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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Of shoes and ships and ceiling stains...

I spent last Saturday picking out my much longed for laminate flooring, courtesy of Lowe's week-end sale on some rather flimsy laminate flooring that goes by the brand name "Laminate Flooring" in a coror called "Harvest Oak," a color which seems to exist nowhere in nature and everywhere in the universe known only to the week-end warrier land. This is an early Christmas present from my father who kept urging me to make sure that this is really what I want, did I want a different color, a different brand, will this really be durable and long lasting? Um, dad? I'm renting. I'm shopping from the right hand side of the menu here as I'm improving someone else's property and well, I think it's damn nice of me as it is.

The landlord, however, has decided thaqt the stain or mark or whateverthehellitis on the ceiling of the apt below us has been caused, specifically, by the lack of carpet in here. It is, apparently, a well known fact that, if one places a piece of carpet on TOP of a leak, the leak will seal itself. This is due to the little known corollary to the first and most fundamental law of physics. "What goes up must come down, unless it's been carpeted." Sir Isaac Newton, dozing under an apple tree one afternoon, was rudely awakened when an apple (more likely an overripe one, young apples of light weight seldom just fall off trees on their own) fell out of said tree onto Sir Isaac's head. And Isaac thought to himsef "Damn. If there had been a rug on top of that tree that apple wouldn't have fallen on my head and I would still be napping." Sir Isaac, btw, later went on to grave robbing (by which I actually mean body moving, there's no proof he helped himself while there) and was instrumental in breaking the Da Vinci code, which proves he was no slouch. Tom Hanks in a mullet, however, is another matter entirely...

So, sometime this week-end I will haul 11 boxes of Harvest Oak "LAMINATE FLOORING" back to Lowes and await Tuesday's installation of brand new cat crap brown carpet. Personally, I think it's a ploy to warm up the place, as we still HAVE. NO. HEAT. The "furnace guy" was here yesterday, he was here for almost three hours by report. When I came in there was the satisfying rattle of a heater in the "on" position. The room was still cold and my husband was wearing a jacket and a knit cap. Well, okay, give it time to warm up, right? Two hours later I decided to bump up the thermostat. Which is hanging from the wall by a corner, unattached to any of it's wires. It's also already set to 90. I walked across the room the put my hand on the wall furnace. I THINK the pilot may be on. I stuck my fingers through the grate and rested them on the heater pipe. (I know, it's stupid. I don't put my hand down the garbage disposal though, so I'm not a total idiot). The cold heater pipe.

I keep saying to myself: Don't give up. Call the manager. Again. There is heat in the world and that heat could be mine. But really I just want to sit here at the desk and prop my head up with my hand, throw in the towel and resign myself to the cold. And for this, I'm paying THEM! And yes, as long as you're asking, I do have a space heater. it routinely blows out the circuit it's on and raises my power bill by 25 dollars a month.

Why do they do that, anyway?

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