Capital P

About seven years ago, we did some renovations on our house. And by we, I mean that P contracted the entire job and worked tirelessly to make sure everything turned out the way we wanted while I cried every night because I was worried that the house wouldn’t be ready on time and OH MY WORD what if we have to bring our new baby home to this rental house instead of her new pink nursery?

I’d like to blame pregnancy hormones on all the obsessing over when the house would be finished, but I know I’d act the same way tomorrow except I wouldn’t be able to sing a chorus of “In the Ghetto” by Elvis Presley to drive home my point because the words “and a baby cries…in the ghetto” wouldn’t have the same impact now that the baby is six years old.

We moved back into the house exactly two weeks before Caroline was born, in spite of the fact that we had no kitchen countertops or any other necessary components that make up a kitchen but we had the pink nursery and that’s all that really mattered. Who needs an oven when you have darling whimsical letters that spell CAROLINE hanging on a pink wall and a fresh, white crib that the baby won’t actually sleep in for several months?

The countertops were finally installed the day before I went into labor along with the sink and the kitchen faucet. Everything was installed, the baby was born, and, approximately one week later, the sprayer component of our new faucet quit working. Actually, that’s not totally true. It worked fine if you didn’t mind the fact that it got stuck and would randomly decide to spew water all over the kitchen. It created a surprisingly non-hilarious situation when you factor in a newborn baby and sleep-deprivation. The kind of situation that is like shaking up a bottle of crazy sauce and then watching it explode.

Ultimately, P worked his plumbing magic to unhook the sprayer and so it has remained a non-functioning component of our sink for the last six and a half years.

Until he decided on Tuesday morning that TODAY WAS THE DAY to fix the sprayer. I don’t know why it was the day because I don’t bother to ask those kinds of questions. Why is the sky blue? Why do people watch Jay Leno? Why does Lionel Richie never age? JUST BECAUSE.

All I know is that he asked me to help him get everything out from under our kitchen sink and our kitchen looked like this.

It has continued to look like that for the past 48 hours. I try not to look directly at it because that would be like throwing a match on a powder keg just to see if it would explode. It would. It totally would.

And it certainly doesn’t help matters that, in addition to being a haven for amateur plumbers, my house has been transformed into some sort of Valentine’s Day sweat shop. Caroline’s only homework for the week was to sign her name on Valentine’s cards for everyone in her class. But, OH NO, she wanted to hand make her cards and write “Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Caroline” inside every single one. It was barrels of fun for the first two cards, but quickly became some kind of Hallmark factory gone awry as I stood over her and insisted that WE MUST CONTINUE TO MAKE THE CARDS. YOU CAN HAVE A SNACK WHEN YOU FINISH ANOTHER CARD.

But oh she is SO TIRED of shaking the silver glitter. It’s exhausting.

Anyway, P wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to fix the existing faucet because the something was leaking into the something and the bottom line is that my new bag of Pledge Grab-its got damp along with our last roll of Viva paper towels. I was out running errands to distract myself from the plumbing when he called and asked me to meet him at Home Depot so I could pick out a new faucet.

I don’t go to Home Depot very often because it is my kryptonite. One loop around Home Depot and I begin to dream about new toilet seats, granite countertops, and fancy showerheads that make you feel like it’s raining on the inside. (Shout out to Amy Grant) But I met P on the kitchen faucet aisle and found a faucet I liked. He asked, “Do you want to go ahead and buy it or do you want to see if I can fix our existing one?”

“I don’t know. I really like this one but I’m not sure it will work if we end up getting granite countertops and a farmhouse sink.”

“Well, realistically speaking, in light of all our other financial obligations, I don’t really see that there’s going to be a time when we’ll spend money on granite countertops and a whatever-you-just-said sink.”

Why does my husband want to kill my dreams of granite countertops and a farmhouse sink on Aisle 6 at Home Depot?

So I said, “I don’t want the new one. Just see if you can fix the old one.” And then I walked out of the store and past the granite displays with a wistful glance.

He bought approximately 782 parts that were supposed to fix the sink, but none of them worked. I went back to Home Depot yesterday and bought the new faucet. Which I actually really love because it’s got the sprayer thingy that pulls right out of the faucet and, yes, that’s exactly how it was described on the box. It’s pretty and shiny.

And it would look great on a farmhouse sink.

P and I bought our first computer back in 1997. I remember it clearly because I still wasn’t sure why anyone would need a computer because the whole internet thing was obviously just a passing fad, like indoor plumbing or telephones.

Honestly, I don’t know why I feel the need to begin this post with the entire history of our computer ownership. It’s completely and totally irrelevant. Well, except it does provide a basis to show that I really have no business messing with technology.

What you need to know is that up until about a year ago, we had that exact same mammoth desktop PC. That sound you hear is Bill Gates crying. Every now and then we’d lure some high school tech wizard to our house to perform some computer maintenance in exchange for fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. It always ended the same way, with some sweet sixteen year old boy asking me when was the last time we updated our virus software and I’d say, “What? Would you like another cookie?”

And then we’d give him a bundle of cash so he could run up to the local computer store (I have no idea what it was actually called) and buy whatever we needed to make our computer quit having a spaz. (You should see the look the teenagers would give me when I would refer to the computer as having a spaz. It’s probably similar to the look you just got when you read the words. A look of disbelief and horror.)

In the meantime, I became employed by a big pharma company that gave me a laptop, although I’m using the word “gave” lightly because they took it back so quick it made my head spin once I resigned. But part of the benefit of the laptop was the company paid for us to have wireless internet in our home, which meant I could sit on the couch and use the computer and that’s pretty much the reason this blog even exists. Had I been chained to our desktop PC and the hard, wooden chair at our desk as opposed to using a company computer for personal use while on my comfy couch, I would have thrown in the blogging towel after about a week.

This is really so much more information than you need and I’m so sorry but I cannot stop.

In March 2007, I took part of my quarterly bonus from the big pharma company and bought myself a Macbook, partly because I really wanted a Mac and partly because I was growing increasingly paranoid that the tech department at the big pharma company was tracking my every internet move and might have reports linking me to frequent use at some inappropriate site about large women who are mothers. Please note that I wasn’t paranoid enough to sit at my desk and use the PC, just paranoid enough to obsess over it while using the company laptop.

From the day I brought the Mac home (almost THREE YEARS AGO) it has never connected to our wireless internet very well. If it ever went to sleep then it would totally lose the connection. I’d have to wake it back up, put it back to sleep and then wake it up again. That highly technical method would usually work, but if it didn’t I resorted to a method I like to call whining and crying in frustration.

But yet, BUT YET, I never called AT&T to complain.

Even though I knew it was their fault because my Mac was always happy to connect to the wireless whenever we weren’t at home. It’s as if it wanted to do its business anywhere but in the comfort of home. Frankly, it reminded me of trying to potty-train Caroline.

To make a long story short (Oh sure.) I quit my job and they took the work laptop. Then about a year later, our PC died a slow death. As it turns out it’s not really a good idea to just turn down the volume on an old computer that is beeping loudly to let you know that the fan isn’t working and its over-heating. Who knew?

And so now we have one computer.

I’ve been desperately trying to convince P that he needs his own laptop. He insists he doesn’t need one. I say for someone who doesn’t need one, he sure spends a lot of time on mine and how am I ever going to break my high score on Bejeweled if he’s busy looking at reloading sites?

But this really isn’t the place to air our dirty tech laundry.

The whole point of this entire thing has been to share that our internet issues with the Mac finally reached an all-time high. P began to ask me every day to please call AT&T and figure out what was up with our internet.

(Why does he care so much if he doesn’t even use the computer enough to warrant having his own? Something to think about.)

And every day I would avoid calling AT&T because there is nothing I hate worse than having to deal with any sort of customer service department for a major corporation. I’d rank it up there with shopping at Walmart on a Saturday or going to the pool without my toenails painted. I just knew I was destined to spend HOURS of my life pressing 1 if I wanted tech support or 2 if I needed to pay my bills or 3 if I was about to bleed out of my eyes.

This has been going on for THREE YEARS.

I have put off calling them for THREE YEARS.

It finally came to head last week after P wrote that whole post on gifts for the outdoorsman and the internet went out and the entire thing was lost. He told me that I shared a least part of the responsibility for the whole debacle because I’d neglected to call AT&T for THREE YEARS.

(I know you may be wondering why he didn’t call AT&T himself. The answer is that he is not in charge of anything tech related in our home. In return, I am not in charge of anything that turns up dead or anything that is alive and unwanted. It’s a system that works well when one of you isn’t a dreadful combination of forgetful and a procrastinator.)

(Case in point: I have been wearing Degree Super-Strong Deodorant for Men for three weeks now because I can’t remember to buy some Secret while I’m at the store. And every morning when I get dressed and remember I need deodorant, I decide I can wait until tomorrow.)

Anyway, he said that he couldn’t be held responsible if he got so frustrated one day that he decided to throw the entire computer out the back door even though he realizes it’s not the computer’s fault. And so I took immediate action and thought about calling AT&T and then forgot.

Until Tuesday when we reached internet crisis mode. The Mac wouldn’t connect no matter what we did. And so I resorted to drastic measures and called AT&T. I had to push about eight different numbers and tell a computer what I needed.

“HELP. I NEED HELP.”

And finally I got a real live person on the phone.

For the first few minutes she didn’t really instill a lot of confidence in me. Mainly because I had specifically stated that I needed help with a Mac instead of a PC and she kept referring to my “Sa-Fairy” internet browser. (It’s Safari for you PC users out there. Safari. Just like in Africa or the drive-through zoo in New Braunfels, TX)

And then she kept asking me to type things into my “Sa-Fairy” browser even though I kept trying to explain that I had NO INTERNET CONNECTION. I was close to telling her that they needed to send some sort of computer wizard out to my house, when she asked, “When you look at your internet connection does it show that you’re connected to 2WIRE665?”

I replied, “No. It says Netgear.”

“What’s Netgear?”

“Well, it’s the name of our router.”

“Why do you have a router?”

“I DON’T KNOW. WHY DO I HAVE A ROUTER? AM I NOT SUPPOSED TO NOT HAVE A ROUTER?”

She calmly said, “No, you don’t need a router since you have a Mac. You probably needed one with your old laptop and your desktop, but you’ve been trying to connect to the internet the wrong way.”

FOR THREE YEARS.

So I unplugged the router, connected immediately to 2WIRE665 with the password found on the bottom of my modem, and have had nary an internet problem since.

Which works out since this whole internet thing appears to have some staying power.

And also since I have a blog.

And also because P hasn’t missed a chance to let me know that I could have solved this problem with one simple phone call THREE YEARS AGO.

For the second time in a week, P has written the bulk of this post and, for the second time in a week, I cannot remain silent while he takes over. So my (helpful and insightful!) commentary will be written in green.

I was so excited all day knowing that P was hard at work answering your questions. Mainly because I had no idea what I’d write about. But then, BUT THEN, I watched Sing Off on NBC last night and I’m dying to know if I’m the only one who noticed that the female judge’s hair appeared to be blowing in the wind at random times. I found it very disconcerting.

Dear NBC,

We know your little singing show is being filmed indoors, therefore there should be no wind. Also, tell Nick Lachey that I loved him on Newlyweds, but he needs to speed up his delivery as host. Not even Casey Kasem enunciates that clearly and deliberately. And Bert Parks never took that much time to announce a winner and he was hosting the most important of all shows, Miss America.

Sincerely,
A potential fan of Sing Off who’s trying to decide if she’s opposed to people making musical instrument sounds with their mouths

But this post isn’t about a singing competition. This is all about the great outdoors. This is the post where all your questions will be answered. Or at least seven or eight of your questions will be answered. Whatever.

Before I let P take over, several of you asked to see an up close picture of Caroline’s flowerpot nativity and I aim to please.

Seriously. Mary looks rough.  And is it just me or does she have a little bit of the crazy eye going?

Now to answer the questions:

1. Do you have any ideas for fishing? What can I possibly get for the fisherman that has it all?

Some ideas for fishing…how can I answer that? It’s like asking what to wear out on a date, too many variables. (He has no idea the nights I debated over the bandana print wrap skirt with my denim vest versus the floral skort.)

Not knowing any specifics (What is there to know?  It’s fishing.), I would say a Mister Twister electric fillet knife, the Cabela’s head lamp (I think all of you need to get your man a head lamp just for good measure.  There is no end to its uses and the Coalminer’s Daughter references), a rain jacket that folds up really small, a new tackle bag (It’s like a little fishing purse!), some Columbia/Patagonia fishing shirts and a good pair of polarized glasses. I have several pairs of Costa Del Mars and love them.

You know what I have?  Several pairs of sunglasses from Target in various stages of disrepair.  P would say that I don’t need nice sunglasses because I always lose them or break them.  And I would say he’s probably right but that’s not the point.

2. Do you have any ideas for reloading?

The problem with this situation is not knowing what your reloader already has. A gift certificate to Midway USA is always a safe bet.

3. Can you recommend a gun for personal defense; small enough to carry concealed, yet easy for a woman to handle? I currently have a Taurus 38 revolver, and my husband has a Browning High Power 9mm. As it stands now he takes my gun if he is carrying, and since I cannot pull back the slide my only hope of defending myself is to hit the intruder with the butt of the gun.

You are spot on with .38 special revolver, that’s what Big (sweet term of endearment) has too.  (I had no idea that I own a .38 special revolver.  No telling what else belongs to me out in that gun safe.) If you were going to get another one I would get a hammerless one if your other one doesn’t have it and maybe look at Smith and Wesson.

4. Melanie, do you have any suggestions for stylishly carrying a concealed firearm? While convenient and practical the fanny pack is not high on the list of fashion dos. A holster perhaps, but then how do you disguise the bulge? Or do you bedazzle it and call it a trendy new accessory?

Well, now that I know I own a .38 special revolver I may have to figure this out.  Of course there isn’t a stylish option in the world that will hide the fact that I managed to shoot my foot off.

5. Can you recommend a decent bow for deer hunting (maybe something at Cabela’s since we have one close by)? My husband is using an old bow, and apparently bow technology has changed a lot in the past 5 years or something like that and he feels left out and wants a new bow. I’d like to surprise him with one, but of course haven’t the faintest idea. So, is there something good you could recommend?

I am a hardened Mathews bow fan. (There is no better bow for when you’re afield.) They are the standard the rest of the industry shoots for. Mathews does such a good job in their research and development department that they tend to release a new bow every 6-10 months. With that in mind, I would look at Ebay or Craig’s list. You can find a bow with only a couple of seasons on it that is still better than any other brand, at a fraction of the cost for a new one. (I bet there’s a good chance that we have one or six we could sell you sitting in our back house.)

6. Is there an advantage to the orange handle on the knife? I guess it is so you can find it in the dim light if it fell on the ground.

I’m a fan of orange and yellow accessories that are not part of the hunt/kill. If you drop them they are a lot easier to find.

7. My husband feels he needs something that tells him how to shoot the bow based on how far away the animal is. Does he need a scope or a rangefinder? And is there one that would also work for rifle AND bow?

He needs a range finder and I use my Bushnell when bow hunting but it will work just fine for rifle hunting out to 400-500 yards, further if the animal is twice its normal size and wearing a reflective suit.  (P made a joke!)

8. We live WAY up north in South Dakota. He would like a pair of really warm boots that are warm enough to snowmobile in. Do you have any suggestions in that arena?

I have no idea, cold to us is 35 degrees. A good pair of Smart Wool socks takes care of us down here. Some good brands would be Danner, Rocky, Irish Setter and I have had several pairs of Cabela’s name brand boots with excellent results.  (Judging by the fact that I haven’t been warm in weeks as the temps here have hovered in the 50’s, I’d bet that I wouldn’t need warm boots if I lived in South Dakota because I’d never go outside.)

And now I’m off to go find another blanket to wrap around me.

It’s in the 60’s here today, so BRRR.