Anna's Bloviations

Home computer problems due to imminent move.... Will hopefully be back up and running soon.
 
They were putting up a new billboard for a racy looking Saab-something-X car as I was crossing the virtually empty streets of Boston this morning en route to the last day of session at the State House. I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake because it occurred to me that they of course purposely put the letter 'X' into the mix so that you'll think SEX(Y) -- particularly in the case of hubby's car I thought to myself i.e. BMW 325Xi. I mean why not 325Bf?

Well I'm getting awfully close to joining the ranks of uninformed Americans... I haven't been reading the NY Times newspaper of late so much as skimming it. I haven't been listening to NPR radio so much as catching snippets. I tried to stay awake to listen to Clinton's 30-minute speech last night at the Democratic National Convention, but fell soundly asleep on the couch. Frankly I'm pooped. I've been painting, packing, and picking up after contractors. I've been pulling weeds and perusing for products. And panicking that even with a week at home, progress towards our move date is painstakingly slow.  And not even one DNC party to prance about... Pathetic.

It's only thanks to Diving Bird that I am keeping up on anything at all given that there is essentially not an email sent to me that I don't open. Like this:  The Communists had Pravda, the Republicans have Fox.  Or this: Congress Must Censure Bush. With no time to volunteer right now to make sure we don't have another four years of Bush, I decided to at least do my part while I'm driving to the dump, the hardware store, the paint store, what-have-you: My New Bumper Sticker (the top one)

Good Jimney F*****Cricket. You should have SEEN the State House today in anticipation of next week's DNC. Soldiers on the roof. The closing off of all entrances save for one. Dire doomsday emails the whole day long.
 
Even so the State House has really very little to do with the upcoming Democratic National Convention, plots and sub-plots abound that terrorists and/or anarchists will attack the building. The HR Director, Keith XXX, came by personally to all of the offices to give us a nine-page what's what, who's who, wing-dinger whopper of what to expect next week.

Said he to me and my colleague, "Well as far as coming in next week, you can if you want but you won't be docked if you don't. If you do I definitely wouldn't wear the tie (this comment directed to my colleague). The anarchists might spot you en route to work. We've been checking out a lot of websites. Like what happened in Seattle and Washington, we think they are intent on creating havoc. It's not just Starbucks and McDonalds. It could be you..." The 'he' is a circa twenty-nine-year-old black Republican convinced that the State House is going to be attacked by whacko anti-establishment what-evers. Never mind Al-Queda. Go figure.

If ever there were a plot, it is the completely blown-out-of-proportion 'threat' to the State House which has nearly every tax-paid employee heading for the Cape or New Hampshire for a week of paid vacation. Your tax dollars hard at work. On the other hand, come on guys.... We're making 29K a year!

My place of work, the State House, will be closed to the public next week in deference to the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Well actually not in deference to... in fear of a terrorist attack of some sort. Technically, state employees are to show up to work during this week and as incentive to do so, the Associated Press will be in the building keeping tabs on the Reps and Senators. Except nobody keeps tabs down in the 'basement' where Fritz and I hang out (it's not really a basement in that we have beautiful windows peeping out to street level). So Anna Bloviations will be checking her email and constituent calls from home thank you. I mean how timely could this all be? We move August 6th and now I'll have a whole week to finish up everything. Mind you a lot has already been done: Yard sale. Check. The 1-800-Got-Junk truck to pick up accumulated debris. Check. A little of this or a little of that brought over in my car everyday to the new house. Check. But live someplace 15 years and there are still a whole lot of miscellaneous unidentified objects in drawers to be sorted. Uncheck.

What I might ought to be doing right now is going to a slew of V.I.P. DNC  parties to which I could gain easy access through those 'connections' I spoke of earlier. For instance my little four-month pregnant, very connected friend is going to all of them. There was internal concern about her being pregnant but the consensus was that her boobs have gotten so big of late that no one will notice her slightly bulging tummy. Not that there is anything wrong with being pregnant.... Yes, she'll be right in the mix of all the big hitters. Her petite-n'-tiny self telling the Democratic demigods that "Sorry no you can't have access to that room."
 
Yes I'd like to meet Clinton. And Hillary. I'd pass on Teddy. And Kerry for that matter except that he just has to beat Bush. But guys I have to move. And every finger I lift over at the new house is a renovation budget that maybe won't balloon out of total control i.e. I'm going to pick up the workers' trash, seal the wood closet doors, and prime the edges of the new doors. Bottom line is that it is a hell of a lot cheaper if I do it based on my hourly wage than if they do it based on theirs. In fact I believe this conversation has come up before when I was renovating the bathroom at my just-sold house. Remember? I was the designated errand bitch...
 
This weekend I will also frantically pull up weeds from the 'minimalist' garden that has proven an optical illusion in minimilism. I'll have to talk to the cute landscaper about that. Jet-lagged hubby comes home from London tomorrow. Oh if he knew his To-Do list...

I was really hoping that the Crime & Death Scene Cleaners' logo might have been displayed loudly on the side of the van when they pulled up this morning just to get my new Talbot's-Land neighbors talking. But the owner of this business seems to think it prudent to go the more discreet route; there is just an itty-bitty sign on the door which they cover up when they reach their destination. God, when did the owner decide to go into this business? What prompted him? "Mommy when I grow up I want to remove bodily fluids and urine smell from houses. What do you think about that?"

It has been these guys -- the cat piss smell removers -- whom I have been looking forward to more than anybody else i.e. thanks for the nice paint job and covering up the ugly 50's fireplace but what good does a now beautiful sexy den do you when there is a dank urinal odor seeping from underneath the door of the utility room? As of this evening when I checked it out, the smell would seem to be gone. Cost: $325.

Bye, bye Wanderlust for now... Unless the spreadsheet is lying, I am way over budget on the house already. Like 20K over budget... But to let you in on a little secret, I don't care. Hubby has worked his ass off from the moment we landed in the US in 1984 with a new-born baby and eleven boxes (nine of which contained his technical books) to our names. The earning power he has now he may (or probably won't) have in ten years when he is sixty. It's time to totally enjoy. To re-connect with friends and family in a house perfect for re-connecting. With a wow-garden. Where every room has a picture-window-view to green. Where every door is solid (thanks to us). Every floor polished (thanks to us). Every wall painted lush color (thanks to us). An office for me: to write my book, to send dumb jokes, to read lefty/righty articles, to publish my own articles and erotica, to explore. An office for him: to work, research, upload his photos, enjoy porn, and explore. A bedroom to enjoy each other. A suite for guests and kids to visit (not live). A kitchen made for hubby to cook his sumptuous meals. What's the worst that can happen? We'll have to sell. We'll lose the money we put into it. But while we were there it will have been great. Boy, am I a great rationalizer or what?! And come February 2005 when we have no money for a vacation to warmth let's see what I have to say....

TEST: Cool. Now I can post pictures. Here is my old colleague's  just-born little boy -- the only descent photo available on my office computer. Oh the trouble I'll be able to get into with this new toy...   

As predicted a phone call was all it took from a certain well-connected Senator to a well-placed Keyspan laison (a.k.a. lobbyist) to put me from the four-weeks-out, back-of-the-pack wait list to "You'll have gas up to your house by the end of the day." I might only make 29K a year but who needs more when you have connections that can make the impossible happen! Anybody else need gas? How about a job? Bring on the Lindt chocolate and I'll put in a word for you....
 
So now my crush on the eloquently speaking Senator who is gay anyway has been redirected to the results-driven Senator who got me gas in spite of the threat of rain that usual benches the Keyspan folks. But more on Senators later. At 7:30 a.m. I have an appointment with the local hardware store door specialist to learn everything I never knew I wanted to know about doors, doorknobs, and locks.

Accidentally knocking hubby's business cell phone into the painter's pail of paint thinner last night at the new house made me realize why most people are so afraid of change. On a very basic level, change means adapting your skill-set as a human being to a new and unfamiliar terrain. Primaly speaking, this could be the difference between survival or being a forgotten Darwinian footnote.
 
In this particular case, it's something as simple as the body learning where all the unfamiliar light switches are in context to turning around and there being a counter on which lies the cell phone which is next to the salad bowl that gets bumped when your arm that was carrying the camera case swipes the bowl which hits the cell phone that plummets not to the right of the pail, nor to the left, but straight downwards with a plunk into the terpentiny spirits below. Expletive. Split-second retrival is too late as Indian White satin-oil paint oozes across the inside of the display screen of the phone.
 
To put things into context. Had I lived a couple of millennia ago, this would be equivalent to accidentally snapping hubby's spear in half -- no spear, no roasted mammoth. No cell phone, hubby can't do his job in bringing home the proverbial bacon.
 
Well so much for our outdoor barbecue we were planning. Hubby raced to the North Shore Mall like a parent taking a sick child to the emergency room. The son decided to go play a game of soccer with friends rather than wait for what was obviously going to be a delayed dinner. Daughter wisely decided not to get anywhere the house once her brother alerted her on his cell phone.
 
You gotta' love America sometimes i.e. try buying a new cell phone in the rest of the world at 8 p.m. in the evening. Forget it. But no problemo here.  Not forty minutes later, hubby returned with a new phone and mumbling happily about some vitally important organ of the old phone having remained intact which meant that numbers and service were still at his fingertips. We sat at our new Crate & Barrel made-in-Indonesia garden table and ate our just-barbecued sun-dried tomato sausages as birds twirped their dusk songs in the trees above. "Another glass of J.Lohr honey?" Or to put it into context: "Another earthenware mug of fermented apples?" No that's not right. Anna Bloviations of yore wouldn't have gone through the trouble of some complicated fermentation process to get an alcohol buzz let alone sit around casting cups. More likely Anna Bloviations of yore knew her mushrooms really well.... "Another mushroom sweetie?"

Problem Child #1 The Comcast Internet technicians are still flummoxoned as to how to remedy their screw-up i.e. they turned off our service on the wrong date and can't seem to get us up and running again. And because you never get the same technician on the phone, it doesn't matter how many times you give them a reference number, you still have to repeat the story all over again. 
 
Problem Child #2  Keyspan. They still haven't given me my gas line. So I am utilizing one of the few perks one has as a state employee. Connections. A good Senator will be putting a "word" in to his contact person at Keyspan and I anticipate a truck to be at my house Monday morning... I can't wait for the asshole incompetent North Shore rep to get the phone call. 
 
My ship is a tight one and so far on course except for the family that seems to think that magic fairies appear the day before you move to wave their wands and Voila!; boxes are packed, the furniture moved, junk taken to the dump, addresses changed, telephone and utility service transferred, work on the new house completed, and the old house put in broom-swept condition for the next owner.  Oh but they shall pay for their faked ignorance. I'm no martyr. I'm a prima-donna who will make their lives very painful until I feel life is again quid pro quo with a slight tip on the scale to my side. 
 
My friend Fritz the Mouse (whom I have forgiven for eating my bag of Lindt Truffles last month) tells me that the State House will be closed during the Democratic National Convention the week of the 26th. Very nice. I'll have gotten the bulk of all the work on the house done and plan to sit outside on our new outdoor garden chairs and order up Margaritas from the son who recently completed bartending school. Or maybe I'll let him try out a few exotic drinks on me.  Cause' I'd rather have unpacked boxes in my garage than forego what I have learned are VERY SHORT summers in New England. In fact, when the hell did it get to be mid-July anyway....

Breakfast at Hawthorne's. Breakfast this morning was at the historic Hawthorne Hotel in Salem with over 200 members of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce in attendance. Suffice to say that certain Senators and Representatives had the crowd believing that there is an organized, cohesive, pro-active, attendance-heavy Legislative Caucus advocating and fighting on behalf of the region's interests. Sounds good to me. But what caucus were they referring to? Not the one my Rep co-chairs.

CNN was there to cover Kerry delegate, Wayne Burton, President of North Shore Community College. As things wrapped up, my good colleague joined the CNN groupies (she is already a Cowboy Junkie groupie), while I was much more interested in checking out a newbie company that was busy outside promoting their feature product i.e. they had a custom-painted Hummer parked outside the hotel and were giving demos. The company is called BioDefense Corporation and their feature product is called MailDefender. Basically MailDefender is a supped-up washing machine that decontaminates incoming mail at the point of entry. Here are a few touted product features:

* Operates safely, simply and securely in your facility [well that's good...]
* Uses safe, proven, commercialized disinfection technologies [as opposed to unsafe, unproven, and non-commercialized disinfection technologies??]
*Sanitizes up to 12 lbs. of mail in just under 45 minutes with no extensive drying or cooling time [beats my washing machine, that's for sure]
* Alerts the user to the presence of anthrax, smallpox and/or ricin [an optional feature available at purchase and installation]. Oh my, what a world.

Even so I told our Internet provider Comcast to switch our service over to the new house on AUGUST 7th, some idiot entered JULY 12th into their work log instead. A completely random date if ever there was one. It takes only seconds to turn off service. But it takes hours, and hours, and hours -- no wait a minute, DAYS -- on the phone with Comcast to get it back on. In fact it's still not up and running correctly. When things like this happen, I milk it until I get lots of credit put on my bill for the inconvenience of it all. The hubby simply blames Bush, fat Americans, SUV's, me, the kids, and the dog that we have no Internet service right now.

The gas company isn't on my Favorite List either at the moment. A unionized, monopolistic company, the term customer service is a foreign concept to them. All I want them to do is come by my damn house and run a gas line up so that the plumbers can convert our heating system. That's not asking too much is it? One of their excuses is that "[they] don't work if it's raining." There is a silver lining because the painters come to paint the inside of the house when it rains. So I find myself in a constant schizo state of wishing it would rain and not rain at the same time.

GREAT MARKETING IDEA . Granted the effect would have been better had we already been living in our new house. Nonetheless in the driveway of the house we will be moving into come August was a cardboard packet addressed to us, the new owners. Inside was the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe and New York Times newspaper plus generous gift certificates and special offers to Jordan’s Furniture, Bose Corporation, The Boston Globe, California Closets, Brookbend Furniture, Cambridge Sound Works, Ethan Allen, Garage Tek, Landry Home Decorating, and Sears Carpet & Upholstery Care -- worth $1,070.

Really a very nice gesture. But first I have to get rid of the cat piss smell in the utility room. Then we have to align all the whacko electrical outlets i.e. on one wall alone, there are FOUR waist-high outlets (I cannot even begin to imagine why this would be). Then there is the protruding plumbing pipe hanging down from the den ceiling I believe I mentioned already. Then the changing from oil to gas. Then some minor carpentry work. Then some painting. Then re-finishing the floors. Then carpeting the guest suite downstairs. Then new hardware for the bathrooms. Then new Viagra-tized doors and doorknobs (versus their existing hollow and limp counterparts). Then upgrading the kitchen. All to happen in about a month's time. Yeah, like I'll have any money left over for my $1,070 worth of whatever redeemable coupons. But thanks for the NY Times guys. In spite of the slap on the wrist they got for shoddy reporting, it's still my favorite newspaper. I can't say the same for the Boston Globe.

"I have an ugly 50's floor-to-ceiling brick fireplace in my den. What do I do?" wrote a woman from www.ths.gardenweb.com.

I am truly humbled by the Internet today. I had no idea there were entire chat rooms devoted to re-surfacing ugly brick fire places and I am quite certain that I now know more about re-surfacing ugly brick fire places than both my contractor and friend Paul together. Paul, as you may remember, flew out from San Francisco (he specializes in 50's houses) to direct my salty dog New England contractor. In spite of Paul's awesome punch-list extraordinaire he delivered to me, the "Oh-my-god-that-brick-has-to-go-fireplace looked to pose a major headache as far as my "Oh-wouldn't-it-be-lovely-if-everything-fell-into-place schedule was concerned. In other words, try making cold calls to masons in the middle of summer and just see if you get a call back. And if you do get a call back, run, don't walk. What to do, what to do....

Thank you Google. For directing me to non-combustible cement board... 'Mike' suggests covering the brick with DUROCK. The cemented board can be mudded, taped and painted to look like sheetrock, or can serve as a flat surface to install tile, marble or other facing materials. So I'm going to have a smooth wall and slap up a spectacular mantel.

Progress. All paint colors have been selected. Two protruding pipes that had been haphazardly covered with wooden casement boxes were put back up into the ceiling where they belong today. Who would do such a thing to begin with? i.e. "Gee, this will be an interesting architectural effect. Let's be lazy and hook up the washer and dryer in such a way that the pipe hangs through the ceiling of the den below and then cover it up with a rectangular wooden box. And let's make it crooked while we're at it. That will look good."

Stay tuned. Once I get all my product ordered for the house, I will be posting my Anna
Bloviation's 2004 Awards....

I've been a bit AWOHL lately at work -- what with all the house renovations. Which led the boss to say to me today:

"Gee, I was expecting to see your picture on a milk carton while eating my cereal this morning."

A Cheshire-smile from Anna Bloviations erupted from my I've-always-had-health-care-teeth.

"Really...."

Indian White it is for the trim. And lots of other custom colors mixed by Paul. There's a nice cement hue. And a beautiful deep, sexy, orange you could view if you happen to have this year's Georgia O'Keefe calendar and turn to the flower featured for July. There are some beautiful light olives and mustard yellows interspersed into the palette.

Paul helped me to pick doors. And floors. And kitchen. He made suggestions for window treatments, bathroom fans, and doorknobs. His knack is to seek out and destroy the bumps, warts, and BADS in a house and offer up a solution in line with your budget. Now I have a nice, neat punch list of To-Do's. But unfortunately the clock ran out before Paul and I could come to a consensus on the living room colors so it is up to my mother and me to try different ideas. "Try a red over the fireplace," he yelled as his cute buns disappeared through the American Airlines doors. Heh, with twenty-plus quarts of different paint to play with, the sky's the limit in terms of trying to create the perfect color. And fortunately there is Shawn at Water's and Brown Paint Store in Salem who can re-create any color from whatever you show him e.g. a certain flower in a Georgia O'Keefe calendar. I saw another woman bring in a Chester drawer and Shawn was able to match the stain perfectly.

It was necessary to don my dominatrix garb to whip my contractors into shape. Getting their cell phones early on when they don't suspect you of being a bitch is the best. I just keep calling them until they finally give up and put me on their calendar. "And you don't get your last $1,000 until the last perfect finishing touch is completed."

I saw a man shooting up heroin in broad daylight this morning on a street corner near the T-Station in Boston. Right there on a stoop of an 18th century house. I only mention this as a friendly reminder to the myriad of realities out there...

I am up to my ears in paint but yes I did register that John Edwards was chosen as Kerry's VP pick. Anti-climactic really. The Republicans are painting a picture of a green-behind-the-ears Edwards too inexperienced to be president. Hmmmm. Well we've seen where this administration's "experience" has gotten us -- specifically Iraq. So I'm thinkin' Edwards might be just the ticket....

If my Personal Designer from San Francisco weren't here right now, I think I'd be in tears. The personal designer is a.k.a. my friend Paul who has given me permission to say that he is my personal interior designer because it just sounds so good. Especially when I tell people we flew him in from SF.

I'd be in tears because it all gets to be so overwhelming. Hubby is in London and I have exactly 30 days to get our present house in broom-swept condition and the new house to beautiful. Paint color is the hardest part of the whole process. Even if one were to do the whole house all white it wouldn't be easy because there are dozens and dozens of different whites: Linen, Cameo, China, Foggy Mist, and on and on into confusion. To make things even more challenging, a 50's house has angles, planes, and picture windows that make a color look great on one wall and terrible on another.

Paul bought twenty little cans of paint to try out colors on walls yesterday (yes twenty). The interior of the house looks like a patchwork quilt at the moment. Sigh.

We are getting there but it requires a lot of focus and patience. Workers have been 'lined up,' but at this point they are all a theoretical concept i.e. I'm sitting on a lot of written estimates but not one worker has actually begun to do anything...

Line of slobber. That's something I didn't think about. We took kids and my mother over to the new house. While we sat drinking wine from plastic cups in the empty, echoing living room, the dog outside made a neat line of pressed-nose and dog-pant along the entire length of picture windows. She already has laid claim to her big, beautiful garden. She's got it easy. She has her own private landscaper that trims, weeds, and picks up after her.

On my side, I am discovering more and more things that need to be done in the house and that to do them will cost infinitely more than I had estimated. To the point that I would suggest to many a kid today to seriously consider a vocational school rather than a conventional, over-priced college. Become an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter. It's a supply and demand thing. Fewer and fewer people know how to change a lightbulb or hammer in a nail which means that these guys can up their hourly rate higher and higher. It's a good thing hubby's company made their quarter. I've got expenses....

There are two kinds of people. There are those who perfect the art of doing things right all the time and those who perfect the art of making things right when things go wrong. Hubby is the former. I am the later. So.... when Anna Bloviation's forgets the house keys to the new house on the kitchen counter and locks us outside, what does one do? Well hubby laments my stupidity and starts calculating the costs of a locksmith, etc., etc. to get back inside the house. I, however, have been in these situations way too many times to keep a locked door between me and the keys inside. While he yells, I scope the house. Front door. Definitely locked. Back door ditto. Windows modern and not conducive to climbing through unless you break them. Hmmmm. "Do you think I'd fit through the cat door by the kitchen?" "Don't be ridiculous," he hisses. I pull up the small metal panel built into the door anyway and manage to fit my head and one shoulder through. But my arm doesn't reach up to the bolt which makes further entry impossible. He grumbles more. I slither out and walk to the back of the garage where the previous owners kindly (or out of convenience) left a stack of firewood. I grab a slender piece of kindling and poke my head and forearm through the opening again. Using the wood as an extension, I still can't quite reach and so send hubby through the opening in my stead. His head and forearm barely fit but he is nonetheless able to flick the bolt open. Gleefully I open the door and nearly decapitate hubby in the process. He swears profusely but I say thus: "You never in a million years would have thought to break through the cat doorway sweetheart." Of course he never would have forgotten the key on the kitchen counter. But which is more fun I ask you....

We were packed like cattle into a small hot room at the Registry of Deeds along with seven other veneered-tables' worth of new home buyers, their brokers, and attorneys. The biggest purchase of our entire lives and this is where they put us. No windows. No water. No coffee. Certainly no flowers on the table. For an hour long we scribbled our signatures on document after document; I didn't count but all told I would guess around fifty times each. Slam, bam, thank you very much Sam, "NEXT PLEASE!" Hubby and I each got a pen to take home. The ambience brought forth a memory of friends who years ago married at the Justice of Peace in Alameda, California. In the room where they were married, nobody had bothered to erase the graphic depiction of a car accident on the chalk board behind the Justice's head. Sigh. OK I guess I'm the only one with Aesthetic-Sensibility-Disorder...

As hubby continued on to work after the closing (to bring home the bacon to pay for this major expenditure), I snuck back to our new house instead of heading into the office (I'm a state employee, remember?). It turned out to be a very bad idea. The glare of second thoughts shone unmercifully onto every pimple the house had to offer. They were the same imperfections that were there before but when you own them, it is quite a different feeling altogether. A 50's house is particularly brutal as it stands naked before you from a workmanship perspective and if you ever find yourself in such a situation, I guarantee you will say something to the effect of, "Oh My God, we just spent all this money for THIS!"

All day long I contemplated how I might keep hubby away from the new house for an entire month while it undergoes its Viagra treatments and cosmetic surgery. OK a run to the wine store this evening I thought. And a sexy nightgown.... But at 7 p.m. before he was either drunk or in bed, he said, "Anna let's go over to the house and check it out." "Are you sure? It's kind of late...."

It's amazing what a difference it made to stand in the empty house with hubby and our dog. The dog checked out her new garden while we discussed and measured and brainstormed. We checked out lights and fans. Hubby christened one of the toilets with his urine and I tinkled in the other bathroom. Much in the same way as our dog was marking bushes outside. A house is just a house. What we were now envisioning together was a home.