What fresh hell is this...

This is today's project. Eventually this room will be Bruce's man cave but for now it's a breeding ground for mold. It's also apparently the room where coolers go to die since we found three of them in there, none of which belong to us.

Daisy was not at all pleased that we were once again moving her dirt. The vet tells me that she's got an anxiety disorder. I told him it's probably puppy PTSD from the number of times we've dropped construction materials on her because she refuses to wear a hard hat.

So the goal today was to rip out the remaining drywall and the nasty, moldy pink insulation which was going quite smoothly until Bruce pulled down a strip of insulation and found this:

And yes, it's live. So Bruce goes to get his little magic wand that tests the wires. Not only is that random mess of wires live but so is the electrical outlet we found buried behind the drywall on the opposite side of the room.

Bruce calls this his concerned face. Obviously he's far more used to this than I am. I'm all hyperventilaty like, "We almost died in a fire!" And since we watch way too much Holmes on Homes, I yelled, "That is SO not up to code!"

Bruce then decided we should cut the power to the room before we finished the demo since I have a bad habit of hurting myself while working on the house and I'm thinking he was picturing me accidentally jamming the crowbar into a live wire and just...yeesh.

There's a nice handy electrical breaker in the garage that's labeled "Room Above Garage" so Bruce ran down to trip the breaker. The funny part of this is that none of the four breakers actually turned the bedroom off. After a bit of finkling around (yes, that's a real word. Because I said so.)it was determined that the breaker that actually turned off the bedroom was the breaker for our bathroom...all the way across the hall...which we also discovered powers our hallway light in the stairwell. And the outlet in the garage that the compressor is plugged into. Oops. So basically our shitter was powering the air tools. Who says you can't power machines with methane?

Bruce: You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me!
Me: Honey, have you met this house? It's so not kidding.

So while Bruce continued to mutter about "what kind of idiots pull this shit when building a house", I went downstairs and threw the giant pile of garbage in the dumpster. At least now we won't die in a fire.

"I just bought a bag for my balls.."

Last week Bruce's beloved Chevy Tahoe bit the dust. We went and shopped around until he found the love of his life: a hooker red Toyota Tundra. Since he has a boat a trailer hitch is a necessary accessory for his new toy and this morning he was laying in bed looking up hitches on the internet.

"Hey look at this. They have a section that's simply called 'Balls'. Hehehe."
Of course I giggled because come on, that's funny.

After deciding on a hitch he turns to me and says, "Look, I even got a bag for my balls."
It's a good thing I was finished with my tea by the time that gem came out of his mouth.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

So apparently Jenny Lawson and I have a freakish amount of stuff in common. Well, aside from the fact that I didn't grow up in Texas. And my father didn't torture me with strange wild animals. Though he did make a rattlesnake out of his fingers and chase me around the house with it.

Now that The Prince knows I blog about him I can tell you his name is Bruce and our beagle is named Daisy (remember that because you'll need that information later). This story begins this past Christmas when Bruce decided to get me a Kindle. I hadn't moved in with him yet but I had actually made the mistake of taking him to see my storage unit. This was a bad idea mostly because I had just gotten done convincing him that I'm not a packrat, but the wall to wall shit in my 10' by 15' unit told a different story. It also gave him a peek into my minor book obsession.

"How many crates of books are stacked in that corner?"
"Um...seventeen."
He nodded. "Seventeen. Plus the book case at your mom's house, the books under the desk at your mom's house, and the ladder that's being used a book case, and the books piled on the floor."
"Don't forget the two boxes of books in the closet. Oh and the one in the trunk of my car. The guy at the car place said that's probably why the back end of my car scrapes the ground."

I'm pretty sure that conversation ended with him saying something about me being allowed to move in but since there are only four bedrooms in the house I'd have to scale back on my books. I almost left him that day...

So I got a Kindle for Christmas. Which was a bad plan on Bruce's part because he also wanted me to watch "A Christmas Story" for the first time with him. He was utterly disgusted with the idea that I had never seen it and he felt that I had missed out on a key part of my childhood. The only problem being he had handed me an electronic gadget (I love gadgets) that was connected to millions of books. Did he really think I'd be able to watch a movie instead?

Fast forward to my birthday. My mother didn't know what to buy me so she gave me money. And I bought another Kindle. Bruce came home to find me sitting on the couch reading my new Kindle and he gave me a funny look.

"Didn't I give you a Kindle for Christmas?"
"Yes."
"And you bought another one?"
"Yes."
"Why? Oh I see. You got the Kindle Fire. So my poor black and white Kindle isn't good enough for you now?"
"No. That's not it at all."
"Then why did you get another Kindle?"
"Um....I filled the other one up already."
He looked dumbfounded at this answer.
"You filled it up? Doesn't that thing hold like thousands of books?"
"Mhm."
"Then how the hell did you fill it up?"
"I downloaded 7,000 books this morning."

And then he walked away.

But of course the first thing I downloaded on my new Kindle Fire was "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson. And now I have an author crush on her because we should so be friends.

A Novel Idea

Once again I'm blogging at work. Why, you ask? Because I have little to no spare time thanks to the death trap house which I'm convinced is trying to kill me. Evidenced by the sliver I got today that was the size of a small Eastern European country. Do any of you know of any wood borne diseases I should be worried about?

The other item on my ever growing To Do list is to finish my first ever novel! Yes, you heard right. No more of this historical nonfiction nonsense. I'm finally turning my hand to gratuitous abandoned building ghosty foolishness. And I LIKE IT!

A Prisoner in the Asylum, the first book in what I hope will become a series, is about a quarter of the way done and for once, it seems the idea is sticking and I'm managing to keep the story flowing. However, I'm the only one reading it so it could very likely be a bunch of crap but hey, A for effort, yeah?

I must go teach! My poor creative writing deprived students need me!

Home Improvement Hell

See, I'm slacking already and not writing regularly. That's what happens when the only spare time you have is spent cleaning sawdust and joint compound out of all of hur crevices. However, I am indeed still alive and still writing, though right now I'm sitting on a ladder watching the Prince put up electrical boxes. Altogether not too exciting!