Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Hawaiian Holiday

“Any plans for the holidays?”

“I hope not,” I say, intonating as if I’ve said, ‘I’m going to Hawaii.’ Say a lie often enough and you’ll start to believe it yourself. I’m excited to work on the house! I’m so lucky!

Lots of people go to Hawaii. Not a lot of people turn a suburban ranch house into Camp Kosovo. Or is it the other way around?

The Vegan has taken to celebrating the holidays by going to bed about an hour before we wake up. We don’t wake up early. He wakes up sometime after we’ve wasted half our workday, takes a shower long enough to use up all the hot water, then goes back to his room and chats online. It’s hard to tell if he asleep or awake if you don’t hear him showering. The shower is like sunrise; the start of a new Vegan day.

For months, two people at a time could shower at our house. Kevin, the sub, opened up walls and the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom while repairing the plumbing. He left the ceiling open to the bathroom upstairs, exposing the pre-repaired plumbing above. When you take a hot shower upstairs, you get a cold one downstairs.

Charlie promises to do the upstairs bathroom and close up this double-shower feature as soon as he’s finished in the downstairs bathroom. The open ceiling remains. It may have exposed plumbing but it looks nothing like a trendy coffee house. Not with the dripping pipes, at least.

It looks better than the bathroom from which the drips derive. The upstairs bathroom is the crown jewel in the tiara of this house of crap. It’s weighed down with endless epoxy repairs, peeled away caulk, the fastest-growing mold in Oregon, fixtures that didn’t work when they were installed in 1972, and all accented by a Spanish-style burnt orange linoleum tiled floor. Charlie replaced the upstairs bathroom window so the neighbors can tell if we’ve gained or lost weight when we get out of the shower. Nobody spends too much time in this bathroom.

Charlie recaulked all around the shower tile upstairs. He figured this would curtail the downstairs leaks. I didn’t like the idea of recaulking when the whole bathroom needed to be nuked, but he did it anyway. Now he’s standing directly under the shower, defying it to drip.

It’s 2:30 pm and time for the Vegan to wake up. We can hear him above turning on the shower. I find other things to do. It’s not that I don’t trust Charlie’s work; it’s that I don’t trust this house. Whenever there’s a problem, there’s five more. That’s what takes so long.

I hear swearing so I assume the shower leaks continue. I find lots of things to do: put things away, call people, do other people’s errands, make breakfasts, lunches, beverages, and clean dishes. It’s amazing how many things you can find to do when you’re avoiding doing something else. I’d planned to paint down there. I assume it’s too wet for that right now.

After lunch I have no excuse to stay upstairs. I want to paint. There are only a few more walls left paint-free in this house. Most of them are downstairs.

The paint’s downstairs, too. I remember putting it here. Trouble is, I can’t find it. There are saws and bags of scrap tiles and wood and other remnants of Charlie’s work. There are also seven diet Pepsi cans sitting on saws and sills down here. I don’t want to look too closely but I can see several of Charlie’s latte cups without looking too hard, too. I can get easily frustrated if I look closely wherever Charlie works.

I can’t find the paint. I try hard to block out everything around me but a potential can or two of paint. I’m trying to look superficially. I’m trying not to count latte cups, but there are three so far.

Charlie stops working in the bathroom. “I’ll help you find it,” he says. “Are you sure it’s down here?”

“I have a system for paint placement,” I say. “I’ll find it; you don’t have to look.”

“I can tell you’re getting frustrated. You’re mumbling ‘why’ questions.”

“I’m what?” I don’t always listen to myself.

“’Why is this here?’ you’re saying. ‘Why is this recycling not in the garbage?’ ‘Why do we need four hammers down here?’”

“I’m thinking, ‘Why don’t you do things like me?’ Sorry. You made me look.”

Charlie moves a dropcloth and finds my paint. “Oh yeah,” he says. “I forgot I moved it there.”

I never would have found that. I better stop muttering and remember his many good qualities or he’ll start to remember my many OCD qualities. He’s too messy and I’m too neat. Put us in a blender and we’d be perfect.

I forgot about anything imperfect the minute I started to paint. It was even more enjoyable knowing it was one of the last rooms to roll.

Charlie checks on me again. “You need more paint,” he says.

“I’m co-dependent on you,” I tell him, “only for paint and cleaning my brushes.” I used to have to do everything myself. Now I’ve begun to relax and enjoy the benefits of a helpful husband. I find myself wondering why he’s so helpful, though. He doesn’t have to be; he’d get everything he wanted even if he didn’t clean my brushes.

Now he’s mumbling. “I think I’ll get rid of this can,” he says while emptying paint into my bucket. He didn’t notice the paint was a different color than what was in my bucket. Neither did I. He put the empty paint can back down next to the right, full one. He mumbled a little more but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to get in a tight spot in the badly-textured corner.

“Which paint are you using?” he said. “Comforting or Cup of Cocoa?”

“I’m still Comforting.”

”Did I add Cup of Cocoa?”

“Looks like it,” I say. I’m up on the ladder and enjoying my co-dependency on him about paint. I keep rolling.

He looks into the bucket. It contains Comforting, which is very light and chocolate milk-like. There’s a beautiful ribbon of Cup of Cocoa swirled on top, like a pretty Starbucks drink. All it needs is whipped cream and a top and I’d be tempted.

“That was stupid,” he says. “You owe me a stupid. I haven’t made such a blatantly stupid mistake like that since I married my second ex.”

“No problem,” I say. Now I have the rest of the day, maybe longer, to make a really stupid mistake. Did you ever notice that when you’re allowed to do something really dumb, you don’t? This is all the motivation I need to paint through dinner time.

When Charlie wasn’t looking, I cleaned up. I put away three hammers, seven diet Pepsi cans, and washed out five very dirty latte cups. If you’re at all OCD, you know how good I feel. It’s not Hawaii but I’m enjoying my holidays just the same.

A little help? [] 6:36:05 PM