Remodeling Our Marriage

So Matt and I recently bought another investment house to rent/sell. All part of Matt's plan to not have us broke and surrounded by flip flops - as is my current plan. We bought this big foreclosure a few weeks ago and Matt has been working hard remodeling it. Keep in mind, this is in addition to his normal financial advisor job. It's funny because he'll put on a suit and talk earnestly about retirement and such and then come home, scarf down some food and change into work clothes and spend late hours into the night pulling carpet, painting, fixing things, laying tile, whatever.

We're currently in the tile portion of the house remodel and let me tell you something - there are fewer things less fun than laying tile.

A week or two ago we were talking to Matt's parents about working on the house and Matt's dad made a joke about it bonding the two of us together.

I looked around at our 4 kids, half of whom were screaming/fighting and dryly stated that if we weren't bonded after almost 14 years of marriage and 4 kids then there's really no hope for us.

Anyway, our marital bonding is well under way, with the carpet removal, painting, and much of the cleaning done. Along the way were such marriage-boosting moments, such as:

"Hey, did you have a seizure today?"
"Um, no. Why?"
"Oh, no reason. I was just looking at the bathroom you painted earlier..."

I have to say, I have been a surprisingly big help to Matt throughout this process. Sure, there have been a few mishaps. One evening, I was vacuuming up the baseboard before he painted and he gestured to me in a vague direction so I vacuumed the nearest baseboard. Sure, I wondered why the brush on the end of the shopvac hose was turning white but I've never been one to need answers to life's mysteries. Plus, the look on Matt's face after he realized I was vacuuming a baseboard that he just finished painting was pretty funny.

And then there was the time I scrubbed (SCRUBBED) years-old caked dirt and urine on a toilet, only to realize after 20 minutes of hard scrubbing that there was a plastic wrapper on the pumice stick I was using.

Yes indeed.

Let's face it, I'm not a perfect person. I have no idea how to wear lipstick without looking like a hooker and I judge people by their grammar and books by their covers all the time.

So the past week we've been tiling. Which has got to be the worst job so far, which is saying something coming from a person who broke a sweat scrubbing a toilet through the wrapper of a pumice stick.

The worst part is that when we tell people we have a night of laying tile planned, it's not a euphemism for something more fun. We're literally just laying tile.

Tiling requires, like, 200 steps. It's all very specific. For instance, a couple days ago I go with Matt to the house to wipe off the grout haze (a phrase I am, unfortunately, not making up). I squeeze out my sponge and am just about ready to start wiping it off when Matt tells me, "Ok, so you basically want to divide your sponge into quadrants. Use each quadrant only once, being careful not to get any water on the grout, and make sure you rinse the sponge after each quadrant is used. You really need to wring the sponge out so it's almost bone dry."

*At the start of this speech on technically sponging, my eyes begin to glaze over like ceramic tiles.*

After a little while, Matt checks in on me.

"Are you using the quadrants?"

"No. I actually found a very efficient method of sponging which entails dividing the sponge into parallelograms. I've also multiplied my sponge field by the square root of pi. I think you'll find the results geometrically pleasing..."

Our exercise in good marriage practices has been further hampered by our smart phones. Instead of insulting each other with good ol' fashioned talking, like in the days of yore, we're using our phones.

"Ok, Google Now, please inform my wife that our 9 year old is more skilled in tilework."

"Siri, kindly inform my husband to get a life."

"Ok, Google Now, send a text to my wife and tell her to go jump in the retention pond."

"Siri, please tell my husband exactly what he can do with that putty knife..."


We are, of course, expecting a book deal for our marriage ideas any day now.

Grief and Bikini Waxes

Recently, a terrible thing happened to a loved one. What makes it even harder is that she lives far away so I had nothing to give her but kind words and flowers. Some people are naturally thoughtful. They instinctively seem to know exactly what to say and do to make bad situations better.

Me? Not so much. I do realize that it's better to make a phone call, even if you have nothing helpful to say, than to say nothing at all. So I called this person and told her how sorry I was and how I wished I was there to help. It eventually turned into her telling me that I could help by telling her funny stories. Which is far easier for me than staring at a sympathy card, brows furrowed in thought, pen poised to write.

I told her that sometime I would tell her this particular story to cheer her up, one that Matt has reminded me time and time again not to put on my blog, no matter what. 

The keyword there is my blog.

Now if Matt wants to write a blog about - oh, I don't know - drumming or car maintenance or home remodeling or investment funds with random numbers for names, he's free to do so.

The way I see it, the joy people get from laughing at my stupidity is something that should be shared. I may not be able to write an emotional poem or craft you something personal with my hands, but I sure can tell you a story about something unbelievably dumb that I did.

Bikini Wax at Home: It Sounded Good in my Head

A couple years ago I was turning 30. It wasn't a big deal to me at all, in fact I quite looked forward to the start of a new decade. The problem with hitting a significant age, it sometimes clouds your judgement. We've all seen the effects of a mid-life crisis, whether it's dating someone who could realistically be your kid or buying a sports car that you have no business driving or injecting chemicals into your face that give the effect of continuously looking like you've been just stung by a bee.

As I was nearing by birthday, the thought popped into my head that I should do something super adulty and womanish. So I grabbed an at-home bikini wax kit.

I made a bad decision worse by deciding to do it actually on my birthday - a symbolic gesture to usher in my 30's.

The icing on the cake of this whole debacle is that Noah was with me. Matt had taken the older kids someone, possibly to give me some time at home or to run an errand. Time has erased many of the details. So I had Noah with me and, as it turns out, we share the same birthday so his first birthday was probably somewhat of a disappointment for him, what with how I was celebrating.

I went into the bathroom and began the process, so full of anticipation. I carefully heated up the wax and applied it ever so gently, while Noah quietly played with toys on the bathroom floor.

This is the part in the story where foreboding music would be playing if I were acting this out (and you can thank your lucky stars that I'm not).

As I was sitting on the edge of the tub, waiting for the timer to go off, I leaned down. Possibly to check my toenail polish. I'm not sure why I did it.

Then I tried to sit back up and realized I was stuck. The wax had melded to my stomach fat when I was folded over.

At the same time panic was beginning to set in, Noah begins to fuss. Then scream.

I start to sweat with stress, still hunched over in the bathtub, my lower tummy inexorably connected to my lady bits.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I shuffled to the kitchen. Naked. Hunched over. Past all the glass windows and doors in the front of our house.

I shuffled back to the bathroom and began stuffing Ritz crackers into Noah's mouth like a parrot. Once he was quiet, I began to think of a solution to my problem. I tried to scrub it off using the only things I had close by, which were the kids soap and shampoo. Which only succeeded in adding a thick layer of foam over the huge waxen blog. At this point, Noah is trying to climb up on my lap to be held so I fend him off by singing.

There I am, rubbing various liquids on myself while singing "Five Little Speckled Frogs."

I can't get this stuff off - darn you and your high quality waxing products, Sally Hansen!

So I had to shuffle to the computer to Google the solution. All the way on the other side of the house. Naked, hunched over, dripping soap, past all the glass.

The solution was baby oil - which was the only silver lining to trying an at-home wax kit with a one year old. I just happened to have some on hand.

Otherwise, I would've had to call Matt.

Me: "Hey, can you stop and get me some baby oil on your way home?"

Matt: "Baby oil? Why?"

Me: "Oh, no reason. Sometimes the heart just wants what it wants. Haha."

Matt: "Now I'm suspicious."

Me: "Fine! Ok! I tried to wax my bikini line and bent over in the bathtub and now my stomach is stuck to my privates and I've fed Noah like 200 crackers to keep him quiet and there's soap all over the floor and I'm afraid the wax has been on so long that my skin has burned off."

Matt: "I'm sorry, what?"


So that was my 30th birthday and Noah's 1st. It is a memorable birthday because it's not often one has adhesive material on one's private areas and hardly ever on one's birthday as well. This year I'll probably just paint my toenails in celebration of my birthday. Fully clothed, that is.