Monthly Archives: January 2011

Trixie.

Dear Trixie,

You are my new BFF. Seriously.

I didn’t even know I wanted you or needed you until Miss Carol brought you home for me.

When I unwrapped you at Christmastime I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure what I’d do with you. I mean, I already had a laptop and an ipod, who knew I needed an ipad?

You gotta realize, Mr. Laptop and Mr. ipod have been with me for sooooo long and I was sooooo comfortable with them that I just wasn’t sure what sort of changes you might be bringing into my life.

So I charged you up and left you on my desk, a little wary of what you represented. When I finally got the nerve up to take you out for a little test drive I discovered that you were pouty and, like all my other BFF’s, resistant to my advances. I tried and I tried to get you to synch up with me and my life and my e-mail but you would not.

You wanted more. You needed the attention you so richly deserved.

So I bought the necessary Mac OSX software upgrade for you and Mr. Laptop and I worked long and hard with Apple tech services and the dreaded COX network people to placate you and make you happy with me and to make you MINE.

And at long last, after days and weeks of anguish and softly whispered entreaties of love and loyalty, you’ve finally acquiesced, giving of yourself freely.

I know its probably just the lust of newness but, Trixie?, I have to tell you, I can’t seem to keep my hands off of your slender, racy, glassy little body. I find myself inventing reasons to touch you- googling, e-mailing, facebooking- any excuse at all to turn you on and be with you.

Tomorrow I’m gonna take you to work with me in MR.GREENE. Won’t that be fun?

You bring a happiness to my heart that I hadn’t thought possible.

I love you Trixie.

Sincerely,

oceandoggy.

And she starts to happen.

Have you ever met someone who just totally enjoys his life? Whose day to day ever enviable enjoyment is so completely and overwhelmingly infectious that you just know his crew would probably cheerfully kill for him?

Meet Phil of Phil Pfeufer Construction.

Phil’s the guy whose gonna turn my amateurishly first-grader looking grid-paper penciled floor plan into something that might just maybe resemble a house.

And he does it all with such an easy laid-back-we’ll-get-it-done-whatever-it-takes confidence that makes building a house fun.

I mean check this out. We started the morning with our home looking like this-

Phil and I went over a coupla things and then I had to go to work. Phil was hoping to get everything laid out and maybe get the girders up.

I was all like, girders is good.

When I got back I was flippin’ amazed. Not only did they have the girders up, they had most of the floor joists in and were banding.

But what was really cool was watching Phil and Nick (his son) and Sideshow and Johnny and Crockett work. All of ’em have been together for so long that they all know what everyone else is doing, their choreographed moves syncopated by blaring music and carefully orchestrated by Phil cheerfully yelling.

And ya know what? Honestly? I needed this. After all of the permitting process and then the first contractor guy spreading fill and then disappearing and then the pile-driver guy bitching and moaning about having to drive 8×8’s (but doing a HELLUVA GREAT job) I was, quite frankly, not into it anymore.

I was, like, why’d I start this?

But.

But, then there’re days like today.

Thanks Phil, I’d have your children dude but we’re both too old.

Tennis, anyone?

Miss Carol LOVES this stuff.

All of the major Opens have to be greedily watched every hour we’re home and they’re televised real-time ’cause Miss Carol’s a purist and absolutely will not taint her tennis pleasure by watching a replay.

I don’t much care one way or another. It’s easy on my beer soaked brain, watching the little ball bounce back and forth and listening to the truck-driver-shaped women grunt with effort.

What’s not to like?

Only this- tonight one of the truck-driver-women playing, a chick with lots of consonants and very few vowels in her name- how DO you pronounce those things anyway?- was having a severe problem with the folks that pay to watch her play.

Seems a spectator had a medical emergency causing some crowd noise and it was severely affecting Miss Kizzvntwerrtismqqm’s play. She was actually crying with the effort to marshall on against all of the interruptions to her preciously crafted concentration.

Um.

Tough shit bitch? (Did I just say that or just think it?)

Last time I checked, you’re a professional- you do this for a living, and I’m guessing you’ve been doing it most, if not all, of your cushy little tennis playing pampered life.

Man up.

You can do it- even with the cute little truck driver skirt on.

Check it.

Sweet, sweet, progress.

After months and months of permit process and weeks and weeks of contractor confusion we’re finally seeing a hint of a barely imagined beginning to something remotely resembling the start of what may, one day, if the stars all align and the gods smile benignly, actually become a house.

True to their word, the new contractor began driving pilings on Thursday. By Friday, when I brought them lunch, I was excited because they’d driven about a third of the pilings.

But all is not rivers of frothy malted beverage just yet. When I timidly asked the new piling contractor when he thought he’d be done so I can schedule material delivery and start date for the framing contractor, he snarled- this is the LAST Carolina house I’m doing.

uh oh. THAT doesn’t sound like warm puppie happiness.

Turns out pile driving is normally a fairly simple and sloppy way to make lots of money. At $100 a piling he can usually drive telephone pole pilings in fairly close to where they’re supposed to be leaving the framing contractor to compensate for the sloppiness by cantilevering the house girders out from the piling line.

Not so in Carolina. In Carolina the pilings are 8×8’s that have to be precisely installed plum, level, and true, because they ARE the outside corners of the house. It’s a lot more work and a LOT more attention to detail.

I’m installing ONE piling an HOUR. YOU do the math, he hissed at me.

So I counted on my fingers and figured if he worked all weekend, he’d be done Monday.

But I didn’t tell HIM that.

Pause me my life.

Wooooohooooooo. Steeeeeeveennnnnn Tylerrrrrrrrr.

OK, so I sound like some dewey eyed little tripster panting heavily, screeching banshee like, but hear me out.

I don’t like American Idol. But I loves Steven Tyler.

I was over it years ago. American Idol, not Mr. Steven.

Acapella  singing does nothing for me. I don’t get it and never will. It just sounds like trilling up and down annoyingly.

But this year is JLo and, and, AND,  Steven Tyler.

I may be gay.

Steven Tyler has been my fucking hero for more decades and centuries than I like to count or think about. Aerosmith is one of the very few bands that Miss Carol and me always go see, not matter where or what.

I know I’m gushing like a little girl but I can’t help it.

And ya know what? JLo and Steven Tyler are amazing. FOX did it. They’ve sucked me in for the duration of  the American Idol season. The chemistry is THAT good.

Hit the Play button, life.

c’mon. hit it.

Unfortunately food.

Miss Carol’s gone again tonight, attending another Ladies Night Out. The limo guy in the yellow corvette with the mirrored aviator shades that Miss Carol says picks up all the ladies for Ladies Night Out came by about an hour ago.

Which means it’s just me and Cutter and Tug tonight.

And that’s cool. I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself and the boys, right? Right. But then there’s stuff that sometimes slips in under the radar, under the shit I’m ready and willing to deal with. Stuff that always seems to surprise me.

umm. Like dinner?

I suck at cooking. Miss Carol is an amazing chef, and she does it for fun. She plates food for dinner that’s just incredible. I have customers that want to know what I had for my leftover lunch ’cause they’re getting a foodie woodie just listening to me.

So you’d think it’d rub off. At least a little. But it doesn’t.

And to make my whining worse-

Ever have one of those days? Doesn’t matter if it’s about food, or your truck breaking down, or your dogs pooping on the carpet while they wait anxiously for you to get home, or having family you don’t like coming to live with you.

One of those days that NOTHIN’S ever gonna go right.

I’m busily having one today. I walked Cutter and Tug and we shared an apple and Cutter barked and yelped the whole time and then I went to work. When I came home for lunch I was like, cool, leftover steak.

I don’t know if I’d originally overcooked it or if the microwave did it for me, but it was fucking awful. I threw it away and  heated up some broccoli. Worst shit I’ve ever eaten-dry, grainy, and smelly. So I gave up and went back to work thinking maybe my Huevos Rorios for dinner would save the day.

Pinto beans and fried eggs. Can’t fuck that up, right?

Oh yeah baby, you can, and it’s easier than you’d ever think.

I can’t wait for Miss Carol to get home and save me from myself.

Constructionless update.

Miss Carol and me were walking the beach this morning trying to keep Cutter and Tug in sight so’s maybe they wouldn’t run off and get lost and I was trying to keep our constructionless little house that’s currently not getting built in some kinda perspective.

Yesterday I drove down to the island to see if Mr. Dickhead Contractor had done any work at all in the THREE weeks since last we spoke ’cause I can’t get him to return my calls.

And he hadn’t.

I’m not quite sure what it is that Mr. Dickhead is doing. And I like Mr. Dickhead. The recent economic unpleasantness- which I think is gonna be MUCH more unpleasant and lifestyle-changing than any of us know- has cost Mr. Dickhead his business, his home, and at least one of his cars.

You’d think he’d be hungry. My buddy Mr. Dickhead’s a good ‘ole Carolina boy who’s done work for us in the past and since he’s had such a hard time of it I gave him the site work, pilings, and septic without even soliciting any other bids. Twelve grand is far from life-changing but it’s still 12,000 one dollar bills. Hell, I thought I was helping the guy out.

I don’t know.

Did I mention I like Mr. Dickhead? But three weeks of unanswered voicemail messages were enough for me. So when I drove down yesterday, I stuck a huge note on the windshield of his bulldozer thingy telling him not to do anything more until we talk.

Because.

I’ve decided to kick him to the curb. I’ve lined up someone else to drive the pilings and gotten a quote from another company on the septic. Both are cheaper than my buddy Mr. Dickhead and both are ready to get the work done immediately.

So I should be happy, right?

So why do I feel like a turd?

Ghosting.

Ghosting by David Poyer is kinda fucking me up.

It’s not a really well written book and it goes in too many directions all at once. If he had just told the story of the perfectly rich fambly sailing their new yacht from Connecticut to Bermuda and getting caught in a huge storm it could’a would’a been maybe cool.

Or, if he’d decided the story would be about the rich newbie sailing fambly getting hitchhiked on the open sea by smugglers that are all a whole lot more like Al Pacino as Scarface than Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, it could’a been amazing.

But instead, he decided to roll the dice with a story that included every horrendously terrible thing that can possibly happen on a sailboat at sea.

Trust me, you will NEVER go offshore if you read this book.

It’s a story of endless grimness and rape and murder. The reviews I’d read leading me gently to reading Ghosting talked about the love the family felt for one another- the love that held them together in their tough times.

Hmmmm, er, I didn’t see it- but, ya know, I’m not too smart.

So.

Read it. It’s not terrible, but I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna pick my next book waaay carefully so’s I can rinse my mental palate.

Just sayin’

6 years.

Cutter and Tug turn six today.

That means they’re 42 years old in human years and somehow went from little fluffy puppies to hardened adults in less time then it takes me to have to renew my drivers license.

The other day I hooked them up and walked outside without looking and some people we know were coming around the corner on their walk with their little perfectly trained one-year old black Lab.

As soon as I opened the door Cutter and Tug saw her and they surged, yanking me outside and they were all like- LOOK ROR ITS A DOG, A DOG, LOOK, LOOKIE, LOOK LET’S GO MEET C’MON going ballistically hopping and tail walking and the folks with the little black lab stopped, sighing mightily, and the little black lab, all obedient-like cowered and laid down on the road watching warily our approaching retards.

So I got dragged over to meet everybody ’cause gosh IT’S A DOG, DUDE, C’MON C’MON!!! and I could see the folks with the really good obedient dog weren’t real happy with the Cutter and Tug rape.

I apologized, and pulled my dickheads away, and got Cutter and Tug headed in the right direction, with them marching me up the road trying to dislocate things on me or maybe pull me down and road rash me, and me just trying to hold on between the sudden surges to get to a new smell and and the abrupt stops- DAMN DUDE I DON’T REMEMBER PEEING ON THAT.

But as they herky-jerked me around I was grinning.

‘Cause honestly? Yeah they can be a pain in the ass but I wouldn’t trade an ounce of their personality and attitude for a pound of the slovenly obedience of that other dog. In fact I kinda felt sorry for it. It’s gotta be hard to be that good ALL the time.

But then again, I do love them the best when they’re asleep.

Happy Birthday buds.

Shitmotherfucker.

There are times when you’re stretched, when you’re wonderin’ just what it is you started, when you’re thinkin’- what the hell were you thinkin’?.

This was one of those weeks.

After we had the Freak Global Warming Snowstorm that dumped 14,  no wait, FOURTEEN FUCKING INCHES of snow on us, I was all, like I get it. Nobody wants to work in the muddy mess of a Global Warming Snowstorm.

So we lost the week between Christmas and New Years.

But then, this week has been perfect. No Global Warming Storms, no nothing- just pretty weather beckoning with outstretched arms, pleading.

So what happened?

Nothing. Nada.

I can’t get a hold of the contractor doing the site work, he won’t answer his cell phone and I filled up his voicemail with messages begging for an update.

This is why people get killed- it’s just sooooo blindingly frustrating it makes you wanna strangle puppies and stomp on kittens.

Whew.

So lets look at babes instead. Breathe in, breathe out, baby.