stunted by a complete lack of structure and discipline.
So he even runs like a moron, digging his heels into the floor when he stomps around all day.
It turns out, that statement's pretty universal:
When all you have is a hardwood floor (and grandparents who either can't or won't give you anything remotely resembling structured play), ANY time looks like Stomping TimeTM!
So...
Athennia being Athennia—and having just a tad more tact than I tend to have when I'm angry—she went downstairs to knock on Rosie's door, to try to translate our raw thoughts...
Hey, neighbor! Is there ANY way that your little pukestain of a grandson could maybe pick up a hobby other than stomping nonstop from 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. every single day?
And also, have you considered what you're doing to his long-term development by not providing more structured and cerebral activities like puzzles, and coloring books, and meaningful interactions beyond blasting the ABCs through your movie-theater soundbar so that everyone in the building not only gets to hear—but also to FEEL—the bass?
Oh, and P.S. my daughter is upstairs trying to attend high school, with all the algebra and the hard science that comes with that; and my husband splits his time between writing and coding as well... so, it's basically intellectual pursuits all around, and not the kind of things that benefit from having Thor's golden hammer banging in their ears all day.
And honestly, shame on you—because, from what we can tell, you're just about the laziest and most inattentive grandmother we've ever seen. Kevin's mom would NEVER pull this shit with our nieces.
And, everyone's already going to hate this kid all through his schooling years because of his obnoxiously pompous name; but now they're going to resent him for being a complete dunce on top of that... which is a shame, since none of it is really any fault of his.
But, at any rate, get better soon. Please and thank you!
...into something a little more palatable.
But, Athennia said Rosie immediately got defensive and insisted that, "Well, Keith and I have to hear everything too..."
Our occasional footsteps on the dreadfully squeaky floor over which we have no control, because it was probably squeaking the moment they'd first constructed it out of toothpicks and popsicle sticks back in the 1960s?
You don't hear us blasting music through a soundbar on a regular basis—because Athennia, Riley, and I all listen to all our music through headphones except on the rare occasion that we have company over for a couple hours.
You don't hear us stomping around like a stampede of imbecilic buffalo—because it's a !@#$%^& apartment building, and who would dream of doing that (or allowing a child to do so) knowing full well how many other people would have to suffer as a result?
And finally? You don't hear all the things we voluntarily refrain from doing out of respect for the other tenants. I used to play bass guitar... but I haven't touched my bass in three years now, because I'm pretty confident that no one else in the building would appreciate me setting up his refrigerator-sized amplifier and jamming along to Metallica for any amount of time. And Riley asked for a drum set for Christmas—to which we said no—but perhaps we denied her too hastily!
But, lady, if you honestly believe that you hear "everything"—or anything even CLOSE to "everything"—you have no idea what's coming down the pipeline on the day that the Jekyll in me finally stops giving a shit about trying to keep the peace, and Hyde gets carte blanche on being the mirror that reflects your own horseshit back to you at the same 110% ignorance and classlessness you send it up through the floorboards to us.
...Because, lest we forget, if it's acceptable for you to blast your bass and let your kid stomp around the clock, then it must be acceptable for me to do the same.
At any rate, Athennia said that Rosie looked exasperated—as though she's at her wits' end with the kid as well. Apparently she's down there trying to work during the day as well, and all this kid wants to do is run and stomp around the clock.
But, Rosie mentioned that he's only here until Christmas—after which time I suppose he'll go back down to Miami where his mother was, last we heard.
I, for one, can't wait.
The Molerat starts counting the days until Christmas starting in late-April; but for the next three weeks, I'll be right there alongside her!
And, on that note, Athennia set up our advent calendar on the first day of the month—and the Molerat immediately snatched the contents of the first box before I could even get a picture of the whole thing intact!
Jump Scare!
On Tuesday the 2nd, Athennia called from work and inadvertently scared the crap out of me when she decided to lead with, "Well, I just got the two worst words in existence..."
We just had maintenance in our apartment yesterday and we're in the early stages of a feud with the neighbors; so perhaps the landlord called in a fit of rage: "Lease terminated!"
Your bosses seem to be unwittingly driving the company into the ground with their boneheaded decisions lately; so... maybe that's finally come to a head: "We're closing."
"Mandatory overtime."
It turned out that Athennia's manager had reinstated mandatory overtime until 19 December, and Athennia had merely decided to hyperbolize that news as though "mandatory" and "overtime" are the two worst words one could ever hear.
"Armani's home" has that beat by lightyears.
And, on that note, it was nonstop bullshit downstairs, all day long:
These apartments already come with appliances; but Rosie must have had ordered some illicit dishwasher or a washing machine or something, because this truck was parked outside for hours...
...and, during that entire time, Armani was being even more neglected than he normally is.
That evening, Athennia picked up Qdoba for dinner (and McDonald's for the Molerat) on her way home...
Later that evening, Athennia saw in the news that some Trenton lowlife twenty-something had decided to drive his BMW over the bridge at over 100 miles per hour, crash his car at Woolston and Stony Hill, leave his AR-15 inside the vehicle for the cops to find, and finally lay low by walking down Lincoln Highway like a zombie.
That's A-L-I-X—like Alex, but misspelled with an I.
So, his parents spell his first name wrong...
...Then give him a second first name for a last name...
...Then decide that Trenton is an appropriate place to raise a human being...
So, yeah; the dude basically never stood a chance at being normal. Mommy and Daddy should've gone with a more sensible name that connotes class and success—like "Armani," or "Tonka-Truck," or "Toodabrim."
Hell no!
You'd probably be standing in the basement of some bank in London right now, having just corrected the new clerk in the safe-deposit vault on the correct pronunciation of your name: It's "To-DAH-brum," not "TOO-da-brim."
Oh well.
Coulda, shoulda, woulda.
Now Mr. Alix Eugene is probably going to rot in prison for a few years.
I, for one, am crushed.
Cloudy with a Chance of Perjury
Speaking of lying... my aunts, my sister, and I received an email on the evening of Wednesday the 3rd with a link to a DocuSign form about the overall state of the property we inherited from my late Uncle Ralph.
For anyone who may have forgotten, this is two acres' worth of desert out in the middle of Arizona... and, fun fact: I've never visited—nor am I ever likely to visit—Arizona.
So, imagine my trepidation upon being presented with a battery of questions that all expected hard yes or no answers...
I'm gonna be completely honest: I hesitated for about half an hour before I even mustered up the courage to fill this thing out and submit it.
Pretty much everything I know about deserts comes from my Super Mario Bros. 2 days back in the early 1990s...
...but it's like the people at the title company got together and had a little powwow to purposely come up with a questionnaire full of crap I know nothing about.
Like, you guys could've just been straightforward and kept things on the up and up...
But, no. They decided to ask me bullshit questions, like "Is there a well?" and "Is the well private or shared?" and "How many energy efficient solar mobile homes are there?"
And, I live a little ways away, in Pennsylvania.
How the !@#$ should I know?!
Let's be real for a moment: You're buying a plot of land in the desert! I'd expect a lot of sand, almost as many rattlesnakes, a few cacti, a tumbleweed or two, a cloudless sky, and not much else.
What do you want from me?
The Sandwich of the Beast
The definitive highlight of Thursday the 4th was... that we splurged for Chick-fil-A for dinner.
Whoa.
I ordered a SpcyDlx+PJ—or perhaps, a spicy chicken deluxe sandwich with pepperjack cheese, if we lived in another universe where label-printer technology wasn't still stuck in 1983...
Plus our order number was basically 6-6-6, and my sandwich tasted like Satan's fiery butthole.
It was delicious.
Oh, and—speaking of Satan—here's a little something for dessert from later that night...
No Love for Leah Lardo?
My mom texted me on Friday to tell me how much Hannah was enjoying the Ninja Turtles Athennia and I gave the girls for their birthdays last month...
I should've had Mom bring Hannah over here for the day, because Armani was TERRIBLE all morning and afternoon, and it would've been nice to give him a taste of his own medicine by letting Hannah jump around and do sick judo moves off the back of our couch for a few hours straight.
That evening, Athennia and I finally watched Interstellar—which she's been bugging me to watch since we met four years ago.
I've been burned by so many crappy movies between my teens and now, that I'm leery of watching just about anything anymore; but Interstellar did turn out to be better than most :)
A Slow Weekend
Saturday the 6th we did Chinese food from the mall for dinner. Also, Ruth happened again...
Sunday the 7th, Athennia got her oil changed; and it seemed like Keith and Rosie were at least trying to keep the imp quiet downstairs.
Athennia had also been bugging me to give Stranger Things a chance; so, with Interstellar crossed off the list and nothing else lined up, we've started watching Stranger Things.
Monday afternoon, I got an email from the title company asking me to video-chat with a remote notary to put the final cherry on top of this Arizona-flavored ice cream sundae—which I'd swear I've already put 17 or 18 cherries on by now, going back to mid-July when they first started asking me to start signing things and jumping through these ridiculous hoops.
But, yeah. Sure. Let me just video chat with you all day.
And the dipshit downstairs can just keep stomping away.
It's not like I have anything I'm trying to get anything done.
Later in the afternoon, the Molerat and I crossed paths in the kitchen and ended up sitting and talking at the table for about an hour and a half—which turned out to be time far better spent than filling out forms about a plot of nothingness out in the desert.
Unfortunately, she's still reeling from a bunch of chaos that happened with Taylor and Ahlina—most of which goes back to before I was even in the picture, which all came to a boil shortly after I arrived.
She had some stuff she needed to talk through; and Athennia was working her "mandatory overtime"; so I was glad to be there to listen (and to opine here and there, when I thought that doing so might help).
Then when Athennia did finally get home later, we made beef stew together for dinner.
On Tuesday, I got to watch this DoorDasher park his car in the middle of our lot like a smacked ass and then amble around the entire five-acre complex as he looked for an apartment that was apparently even harder to find than the one I rented without a street address down in Grenada back in 2019...
Seriously, how are you gonna park your car in the middle of a lot where you don't even live, and then just completely walk away for the better part of 10 minutes?
How does one's brain even present this as a possible course of action?!
Orville and Wilbur
Wednesday the 10th, Joe was free; so he and I decided to fire up the new planer and take it for its inaugural flight.
Joe bought hearing protection to match the planer itself, while I went with Orioles colors to honor my dad...
Aaaaand we also wore dust masks, since we were planing boards from my parents' old deck. (I'd assume that pressure-treated lumber from the early 1990s is most likely chock full of arsenic.)
But I'm happy to say, our first "flight" was a success! We baked those boards to a delicious golden brown...
Athennia swung by and picked me up on her way home from work later, and we grabbed a pizza at Bambino's to take home for dinner.
Save a Tree
I guess she got jealous of all the woodworking I'm planning to get into in the coming months, and so she decided that she wants to work with wood as well—or at least with plastic that's masquerading as wood.
More specifically, she wanted to set up the Christmas tree this year—which we haven't done since we adopted Odin, because we're afraid he'll climb it... or eat it... or climb it and then eat it.
But, on Friday the 12th, Athennia and Riley helped set up the tree—while Odin supervised and ran point...
chmod u+x ~/christmas_tree to make it executable...
The Grinch must've heard about the Christmasness going on in here though, because she soon came lumbering up the stairs...
I have to admit, wearing green clothes with the word pink is an interesting strategy for trying to gaslight the rest of society into thinking they don't know their colors.
Maybe Joe and I should write a song in A-flat...
But call it C-sharp.
You won't even know what hit you!
Continuing a Legacy?
Friday evening, I noticed that my share of the money from the sale of the Arizona property had reached my bank account; and so, I bought a few more tools to round out my woodworking arsenal.
I've mentioned before that my Uncle Ralph and I had basically no relationship whatsoever after 1999 or so; thus, this money from his property was completely unexpected.
But he was my favorite uncle once upon a time; so I wanted to use this money in a way that would honor him. And, since he and his best friend built me and Kelly a swingset from scratch way back in 1992 (which seemed like a nigh-impossible feat to me at the time), I figured that using a portion of my newfound wealth to get into woodworking would be sort of poetic.
So, we're flashing forward a few days in this picture—and I'm still waiting for my router, my orbital sander, and my laser engraver to arrive—but I've acquired everything else Joe and I should need to start making some pretty kickass stuff...
I hope I do you proud :)
Ruthlessly Ruthful
That brings us to yesterday—when Athennia and I woke up to find this little development sitting in the parking lot...
Also, one of the Jamaicans likes to drive around in his Beamer like he's somebody special; but that image tends to be sharper when you're not keeping your windshield in place with duct tape...
But, yeah. These are our neighbors.
Classy, as always!
That afternoon, we went over to my parents' house for more beef stew—and I diverted a tool shipment there from Home Depot when I realized it would otherwise be coming to the apartment while we weren't home.
How long do you think these would've lasted on our porch here in L'il Trenton?
I feel like the Jamaicans would've been all over these, for sure.
These are mayans. You stick to urines.
Ryobi tools are like catnip to porch pirates. One can never be too careful!
I got lucky this time ;)