This is week 76 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 525): Two Small Failures Was Plenty

We went to the house in the morning to install the bathroom mirror, but couldn’t figure it out. We moved on to installing the numbers, but I found that they were made to be stuck to a plaque instead of screwed into wood. We didn’t have a plaque. That was strike two. Before we hit strike three, I suggested that we give up on the house and go shopping for furniture. It seemed like a better use of time, and I was sensing imminent failure, so I thought I should get away before it happened.

Monday (Day 526): Numbers, Mirrors, And Toilet Paper Holders

I went to house in the morning to get a couple of things done. I started with installing a new set of numbers that we bought the night before. I found the center of the door, which didn’t end up being the center of the light above it, so I fudged a center for the numbers somewhere between the two. I measured to where I thought the numbers should go and then hung them with masking tape. I stood back several times tweaking their locations to make them look normal.

When I got them where I wanted, I drilled the pilot holes. I coated the screws with caulk and drove one screw into each of the numbers. When I got to the final screw, I drove it in and broke the number in half. I stood there staring at it for a second and then said “No way.” I had to laugh because I’m really starting to think that the house is resisting all of my attempts to tame it. I knew that if I ran out to the store for a new number right then, something else would inevitably go wrong and require another trip later. I abandoned half hung numbers and moved on to installing the toilet paper holder.

I noticed the screws that the screws included with the toilet paper holder were an inch and half long, which would have driven right through the cabinet that it was going to be attached to. I looked for more screws in a couple of the coffee cans full of screws that homeowners accumulate over time, looking for four matching half inch screws. It took me longer than I expected, but I eventually came up with a few good matches.

I took the screws into the bathroom and took out the toilet paper holder instructions. I’ve installed a toilet paper holder before, and the installation is far from complicated. All you need to know is how far apart the sides have to be. This one had instructions that went something like this: 1. Install one side of the toilet paper holder at appropriate height. 2. Install other side levelly.

Hey, instruction writing fuckheads: The only thing you had to tell me was put the mounts for each side 5 and 15/16 inches apart. That’s it. If I have to guess, your instructions are worthless. I knew that the only way I could goof would be to make the thing too thin so that it wouldn’t fit a roll of toilet paper. Being in an empty house, I didn’t have a roll to guestimate with. I jammed it the holder back in the box and decided I’d get another one that spent two minutes on their instructions.

I had failed twice on two minor projects, so I decided to try to repair the hole left when the last contractor replaced the electrical service. I was swimming in blown in insulation feeling around for rafters, but I couldn’t reach the hole from the inside. I dusted off and went to see if I could close the hole from the outside. The simplest thing I could do to keep squirrels from using the hole as a gateway to a winter hideaway was to fill the hole with expanding foam insulation. You’d think I’d have sworn off the stuff after someone filled my vent pipe with it, but even though I didn’t want to buy it, I really didn’t have another option. So that’s what I did.

As a note to anyone else who uses expanding foam insulation: use gloves. I was using my fingers on the stuff a lot. I know the warning says not to, but I assumed that the warning was just for ladies who want maintain their smooth Palmolive hands. It’s not. It took about a work week to get the stuff off of my hands, and it picks up all kinds of dirt, making your hands look grungy as hell.

Once the hole was as sealed as it was going to get, I went up to clean the attic. I nailed down a few boards to repair some of the holes that the last contractor had left for me to fall through. The electrical inspector came by and made two quick checks before passing us. Once he was gone, I headed out to get some new numbers. Of course the one that was already up needed a match from the home improvement megastore that was the furthest from the house.

I picked up the numbers and tried to find some oversized switch plates to cover the massive holes that the plasterer left around the outlets and switches in one of our rooms. Of course, they didn’t have what I needed. I decided that I’d buy the number I needed and then go to the next megastore. The number was $3.99, and I had four singles and a twenty. I scanned the item, put in the four singles, and waited for my penny. The machine waited for its nineteen cents. I forgot that I do not live in tax free, New Hampsire. I had to break a twenty dollar bill for that nineteen cents.

I left there and went to the next megastore looking for oversized switch plates. They had what I needed. As I was standing there, a guy walked in front of me and picked something up. He stopped and looked back at me. “Did you drop something?” he asked. What a fucking stupid question. I went through my pockets and pulled out some wadded twenties. I pocket my money like a seven year old, and it looked like it could’ve all been there.

“If you found a nicely folded twenty or something, it’s not mine. Enjoy.” It might have been, but I didn’t think so. I never would’ve seen it on the floor anyway, so I figured, “Fuck it. Someone should have a lucky day”. He walked away happy. I was feeling like Mr. Lucky. I went back to the house and started working on the attic again before a piano fell on me.

The contractor called to tell me that one of his guys would be by to help me install our bathroom mirror and sister up the beam that had to be cut to repair my insulation-filled vent stack. He asked if I could hang out and give him a hand. I would be happy to help because I was solidly clueless about how this mirror should go up.

The contractor’s guy showed up, and it was a 1.5 man job that required me to balance between trying to help and staying out of the way. Mostly, it was better for me to stay out of the way. I helped him install the mirror by watching.

#1GF! came home and I showed her the oversized switchplates to see what she thought of them. If she wasn’t keen on them, I’d plaster and paint the holes. Luckily, she was fine with them. We headed back to one of the Home Improvement Stores to return all the mirror stuff that we didn’t end up needing. It was late and I said that we didn’t have to go, but #1GF! wanted to help out, too. On the way home, we grabbed some subs, and I tried to figure out where the day went because I felt like I had been in motion all day without accomplishing anything.

Tuesday (Day 527): LOR Is a Day Late

Wrote LOR in the morning and then went out to wait for the plumbing inspector. We passed, but with the caveat that the water temp needed to be turned down. The inspector turned down the temp on the tank, but marked it on the permit anyway. He looked at our washer and dryer and made a comment that we obviously didn’t care how much we spent on the house. Even considering the guy didn’t know all the headaches and extra expenses we’ve had to get this job done, I still thought it was a pretty fucking flip thing to say. I just smiled because I wanted to pass. I guess that’s what it means to grow up. You can’t tell people to go fuck themselves as often as you’d like.

I went home to continue working on LOR. I was a day late, but it’s not a post that I think I can skip. I checked my stats for the first time in a week, and I had been running between 5-8,000 visitors a day, which really isn’t bad for me.

The contractor called and the basement door and attic window would be repaired today. I went over and let the guys in at around 3. I went home and published LOR. It was a day late, but I was working on the house for a week and didn’t have time to write it. I checked my mail for the first time in a week, and found an e-mail from a blond guy who was going to attempt a beard over the next couple of months. MaBeGroMo is coming, and we can use all the participants possible. I think a beard fills in after a couple of months no matter what the hair color, anyway, so I offered the guy what I could for encouragement.

I called the kitchen place to check on the status of our remaining drawer pulls and to see if they thought our faucet was operating normally. There was no status. The floor guy called, so I set up a meeting with him the following day to see what he thought of some of the floor issues.

Went back to the house to check on the window and door once #1GF! got home. It was all done. #1GF! dragged me out to dinner, but I won’t pretend that I was kicking and screaming. The contractor called in the middle of dinner, and because of his ringtone, the whole restaurant was subject to the theme from Good Times (any time you need a payment). Ringtones that bite you in the ass make life a little more fun.

After dinner, #1GF! and I went out to try to find some cheap rugs. The only thing we found out is that cheap rugs shed like mad, so when you’re trying to make a joke like you’re rolling around on one, you end up coated with hair. As we were walking through the store, #1GF! pointed out the “Valet De Douche”. I have no idea what it was, but I took a picture of it. Douche valet. Bwah ha.

Wednesday (Day 528): Dryer Vent Take One

I went through a week’s worth of stats in the morning, and then ran out to the bank to pick up a check for the plumber. After the bank, I went to the house to meet the floor guy to talk about a couple of issues. He fixed one of them with a floor guy magic marker. He’s really good at what he does, so I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing, but a magic marker just seemed wrong.

Three copies of the Sun came in the mail, and I was indeed in there. There was also a naked chick on page three. I had no idea Page three girls were naked. Call me American, but I do not expect to see boobies in the newspaper. That was a shock. Or a pleasant surprise.

The floor guys hung around to see my article, and on my first pass through, I couldn’t find it. On the second pass, I found it but it wasn’t nearly as big as the online piece. Even thought it was a blip on the page, it was still pretty cool. The floor guy was pretty surprised that the only reason that I was in the paper was for growing a beard. Honestly, I think it’s pretty surprising too.

We all left and I went home to check my e-mail. I got a call from the plumber to meet me at the house so that he could level the toilet tank and pick his check. He did both. He told me that our vent stack insulation story had become something to talk about around the plumbing supply house. Great. He also mentioned that he hoped we nailed the guy who did it.

When he left, I stayed to put in the new toilet paper holder. While I was sitting there reading the instructions, I heard someone talking and couldn’t figure out if someone was in the house or not. It turned out to be one of the contractor’s guys who showed up to trim out the front windows.

He put pine on it because he said that the plastic stuff would break because of the piss poor job the last contractor did. He didn’t want to put up the better stuff because I’d just rip it down when I fixed the rood in the next couple of years. It seemed a little like putting up the cheap stuff instead of the good stuff (and I will have to paint it), but the guy hasn’t steered me wrong so far.

I went home and floundered with writing. I had a bunch of half written posts, and no real desire to get them completed. I felt like I should be packing or doing something on the house, but I also wanted to get a post out. Instead, I just checked my e-mail over and over hoping something important would come in and need my immediate attention. Nothing did.

I got a message from one of my old college roommates, who we nicknamed B.A. BArakus. I was a real friggin’ douche to the guy (like most people back then), so I was surprised to hear from him. I’m always surprised to hear from people from the past.

In the evening, I got called back to the house to explain to the contractor where I wanted the dryer vent to go. I let him hear his ringtone, which is the theme from the show Good Times, because “Gooooood tiiimes” has become somewhat of a catch phrase on this job. I explained where I wanted the vent, and after a test cut in the wall, we found 3 wires blocking the path. Why wasn’t the vent already installed before the walls went up you ask? Have you been paying any attention? My first contractor had no idea what he was doing.

So we’re standing there looking at the hole in the wall, and my options were to cut through the newly installed shelving and go through the roof, or call the appliance guy who already told me that a bottom vent for this dryer was too complicated to install. In either case, we were going to have to cut through the floor and the outside wall to vent the thing. I don’t really know how I got nominated to cut through the outside wall with a hammer drill, but I said that I would. You know I’m going to measure fifteen times and then fuck it up. I always fuck up the first try and learn from my mistakes. If I had to cut two holes, the second would be perfect, but the first one is always a wreck.

#1GF! showed up at the house and I explained all the issues to her. Nothing is fucking easy on this job. The vent was the final thing that we needed done before the floors, and it had turned into a huge thing. We came to the decision that there was no good way to do it, but bottom venting the dryer would probably be the best solution. #1GF! and I went home and had some pasta, which for Italian blood, is like a carbo loaded pacifier.

Thursday (Day 529): Dryers, Granite, And Frustration

I woke up before the alarm because I couldn’t help trying to solve the dryer vent problem. I ate a couple of packets of instant oatmeal for breakfast that had been sitting in the pantry since 1996 because I hadn’t done any shopping all week. As I tried to get #1GF! out the door, she realized that I was giving her the bum’s rush because I really felt like I needed to go to the house to try to solve the dryer issue. She resisted, and I freaked out a little.

I just started in on a tirade about how fucking frustrated I was with the whole dryer issue. I was wondering in what universe it made sense for me to cut through the outside wall of the house. #1GF! asked me why I had agreed to do it, and I had no idea. The previous night, I spent a lot of time facing a crew of guys asking me what I wanted done. I would tell them, and we would hit an impasse. They would suggest something else that would require ripping down the shelving, and I would shoot that down. It was constantly trying to figure out a way to vent a fucking dryer. When I got asked if I could cut a hole in the wall, I sort of agreed to it just to keep the process moving without realizing that it didn’t make any sense for me to do it.

#1GF! asked if I wanted her to take the day off. I told her it was a waste of her time because I was just frustrated and tired of hitting issues with every little fucking thing that had to be done. I explained that everything would be fine, but I was just doing it all wrong.

In business, things change all the time. You don’t get frustrated about it. You simply adapt and find a new course of action. I couldn’t do that here. I think it’s because when I worked I knew that people could change things a hundred times and at the end of the day, I would take the same amount home with me to relax. In my current situation, there is no check, and there is no place to relax. As much as I want to, dealing with this shit is not as easy as it is dealing with business issues because I have more invested in the outcome.

When they change things at work, you go home and find some peace. When your life is about changing specs, there is no peace. There’s no balance. There’s no payoff. There are no vacations, there is no paycheck, and there is no reward. Plus, if you’re working, you get paid whether it’s a shitty day or a good one. If you do really well, maybe you get paid more. On my good days, I pay. On my shitty days, I pay more.

Imagine if you were at work and personal issues cropped up every two hours that required you to leave work at a moment’s notice. Even if you hated your job, you’d end up frustrated because you would never get anything done. That’s where I’m at. I can’t write because every minute I take to write feels like it has to take a back seat to the neverending house renovation. When I finally have a minute to sit down and write, half the time, I’m too irritated or distracted.

The contractor called in the middle of all this looking for a status on the dryer. I didn’t have one because I hadn’t called the appliance guy yet. I was too busy whining like a cranky baby. I got #1GF! out the door and then called the appliance place, who told me that the appliance salesman wouldn’t be around until 11:30. That fucked half a day. I looked up bottom vent kits for the dryer and then went to the house to see if I could find a solution. After an hour, the only solution was still to bottom vent the dryer, which required having the dyer taken apart.

Because I still had too much time before 11:30, I tried to plan out the phone, cable, and network wiring. I went home at 11, feeling like I was just wasting my time. At 11:30, I headed over to the appliance place and took Neutral Milk Hotel with me. For some reason, I find that their disc, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea hits a nerve and calms me down. I have no idea why.

I went to the appliance place at 11:45 and the salesman told me that the dryer couldn’t be bottom vented. The manual said that it could, and he once told me that it could be, so I got him to agree to send someone out to look at it. The soonest that he could get anyone out was the following Monday. I asked for sooner, but there was nothing that he could do. That pushed cutting the dryer vent and refinishing the floor off a minimum of four days. Days that we are quickly running out of.

I let the contractor and #1GF! status messages and drove home. Any frustration that was lost in the drive over was back full force. On the drive back, I started narrating what I was doing in my head in the third person. It seems crazier now than it did then…

“Random leaves darted over his windshield as he drove down the winding New England road. He turned his head to the left to make it easier to scratch a frustrating itch on the back of his head. He knew it was more of a mental itch than anything else, but even mental itches need scratching. He passed a grandfather and grandson, and noted how happy and relaxed the looked walking through the autumn leaves. It gave his mood a benchmark that made it seem even worse than it was. At least he wasn’t driving on the sidewalk and laughing maniacally. “Just breathe,” he thought. “Everything will work itself out.” If he only believed that he might not have mashed the accelerator…”

During all this, I kept rewinding “Two headed boy” whenever it hit the two minute mark, not allowing it to finish or help in any way. I was really aggravated by things that were way beyond my control, and instead of trying to calmly work through them, they were working through me.

As I drove, I realized that being a man has something to do with convincing your loved ones that everything will be fine, even when you think that it won’t. It’s about pushing everything down and being a shield. It’s about having conviction. That’s something that I seem to have lost somewhere along the way.

It could’ve been the loss of religion. Realizing that there is no god for you means that there is no one out there watching over you. You are on your own. Bad things can’t be brushed off as happening for a reason, because there is no reason. When everything is fucked up, you have to dig deep and deal with it. There is no master plan for you. There is no comfort for you. Things don’t happen for a reason. They happen, and they are not necessarily going your way. You are here, and you are alone. There is no one in your head but you.

I really thought about taking a long drive to sort of clear everything out, but realized that I couldn’t go anywhere because the granite people were scheduled to come in and fix our backsplash. I was trapped. I drove right by out apartment because I didn’t want to give that thought four walls to highlight it. I went to the beach and sat in my car writing all of this down as people walked by.

I went to the house and waited for about an hour before the granite folks showed up. It’s the story of my life these days. I wait for people. That’s what I do. When they finally arrived, I found out that they were waiting for me at the wrong address up the road. They got started and asked if I had any wood to mount the granite. I didn’t. I had to look through my attic to find some. Then they asked if I had a saw and a screw gun. I said that I didn’t, but I’d go to my apartment and grab one.

I brought back a portable saw and screw gun, and they weren’t powerful enough for what the guys needed. They ended up cutting the wood with a granite saw. I guess the guys thought that they were just coming in and the supporting wood would already be in place, but they took care of everything and it came out great.

They finished up around 4, and I went home to read some feeds and ended the night watching Dexter, a show about a serial killer. It seemed to help.

Friday (Day 530): Laughter Makes For A Good Day

I wrote a single post all day long and included a video as part of the post. I think it got a little out of hand, but I was really happy to be able to write all day.

While I was reading a few of my feeds, #1GF! called. She told me that a friend of hers had called all the way from Florida specifically to tell her how funny she thought I was, and she wasn’t talking about my fashion sense. That was sort of cool. It really was turning out to be a pretty good day.

As if it couldn’t get any better, #1GF! saved me the trouble by doing a full load of grocery shopping. When she had a minute, I asked her to look over the post that I had been writing all day because I wasn’t sure if it was funny or not. I was laughing at it, but usually that is the kiss of death for a post. If you laugh at your own jokes, the odds are that they’re only funny to you. She went through it and laughed harder than I could’ve expected, but at the wrong time.

It was harder than I had seen her laugh in a long time. Whether the post is actually funny or not, when she laughs hard enough to cry, whether it’s funny to anyone else is sort of inconsequential. She is a large part of my target audience, and if she’s laughing, I might not necessarily think I’m funny, but I think I’ve done my job.

Saturday (Day 531): Family Parties and Balloons

#1GF! made coffee and pasta salad while I sat around like a dumbass. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to get moving. We went to her family’s for a birthday party, and had a pretty good time. You know when there are balloons, people will feel compelled to keep them up in the air? Well, there was a room full of people of various ages, keeping a room full of balloons in the air. It went on far, far longer than you would’ve expected.

I got a couple of phone calls, and one pissed me off. It sort of went like “Hey, know what I’ve been sitting here laughing at? Your girlfriend introducing you to people and telling them that you have no job. And then that you can’t even afford a razor.” I just sat on the phone and wondered if the guy was working a bad angle for a joke or if he thought that I was some sort of asshole.

I blew off the whole conversation rather than explore it, but it has stuck in my mind for a few days. Leeway is something that I give in appreciation, so if you see me backing up, don’t take it as sign that you can back me up. That just going to lead you somewhere you don’t want to be.

#1GF! and I left there to go fix her mom’s internet issues, and then went out looking for new furniture. We zeroed in on both a couch and a mattress, but didn’t buy them because I don’t trust the house and I always feel like there are thousands of dollars of repairs lurking around every corner. After that, we went out to dinner and headed home.

What I Learned

• Chaotic business dealings are easier than personal dealings because you have less invested in the outcome.
• This house refuses to let me tame it.
• I’m getting very close to my boiling point.

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