Only 15 days until November!

That means I only have 15 days to get stuff done before National Novel Writing Month begins again, and I fling myself back into the race for 50,000 words in 30 days. I will be putting my word count tracker widget up again this year, so you can cheer me on!

I have got to clear my plate before it begins, or else I will have way too many excuses to procrastinate.  Last year I had to leave the house to write most nights because there were so many projects there that caught my attention and distracted me. I spent way too much money stuffing my face as I wrote night after night at the Gelateria that month.

So, in the interests of a healthy bank account, in the next 15 days, I will:

• Finish painting. I have the living room and bedroom left to do.
• Outline my NaNoWriMo story. I have given myself permission to use Post-Its.
• Write at least 4 more blog posts. I’ve been slacking.
• Finish my grad school application and send it in. (Did I forget to mention that? Grad school? More on that in the next post, I think.)
• Visit my grandparents.
• Weatherproof my windows.

And in the next 12 hours, YOU should enter my bath product giveaway at Like. Love. Want. before time is up at midnight tonight!

It’s a double-edged sword, this dishwasher of mine.

When I was first viewing the apartment, I shook my head at the kitchen, noting the absence of a dishwasher.

“It’s kind of a deal-breaker for me,” I commented. “I’m lazy and I like machines to do the work.”

The apartment broker rushed to assure me that they are redoing kitchens in their properties one by one, and dishwashers were coming. In the meantime, she said, she’d be happy to order a portable dishwasher for me to use, and I could pass it on to another tenant if my kitchen was renovated during the time I lived there.

Right on.

My brand-spankin’-new portable dishwasher arrived on move-in day (like I needed another box, right?) and I pushed it into a corner while I focused on the mess with the movers. We ate off paper plates for awhile.

A few days ago, I decided to take all the foam and plastic out of the thing and try it out. Roll to sink. Remove unicouple and hose from back. Attach unicouple to the faucet by twisting – -

Oh. The faucet doesn’t have threads on which to twist the unicouple. The instructions inform me that my local hardware store should have some sort of adapter.

I unscrew the entire faucet and the unicouple adapter and put them in a bag, then slog off to the True Value hardware store a few blocks from my house.

“Please help,” I asked the old man behind the counter, showing him the stuff. “This needs to go onto this but it doesn’t have a thing.”

The old man screws up his lips and ponders the pieces for a moment, then walks silently to a rack of approximately ten zillion pieces of plumbing. He deftly plucks one from a hook, opens the package, and screws it onto my faucet head.

$3.59. All right.

Except that it didn’t entirely work.

I put the faucet back on the sink, put the gasket on the new threaded piece, and screw on the unicouple adapter. The unicouple clicks right on, nice and snug. Too bad that when I turn on the hot water to test the connection I get a wee bit of a hot shower in my kitchen.

I dig out a wrench and give the adapter a good crank.

Another shower.

I unscrew the whole apparatus, remove the gasket, and wrap it in plumbers’ tape. Gasket back on, adapter back on, tighten like hell.

Not a spray, but an aggressive dribble. I swear my cat was laughing at me.

I give up for the evening and have my Hot Pocket dinner on a paper plate. The next day I am back to the hardware store to get a second gasket to reinforce the first. More plumber’s tape on, twist twist twist, click the unicouple into place.

No drips!

I dance over to the counter and plug the machine in. I put soap in the container and a few dirty dishes in it to test the thing out. But before turning it on, I push a button to release the water pressure from the hose where I tested the adapter. Splash, into the sink – and the sink doesn’t drain.

Then it does. Very. Slowly.

Not good.

I find a bottle of Drano in my box of cleaning supplies and tip it down the drain. Fifteen minutes elapse and I am supposed to flush it down with hot water. Which, of course, drains only marginally better than it did before. I pick up the Drano jug and notice that it’s still heavy… turns out that whatever active ingredient is in it has settled to the bottom in a sort of bluish sludge, which I scrape out with a knife and poke down the drain in hopes that maybe it will help.

After another fifteen minutes and another flush of hot water, the sink drains a bit better. Adapter on, unicouple clicked into place, water test, no leaks – GO!

I refuse to leave the kitchen while the washer is running, so fortunately I am close by unpacking plates when I hear a little  noise.

Drip. Drip.

The adapter is dripping. But it’s just a little drip.

I go back to my unpacking. And the noise becomes a high pitched whistle. There is a small, fine spray coming from the adapter. But it’s just a little spray.

I can hear the water in the machine splashing around during the wash part of the cycle, so I know that whatever is in there is a soapy mess and I do not want to stop it right now. So I unpack some more.

Then it’s a bigger spray. I have visions of a deluge of biblical proportions.

I give in and crank the dial to “off” and undo the adapter. It gets another layer of plumbers’ tape and another good crank with the wrench, then I smack the unicouple back into place and set the machine to “rinse only.”

I still get a little dribble as the machine finishes out its cycle, but all I am praying for at that point is that I’m not sending a ton of rinsewater into a machine already full of soapy water, thus flooding the kitchen. But it all miraculously drains into the sink without overflowing, and I triumphantly detach the tubes and cords.

“Ha HAH!” I shout. “I win!”

E comes in from the living room and pats me on the back. “Good job, honey,” he says, relieved that he won’t have to deal with The Crazy anymore that night. “Let’s see how the thing did.”

I pull out a plate. It looks shiny and clean. He pulls out a fork. It has soapy sludge on the tines.

We both frown.

“What did we do with the paper plates?”

I’m not actively job-hunting. Work is fine right now and I have a good job that pays the bills. But a new position is being created in another department at The Hospital and I really feel like that job and I could just love each other forever. I’ve talked with the leadership people in that department and they’ve said they’re definitely interested in me, etc.

I was feeling optimistic.

Then I got an email from Human Resources.

“Thanks for applying to (job). We have considered your application and come to the conclusion that you are way out of your league and we’re going to continue to look for a better applicant with less laughable qualifications. Good luck with your life.”

Or something like that. Like all rejection letters, that’s what it felt like.

So I was sad. Disappointed in myself. Could I have written a better resume? Been more professional when talking with the people in that department? Demonstrated better communication skills? Worn better shoes?

The thing is, I honestly don’t think I am under-qualified for that job. I think I would kick ass, frankly. But things are what they are, and people will make choices that don’t make me happy.

I was determined to resign myself to that fact – after all, I still had a work day to get through before I could go home and pout with my friend Bud (Select). So I frowned, sent a “didn’t get the job, boo on life” text to E, and resolutely turned my attention back to my NovaMind project.

Three minutes later, another email.

From HR.

Huh?

“Please disregard the previous email. Due to a glitch in our system, that message was sent to you by mistake. You are still being considered for (job) and we apologize for your three minutes of sadness.”

YAY! I mean, WTF, but YAY!

Apartment news on the way…

I’ve been working for a few weeks on some posters and other edu-ma-cational goodies for the staff in my department. One of the national regulatory agencies has issued a set of rules we must follow, and my job was to create the various visuals for the education blitz.

There was a lot of back-and-forth about how to word this, how to explain that, until the Powers That Be all finally agreed on the copy and let me have at it with the design work. I was determined to make these things – the posters especially – absolutely professional and perfect. I mentioned to The Boss that due to a lack of appropriate stock photos in my arsenal, I was having a friend from PR come and take some photos in the operating room with me.

“Just make sure everyone is wearing eyewear,” The Boss said. “People keep taking pictures of staff without eyewear and that should never happen.” Duly noted.

My friend and I went into an OR to take the pictures and a nurse stopped us at the door to check that we had our masks and eyewear on. We did, and so did everyone else in the room. After explaining why we were there and getting the releases signed, my friend took some photos of the appropriately eyewear-ed staff and we were done.

I picked out two of the photos and used them on the poster design. They looked perfect. I sent everything to the printer and was hopping happily when 19 big posters were delivered today. The Boss wasn’t in her office, so I left them propped up by her desk.

She calls me.

“The posters look great,” she says. “One thing. Can you come up for a second?”

Doom.

“What’s up?” I ask, walking into her office. She is looking at the poster and biting her lip. “What is it?”

She points at one of the photos. “The girl in the pink scrub cap. She’s not wearing eyewear.”

I squint. “She has to be. They all were.”

“But she doesn’t have goggles on and those masks with the built-in eyeshields have a black stripe. There’s no stripe. The Vice-President and I just noticed it.”

Crap crap crap. How did this happen? I swear to GOD she was wearing eyewear. That was the nurse who checked mine! And now I have violated my sacred charge to make sure that everything we print is compliant with every rule from everywhere.

“I’ll fix them,” I say in a small voice. I want to hide. The Boss shrugs apologetically – she really sympathizes, I know, because she reminds me that she approved the proof, so it’s not just me that missed it. Still. I don’t feel any better. I mentally stamp my forehead with a big “FAIL” and slog back down to my office.

I open the folder of photos and click through until I find the ones from that OR. There’s the girl in the pink scrub cap, not wearing eyewear.

I zoom in. And in. And in.

And there, at 400% magnification, I see it: the glint of a thin plastic eyeshield on a new variety of mask that does NOT have a black stripe.

“I see it I see it I see it!” I yelp to no one in particular, and skitter back upstairs. “She IS!” I say triumphantly, bursting back into The Boss’s office. “She IS wearing eyewear!” I pick up a poster and wave it around.

The Boss picks up her glasses and narrows her eyes at the photo. “Where?”

“That little glimmer. I saw it at 400% zoom. I swear.”

“There?” She points. I nod. Hooray! No need to reprint $800 worth of posters because I made a mistake – because I DIDN’T! Win! The Boss high-fives me and I leave.

“Hey, I’m not so dumb after all,” I say happily to The Boss’s secretary.  “Yay me!” And as I’m speaking, I’m turn toward the doorway and almost run smack into the Vice-President.

“She is wearing eyewear,” I announce, and run away before he can ask me to prove it.

I’ll send him the file.

Literally. Bwahahaha!

I moved into my house in October 2006. I was able to buy it at a great price because it needed updating so badly, and since it was held in a trust the sellers didn’t want to do any work on it and wanted to unload it is soon as possible.

Enter me, with a toolbox, an industrious family, and a Home Depot credit card.

The house officially went on the market last week, and the realtor has had 5 showings already. I’ve been griping a lot about how much it’s taken to get the house ready to show, but when I look back, it’s not much compared to what I did in the first 4 months after moving in.

Here’s some of the most convincing evidence:

LIVING ROOM: BEFORE

LIVING ROOM: AFTER

KITCHEN: BEFORE

KITCHEN: AFTER