During my salad days, the post collegiate ones, I lived in a shit-hole of an apartment. The flooring was cracked tile, I had raw sewage back up into my tub a few times before the landlord updated the pipes, all the neighborhood cats crapped in driveway, and there was a crack under the front door large enough to admit small mammals. At the time, it was awesome because it provided the opportunity to live outside my mother’s home roommate free.

The job that afforded my said shit-hole, was like many jobs when you are trying to establish yourself in a profession. Low paying. Life isn’t fair and most people can expect to pay minimal dues before reaching their goals.

To make things work, I lived frugally. I was fortunate not to have a car payment, and rarely ate out. I didn’t have internet, a cell phone, or cable. I’m not trying to poor mouth, or tell one of those awesome When I was a kid I had to walk five miles backwards in the snow barefoot just to get to school stories, because, frankly I’m not that funny. It’s more accurate to describe it as a When I moved into my apartment I was so cheap… stories, because I managed to save money living there.

Most of my furniture was used, recycled or in one case swiped off a loading dock. My mother graciously gave me an old TV. This worked okay for a year or two with a coat hanger for an antenna, but eventually it died. By this time, I was involved with the Better Half and I knew if he found out the TV was dead, he would go all guy on me and start checking online for reviews and taking me to electronic stores to find a replacement. Not that it wouldn’t have been a nice gesture, but the thing is, we weren’t spending a hell of a lot of time watching TV together. It would have been the IDEA of not having one rather than the necessity. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the dead TV. With a kick ass stereo, a stack of paperbacks, and a drawing table, I didn’t need one.

So I left the dead TV on the shipping crate that served as my entertainment center for eighteen more months until the Better Half and I chose to co-habit. It wasn’t until boob tube didn’t make the move that he found out out it hadn’t worked in over a year.

It’s time to revisit my salad days. Life ebbs and flows. It is time again to bring a TV devotion to a halt. Lately it has been serving as something of a surrogate to real relationships with real people. Blame it on the weather. Blame it on eating alone. Blame it on peer pressure. It doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s evidence of a lack of restraint on my part. Besides if have to look for something to watch, I should probably be spending my time on other things.

I get in a hurry. Not exactly impatient, but a self-inflected rushing. I assume since I dislike waiting idly, people waiting in line behind me feel the same way. So, I hurry racing against a fictitious stopwatch, for what or against what, I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter, because I’m behind schedule, whose schedule, I can’t say.

During one of these self-induced scrambles I scalded my wrist with hot coffee. I was waiting at the counter of one of those carefully branded coffee boutiques, and rattled, because it took longer to place the order. In my mind the great scone debate of 2009 lasted five minutes, not thirty seconds, so in my head I was one of THOSE high maintenance customers. When my order was up, two tall coffees and supposedly a cinnamon chip scone, I did as I always do. I balanced one cup of coffee on the lid of the other to pick up both cups with my left hand, while using my right hand to carry the pastry bag.

So this time the cups weren’t balanced as well, and the top cup fell over as I stepped away from the counter. It splashed my shirt, maybe covered is a better description, and scalded my right wrist before the cup fell to the floor. Groan.

It’s unlikely I would have scalded myself, had I not created this artificial pressure to get out of the way. Ironically, in an effort to dispel attention away from me, I attracted more.

When we returned home, I perused the interwebs for treatment options and quickly discovered I box of bandaids does not constitute a first aid kit. In typical DIY fashion, I confiscated one of the Better Half’s cotton t-shirts, and used it for bandages, sterilizing it in the microwave first. Instead of the painter’s tape, I opted for electrical to hold the cotton strips in place. It looks like Bob the Builder was hired to do the costume design for Xena, Warrior Princess. Cheap, tacky, and strangely effective.

The Better Half is concerned about scarring. I’m concerned about ability to go on as if nothing ever happened. Both of us might be ready to concede the necessity of a decent first-aid kit.

Do you remember being the age when you showed those first signs of self-awareness that other families do things differently? You are sitting at the table at your bffs house and, oh crap they’re blessing the food, or maybe, oh crap, you can eat without blessing it, or the more sublime, you mean you can prepare beef without over-salting it and roasting it to the consistency of tire rubber?

When Better Half and I got engaged, we were cranberry sauce novices. Our combined experience was limited to the mysterious gelled substance that made a disgusting slurping noise as it was disturbed from the the vacuum that sealed it in the can. If it wasn’t cylinder shaped and ribbed, it wasn’t a cranberry sauce, it was some sort of fancy impostor.

On impulse, we purchased a bag of ripe cranberries, We assuming people purchased them for snacking on because they were next to the grapes in the produce department, and the dried cranberries tasted pretty good, and heck they had fiber, you can’t really go wrong with fiber.

We popped a few cranberries into our mouths, which immediately caused my face to contort like one of those scary denture-less old ladies you see in the hospital wearing the backless gown wandering down the hallway trying to remember where she parked her Buik, then I spit them into the sink and threatened to lick the shag carpet to eliminate the memory of the unfortunate assault on my taste buds. We decided those berries might not be ripe enough, and chose darker berries for taste test number two, and dude what the hell, those were bitter too. We threw away the bag.

Fast forward to the following year, and my aunt invites us to join her for Thanksgiving dinner. Like a gracious guest who is relieved not be saddled with the burden of cooking for eight, I ask if there is anything we can bring?

Yup, you guessed it. A bag of fresh cranberries. I asked if she was sure, and the Better Half went into a lengthy diatribe about the bitter truth about cranberries. Unconvinced, she insists. Fresh. Cranberries. In. A. Bag.

Fine.

So, we show up with fresh cranberries. In a bag. My aunt tells us, oh the cranberry sauce is easy. Just follow the instructions on the bag. Better Half gives me the, you can’t turn shit into shinola eye-roll, and I think to myself, THERE WERE INSTRUCTIONS? ON THE BAG? FOR REALS? I am such an idiot.

It was easy. Sugar repairs a host of ills when it comes to cranberries. But they aren’t really ill, just misunderstood. It’s easier to make cranberry sauce from scratch than it is to coax that gelatinous glob out of the can….although homemade is ridge-free and I find that suspect.

When I was nine, I used to feed it to the family dog to watch her do this.

******

In high school there was a female student, the guys referred to as Peanut Butter, supposedly because her legs were easy to spread. Classy bunch, teenagers. In retrospect, I wonder if the rumor was even true, since no one tells the truth about sexual conquests at that age.

******
The small town I grew up in declared itself to be the Peanut Capital. If you look the web, there are plenty small communities that think so highly of themselves in Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and even Australia.

******

I knew a guy who ate peanut butter and tuna fish sandwiches. The salty sweet combination makes palate sense, but I’ve never liked tuna in a can. The smell is too strong. Fresh seared tuna? Save me a seat.

*****

Peanut Butter is useful for removing chewing gum from hair.

*****

It’s the only food item in the pantry I don’t offer guests. It isn’t based on a deep seated spiritual belief that peanut butter is the holiest foods from childhood. I never saw the image of the Virgin Mary in the shadowy scoops of creamy goodness. Mostly, it’s because I eat it straight out of the jar for breakfast on those mornings I don’t feel motivated enough to scramble eggs or cook oatmeal. I used to chase it with milk gulped directly from the carton….Yeah cliché. Not any more, though. So feel free to ask for a glass of milk. It’s safe. No cooties.

Everything has a beginning: love, hate, disaster, joy, inconvenience even madness. Beginnings serve as landmarks reminding us of the precise moment when everything turned to crap. Frequently the catalyst which sets things in motion seems inconsequential at the time. Yet there is still a burning desire to trace the exact moment things went amiss, as if knowing could effectively turn back the hands of time.

And so it began with a sliver of peeling paint on the deck rail, and a phone call. Two separate impetuses leading in opposite directions. The phone call I prefer not to consider, but the peeling paint provided a way to keep my hands busy on the phone. Phone calls require an enormous amount of pacing on my part, not that each calls is worthy of such abstract busyness, but I find it almost impossible to stand still while listening on the phone. Perhaps it is the embedded notion of feeling the constant need to multi-task or maybe just a non-threatening version of attention deficit disorder. Either way, I stood at the rail lifting paint with my fingernail until a turned a small imperfection into a gaping problem as I exfoliated the deck rail of sheets of paint exposing the raw wood.

I created the problem so it seemed only logical I correct it. I set about the business of scraping and sanding with the intent of priming and repainting. It would be my side project. A maintenance project undeserving of adult supervision, because damn it, I can paint, sand, and clean up after myself.

All was fine until the Better Half (BH) intervened and offered to help. I offered a paint scraper and resumed working. After ten minutes or so, he suggested replacing the deck flooring (a.k.a. my current assignment is too tedious and there is no credit to be gleaned from simple maintenance, I want a more glamourous, or perhaps supervisory position). I never solicited his help in this. I took responsibility for defacing my own property. I agreed and told him to do the prep and planning if he could finish in a week or less. It’s a small deck and the flooring has water damage, even if it isn’t dangerous or rotting. I continued scraping and sanding as he ran the numbers. He wants to replace the rail as well, but I refuse. The rail is usable, not worthy of a landfill, and I have already spent hours on sanding and scraping.

The next morning, we rented a truck and purchased supplies. This took four hours. Next, BH started some mild mannered demolition pulling up deck boards, as I continued sanding and scraping. During demo, BH discovers we have water damage to the siding, and feels we need professional help. I concur.

Again, he offers to help scrape paint, while we wait for the professionals. This time, he works maybe twenty minutes, before deciding this is still too tedious and thankless, and suggests we take the railing apart for better scraping. Fine, I say, label the parts so we can put it back together after painting. Once again labeling is too tedious, but I refuse to budge on this. Shit always happens, and we usually finish projects like this weeks behind schedule. He relents but walks away before demo is complete leaving me to pry out rusty nails, and continue scraping.

He lines up a repair guy, and I spend 8 hours painting primer on the rail parts. Gotta love those four sided spindles. Two guys show up for repairs and BH spends most of the day supervising and talking with them. I’m a little put out by this. Not the talking or the chest puffing, but the fact they seem to think as the token female my job drop whatever I’m doing to listen. If they don’t want to work fine, but preventing me from getting work done is a deal breaker. This is BH’s domain. I walk away to paint the deck rails. Throughout the day, I complete 4 loads of laundry, cook breakfast, straighten up, clean paintbrushes, rip a few boards, clean the pond filter, and cook dinner. The BH, well he supervises, and he watches me paint.

That night at midnight, a thunderstorm moves and dumps almost an inch of rain. Nothing is protected except for a few pieces of siding. I wake up to the sound of thunder, and walk through the house muttering golfing words. There is an eave, but the siding is removed, exposing the house innards to moisture. The next morning all is okay, but there is more damage exposed that must be repaired. Groan. The men work until the lunch, when the rain returns.

Today the rain continues, the work is incomplete, and it is too rainy for me to finish painting the rail. I guess I’ll read a book instead. At least there is no structural damage, and the water damage will be repaired and the siding replaced, though I will have to paint the siding as well once repairs are complete. Thankfully this isn’t one of those second mortgage repair jobs, it simply an inconvenient one, but aren’t they all. Who knew lifting the corner of some loose paint could stimulate the economy so effectively?