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Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Friday • 05.09.08 • 10:22 AM
Blog Stuff - • Comments (4)

Long post ahead with much use of bad words and run on sentences from hell.  I hope you can feel me seething through the monitor.  You people just don’t know how angry, no, how enraged I am.  I’ve tried to see the humour in the situation.  I didn’t want anyone to know how bad it was.  It’s humiliating even though I was not the cause of this.  I didn’t want anyone to say, “Why in the world would you people even think to try and make this habitable.” I swore to myself I would never post these pictures because regardless of the fact I did not create this, it’s too embarrassing for words.  I had an emotional meltdown.

I tried to maintain normalcy and do normal things.  I managed not to feel sorry for myself.  I managed not to cry.  I managed not to scream at my MIL when she called because she needed GeekMan to do this or fix that.  In all of this I did the raffle so Lisa could have a special gift and managed to mostly keep things straight even in the face of assholes who wanted to make me look like a thief and a liar and unethical because they didn’t do it first so they could look all altrustic and make everyone think they were oh so fucking wonderful because they wanted it to be all about them (which fuck you and I hope you rot in hell because you are nasty, vicious, vile, spiteful, cruel, HATEFUL people and I most certainly believe in karma and it WILL find you.) I managed to blog a little bit and I crocheted a baby blanket.

But then…

I was on the 4th coat of primer in the master bedroom in which the walls looked like this after sanding. If you look closely, you can see where someone drew a barn on the wall, this is what it looks like now (the ‘window treatments’ are theirs, we hadn’t yet taken them down because they were so full of dust and grossness, I had to get up the nerve to touch them) And my niece called.  Her mother is the one who destroyed the house but she lived in it too and she was the one who caused a huge amount of the basement destruction because the rooms down there were built for her.  When it got so bad, so full of mold and garbage, my niece just left it and moved upstairs into the house proper.  She helped destroy it and then abandoned it. 

She says they want to come over to “See how things are going.”

So she comes with the baby, her little sister and her mother.

Now let me just say something here.  That child, the little sister, is 11 years old.  She is the only child in the world about whom I can comfortably and without remorse or shame say that I hate.  Hate is a strong word I know.  But it is the only word that sufficiently describes what I feel for that child.  There is something wrong with her.  Really, really wrong.  I don’t think she has a conscience.  GeekMan said she reminded him of a budding serial killer (this is HIS niece by blood) and he hit the nail on the head.

Anyway…

SIL says, “What are you doing?  I say, “Priming the bedroom walls.” She says, “That’s nice.” And I am becoming my own self help best seller, “Breathe...just breathe...find your happy place.”

So the Miniature Serial Killer asks if she can go into the cellar.  I tell her to watch out because there’s wood with nails around.  She trots her serial killer cookies downstairs.

She comes up and says to her mother, “They RUINED the cellar!!”

Here’s a few pics of the cellar already in the beginning of cleanup...which means it was much worse:

pic 1
pic 2
pic 3
pic 4
pic 5
pic 6
pic 7

I was in total shock, the mold smell was horrible and I didn’t have a respirator rated for mold and it was hard to move around so I didn’t take a lot of pictures.  These pictures do not do it justice.  Seriously.  Please remember this is HER FUCKING GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE.  A FAMILY HOME.  SOMETHING SOME PEOPLE MIGHT, YOU KNOW, TREASURE.

GeekMan has singlehandedly deconstructed 4 rooms in the cellar and 2 in the garage.  They had built rooms in a basement that originally had 3.  It was divided down the middle.  One room was his work shop.  The other was her canning/laundry area with a small room with cabinets for the canned foods and a small root cellar.  They turned the workshop half into 3 fucking rooms.  He had to take them all down, plus the canning room/root cellar.  A house with no gutters cannot maintain a dry basement....which it used to be.  I remember what it was like before and it showed the pride and love his grandfather had put into it.  Adding more rooms only adds to the moisture.  He has been working on cleaning this out (filling the three 3 ton dumpsters with all the crap and grossness) for nearly 3 fucking weeks and it’s still not finished!

Here’s some pics of the progress:

pic 1 (corresponds to pic 1 above)
pic 2 (corresponds to pic 3)
pic 3 corresponds to pic 5
pic 4 (corresponds to pic 7)
pic 5
pic 6

Ruined.  We ruined the cellar.  You have no idea how much restraint I exercised.  I wanted to choke the life out of that little bitch.  I have come to believe that pacifism is highly overrated. 

So then that miserable little ~insert word that no one should ever call a child here~ sees the door knobs.  Expensive, beautiful Schlage door knobs, and says, “Those don’t match the doors.” So I said, “Well, at least they HAVE door knobs now.” Because they didn’t.  You may remember me posting about first seeing the place and how GeekMan was showing me the damage and how he was already in the living room while I was still standing in the doorway, “There are no doorknobs?  Why are there no doorknobs?”

Then she says, “That faucet doesn’t go with the kitchen.  You’ll need new cabinets and counter tops.” That faucet, the one we had to replace because the one that was there was leaking so bad and for so long that the the faucet itself was rusted.  The floor of the cabinet underneath had turned to mush.  Yes, the WOOD was squishy, you could take a handful of fucking wood.  It was moldy, wet, had a fucking bucket under the pipes because it had been leaking for 3 fucking years.  That mismatched faucet cost $200 freaking dollars and it is beautiful.  And this kid is talking about things matching.

And her mother says, “Yeah, it looks out of place.”

And I was:  Breathe.  Find your happy place.  Oceans and kitties and rainbows. 

As we need to replace things...which is everything, we are replacing it with stuff we will keep.  It might seem odd to add a beautiful faucet but why buy something that will just be replaced?  So yeah.  I have a vision.  It does not include a $12 bargin outlet faucet.

And then this ~insert really, really bad word no one should ever call a child here~ says, “Can I go see if the kids next door are home?” Her mother says, “Ok but be careful.” The house next door is having a second floor added.  They just finished framing it.  There is nobody at home since they don’t have a freaking roof right now.  And the entire front yard is full of construction debris and men are over there working. 

Is it just me?  Seriously.  Am I the only one who is flabbergasted by how fucking clueless these people are?  And I tell her they cannot live there right now.  But she goes out into their back yard.  She sees a toddler’s see-saw which belonged to my other SIL who gave it to the people next door.  She comes running in…

“The see-saw is over there and it’s all clean!  We should take it for the baby!” And her mother says, “Oooo!  Go get it and bring it over!” And I say, “It was given to them.”

And in my mind I am hung up on the it’s all clean statement.  I’m hearing: “Someone else cleaned it!  Yay!  Now it’s good and we’ll take it!” And my jaw hurt from clenching it so hard.

And then SIL says, “Why do you have so many cleaners (cleaning products)?  Why would you need all that?” And I said, “I like things clean.” And she said something else about it but I couldn’t listen anymore.  My blood pressure was skyrocketing and I could feel the blood pulse in my neck.

So I took the baby and played with him, randomly smiling through my teeth at them.

So she then SIL said, “Why is there a bed in the living room?” And I said “Because GeekMan is spending some overnights trying to finish the basement before the inspection because it will fail inspection as it is.”

But in my mind I said:

Yes, He’s been staying up til 1 AM cleaning and then he goes to work at 6 AM.  And he hasn’t stopped since she got out and we came in to try to do what we need to do to fix things and clean things and make things relatively presentable so the fucking house won’t fail inspection so we can actually get the fucking loan to buy the fucking thing.  And we can’t even apply for the loan until this shit is done, you stupid fucking cuntwhoreassholeidiotmoroncuntfuckingstupidwhore.  And we have so far put ten fucking grand into this place, $4000 of which was just for the fucking dumpsters alone, and it still needs the chimney fixed and the bulkhead, which sustained so much rain damage the brick actually fell two fucking inches and is crumbling because you let the gutters fall the fuck off...you let the gutters fall off the fucking house you stupid fucking cunt and we have to have that fixed BEFORE we can have it inspected or it will not pass you dumb careless stupid miserable filthy fucking whore.

And finally they left.

I realise that the kid is only emulating what she knows.  I know it is not her fault she’s a fucking idiot.  And it wasn’t what she said.  It was that this is how they are and what stupid fucking shit his sister has said previously and this kid is so fucked up she thinks living in filth is a normal way to live.  It rubs me raw that there has never been any acknowledgement from them for what they did.

And I went outside with GeekMan to have a smoke...yes, I am smoking again.  Can you blame me?  (I’m stunned I’ve not taken up drinking.) And I told him, “She can’t be here ever again because I’ve kept my mouth shut by sheer force of will and I don’t think I can do it anymore.  And I’m sorry if that will make your life a living hell because she works for you but I’m beyond the limit of my patience...if you can call it patience...no, it’s restraint and I can’t restrain myself anymore.  I’ve never in my life manged to show this much restraint in the face of sheer idiocy.  I can’t do it anymore.”

And he said, “I know.  We can’t let her be here because I’m where you’re at.” And that is amazing because GeekMan is a fucking saint when it comes to restraint.  He is mellow (mostly.) He is patient and he knows how to shut up.

I’ll tell ya, I have never managed this much restraint ever.  I have never managed to keep my mouth shut ever.  I say what I feel.  But I don’t want to add even more stress to the stress he is alreadly feeling by flaying her alive with my tongue.  But I am at the point where worry over his stress and maintaining restraint is no longer possible.  I just can’t do it.

You have no idea...none...how angry I am.  I don’t get angry.  I get annoyed, pissy, bitchy...but I rarely hit outright rage.  And I’m there.  I am so there.  I swear to God, if there wasn’t so much to do in so little time, I’d be seriously seeking therapy.  I would be raging to a psychiatrist who would no doubt medicate me heavily.  I’m not kidding.  I’m serious.  I guarantee, I would get put on “the good drugs.” But I have to swallow it down because I don’t know if we can actually get what needs done finished in the timeline we had laid out for getting the loan, having the inspection and hopefully moving into a house that is move-into-able which right now it’s not.

I leave you with 5 more pics.  This would be the cooktop before.  This would be the cooktop after.  It was the best I could do.  The knobs, which of course were gone, cost $60.  For 6 pieces of plastic.  This is the range hood.  I’ve used engine degreaser and it’s only mildly less digusting.  I wish I had taken a ‘before’ pic of the oven but it was so horrible it took me 2 weeks to work up the nerve to clean it.

And this and this are pictures of the sunroom.  They speak for themselves

I spent the day thinking on whether or not I would post this.  I was going to make this a private post because I feel so humiliated and I didn’t want the assholes to read it.  But fuck it.  I’m not going to pretend and keep it hidden simply because it embarrasses me.

So yeah, that whole blogging thing?  Not so much right now.  I stayed up til 2 last night to write this only because I am so fucking angry, I needed to vent so I vent here.

And I finally cried while I wrote it.  And now I feel completely sorry for myself.  But it’s ok.  It won’t last long.

As long as that filthy slob bitch and her serial killer kid stay the fuck away from me.

Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Wednesday • 05.07.08 • 11:12 PM
Shut Up And Let Me Talk - The Big Move - OMFG! WTF?! - • Comments (32)

In all of this moving stuff, I was trying really hard to finish an afghan for a soon to be little boy baby who is the fruit of the loins of my favouritest Trailer Trash¹ Person ever. 

So I took some pictures.

Here’s the blankie.

Here’s the edging of the blankie.

Here’s the blankie undergoing rigorous inspection.

It’s a pale blue colour (but darker than the picture) with a little variegated baby print.  The blue is Bernat Satin.  It sucks.  I hate it.  I will never use it again ever.  While it is sucky yarn to work with and while I am in fear that the knots will come undone and it will become an unraveled mess of yarn, it is, however, really, really soft.  It’s from the Heirloom Afghans For Baby Leisure Arts book.

¹ Could be White Trash.  I forget which.

Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Tuesday • 05.06.08 • 12:17 PM
I'm So Talented - • Comments (9)

Pretty much our new house has that lawn hayfield, right?  And there’s all kinds of mutant hybrid things around here.  (No, I’m not one of them, m’k?) So what with the spider crickets (sprickets) and the dormant squirrels in walls (squiders), and the pricker bushes from hell (sprickers), we discovered what we now er...affectionately...refer to as The Squaper.

My SIL not the one who lived in the house, the other one, the drama queen, used to work at Borders or some place like that.  She was the lucky recipient of a roll of gift wrap.  A big roll of gift wrap.  A really, really, really big roll of gift wrap.  She had three large men (I’m thinking The Hulk, Hercules and Ah-nold) bring this thing into the cellar and put it in the former room formerly known as The Root Cellar which is no longer a room which is why I call it The Former Room.

Anyways…

This was where the basement window was broken for 12 years so water came into the cellar mostly from that one window.  And it poured down onto this really, really, really big roll of gift wrap.  And God said, “That is not good.” After years and years of unimpeded water damage, the really, really, really big roll of gift wrap turned into a really, really, really big roll of paper maché.  And it exponentially grew in size and weight.

And we needed to get it out of the cellar but it weighs in the vicinity of 350 lbs.  No, I’m not kidding.  This is serious business here.  Since me and GeekMan have done all the clean up ourselves, it fell to us to get that out of there.  So GeekMan decided to put a piece of plywood over the bulkhead stairs, bound the Squaper up in plastic and tied it up with rope and then we...as in including me...hauled that fucker up the plywood ramp onto the back lawn hayfield.  It got stuck about 3/4 of the way up.  I seriously didn’t think we were going to get it over the top but when I have to I can give over the girly stuff¹ and man up, not often, mind you, but it can be done, so I put a little more back² into it and up it came in a big, wet, ball of yuck. 

And so this Squaper sat on the back lawn hayfield for 10 days and in that time it rained.  And so then the last of the 3 ton dumpsters was being picked up on Monday.  Which would be yesterday.  So GeekMan says we need to get rid of it.  I just stared at him blankly.  Getting it up 8 steps on a ramp was a problem, how in the hell are we gonna get it 10 feet into the air to drop it in the dumpster?  Being ever so bright, I suggested the tried and true Ashes To Ashes, Dust To Dust method.  Ok, so it might take a few years but who will notice if you stick it out on the lawn hayfield?

But no.  He says he has a plan.  When he gets plans, which means he has ideas, which means he is thinking, I get really, really scared.  Because he knows things.  He knows stuff no real human person has any business knowing.  And it always means a lengthy explanation and his explanations make my brain hurt.

So he says he is going to rig a pulley system and he starts talking about leverage and how 350 lbs becomes 70 lbs and PI and breaking the time-space continuum and sound barriers and who knows wtf else.  And I just look at him and his voice starts to fade and I see him through a tunnel as if from far away and my brain tries to run away and hide but OMFG!  He’s still talking!

So then Anyways...he goes and builds what looks like a crucifix and it has nylon rope and metal things and he ties things and then he clips all this crap onto the rope holding the Squaper together and then he says, “Hold this and don’t let it move.” And then he says he needs more pulleys because the 350 lbs has not become 70 lbs and so we go to Ace but they’re closed so he says he is going to get up early (he slept over there), go to Ace, buy more pulleys and get the Squaper in the dumpster before they pick it up at 9:00 AM.

And I said,

And then I also said, “If you die before this house is finished, I will pee on your cold, lifeless³, corpse and bury you in the lawn hayfield with the Sprickets and Squiders and I will plant Sprickers on your grave.”

But he somehow (it’s all very scientific and stuff) got the Squaper in the dumpster without losing life or limb.  Which saved him from becoming a pee smelling lifeless corpse.  Instead, he is a sweat smelling alive corpse-like walking dead thing with aches and pains who could technically be a zombie because everytime he tells me about one of his Plans, he eats a little bit more of my brain.

¹ I am a girl and I refuse to wear pants so I bought a denim dress and a (STFU plzthx) pink sundress specifically for The House Project and my shoes, specifically chosen to be destroyed with all this work, are pink slides.  Anyways....

² Even though I have broken numerous bones, cut through numerous nerves and tendons, and otherwise abused myself over the years, I have a good back and no neck problems.  I assume this would be because God felt sorry for making me so accident prone.

³ I realise that corpses, by their very nature, are lifeless which is what makes them a corpse, but sometimes I like to add in redundant words to make things sound more severe than they already are.  And stuff like that.

PS:  I came home early last night to get something else done that needed doing which I will post about tomorrow and which is why I got to write a lengthy post about Squaper and bladder control issues.

Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Tuesday • 05.06.08 • 10:35 AM
The Big Move - • Comments (19)

Remind me to tell you about the sprickers and the squaper and how GeekMan has apparently developed a Grand Plan which will probably result in his death and how I told him I would pee on his dead body if he had the nerve to die on me before this house is done. 

Otherwise, I might forget because I hear surpressed memories are all the thing in psychology these days.

Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Monday • 05.05.08 • 2:35 AM
The Big Move - • Comments (3)

So my stepson is in the hospital again.  He had another surgery.  I’m not sure what’s going on with him and I won’t know until later today.  I’m really worried about him.  I don’t think they know what’s wrong with him at all.  It was exploratory surgery which to me, is just flying blind.  Poor kid.

On the house front, the cellar is cleaned out.  Pretty much the whole house is cleaned out and we won’t need a FOURTH 30 ton dumpster. 

We’ve picked out the marble for the countertop and floors and all the stuff for the bathroom.  The bathroom is going to cost nearly twice as much as the kitchen...we don’t need cabinets which is generally the biggest expense for a kitchen remodel so we’re able to really splurge on marble for countertops and floor, which seriously rocks.  We bought the sexiest fridge and stove I’ve ever seen.  So GeekMan being the pig that he is, says, “ Ya know, all I have to do to get the chicks is to stand next to that fridge.  They’ll be begging to blow me just so I’d let them open the doors.” I told him good luck with that.  He’s more likely to get bitchslapped out of the way by crazy women shoppers lusting over appliances.  He’s never been to Filenes Basement during a 60% off sale.  Seriously.

The bulkhead is being fixed next week.  I’ve got the bedroom primered.  It’s been raining which is why it’s taken so long.  All the wasps are gone but we found what can only be described as a bird condo in the eaves of the sun porch.  This wasn’t ‘just a nest.’ It was a birdy mansion.  We scared her into the sun porch where she did the whole banging herself around horribly til she found her way out.  She’s homeless now.  There’s another nest in the gazebo which I discovered when the bird flew out and scared the bejesus out of me.  The yard/hayfield is being brought to shape this weekend.  The barn, gazebo and sun porch can all be saved.  We weren’t sure if they were too water damaged to make it.

It’s coming along and I think except for the kitchen, siding and seamless gutters, pretty much everything that needs to be done will be done by the time we’re ready to move in July.  All of that stuff will be done after we’re in which living with a kitchen in a state of remodel is gonna be a bitch.  I’ll get over it.

So that’s pretty much the lay of the land.  Send good vibes my stepson’s way.  I’m worried about him.

Posted by Miss Ann Thrope on Friday • 05.02.08 • 1:01 PM
Family Stuff - The Big Move - • Comments (19)