All Over The Place

Has no one noticed that I have been without a working dishwasher for several weeks now? Do I receive no kudos for not even complaining about this situation? Does anyone even realize how many dishes I have washed by hand in the past month?

I think I'm needing a little pat on the back right now.

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I'm not sure whether I've ever addressed this issue here before, but Larry tends to be a very thorough person. Whatever he does, he does to sort of an extreme (I mean, let's face it, he's got 6 kids). So when we bought this house 2 years ago and decided we needed to install ceiling fans in several rooms, the man went into hyperdrive. Whereas most people would have moseyed on down to the local Home Depot and come home with some fans that same day, Larry devoted a good 2 weeks of his life deciding which fans to buy and where to buy them.

He researched. He Googled. He compared and contrasted. There were spreadsheets, people, comparing various fans and their attributes. Larry was going to get the very best fans, by golly, so he wouldn't ever have to replace them and go through this process again.

He tends to go a little overboard, okay?

So! We installed the fans (ordered over the Internet) in 5 bedrooms, the dining room, the kitchen, and the family room. It took the electrician all day to get the job done. When he left, Larry proudly showed me what excellent fans he had purchased by flicking on the one in the master bedroom. "Look at this power!" he said. "These have the best motors!"

Folks, when that fan is on, it feels like a gale force wind. It is strong enough to alter local weather patterns. When we turn on all 4 bedroom fans upstairs, I wince. I expect the entire roof to lift off and go sailing away under their power.

And then there was the matter of the light fixtures. Larry chose them, because looking at all his spreadsheets made me whimper. The master bedroom and the kitchen fans ended up with this fixture where the chain for the light hangs down through a hole in the bottom of the globe. As the fan whirls, the chain tends to describe a small circle in the air, reminding me of that scene in The Graduate when Dustin Hoffman takes his date to a strip club, and the stripper stands over their table and twirls the tassels on her pasties (what? you don't remember that scene?).

I've told you all this just to explain why as I lie in bed - clutching the covers to keep them from blowing off and staring up at the chain twirling around and around - I am always trying to remember the name of the actress that played Anne Bancroft's daughter in The Graduate.

I guess sometimes a ceiling fan is not just a ceiling fan.

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Tonight was my last night at the bookstore. In theory, I start my new job next week. But I've received no formal notification of that. I feel as if I made the whole thing up - you know, that thing about flexible hours and work from home and do you mind making 25 dollars an hour and setting your own schedule? Next thing you know, I'll be telling you I'm going to be an astronaut, or perhaps a trapeze artist. Hey, if I'm going to make things up, I should go a little wild, right?