Daily Archives: May 9, 2007

May 9

Bogged Down

I still have water here in my downstairs.  I can’t tell if I still have a leak or not because what happened when we noticed a problem was that there seemed to be a growing bubble of water under the carpet that would squish out if you stepped on it, but otherwise, hadn’t yet quite come up through the carpet.

Now we no longer have a giant bubble of water; instead it’s just spread out over more of the room, but is shallower.

I have a fan on it; as soon as I have towels that are dry, I have towels soaking it up.

Here is my question for you, internet, since the leak is/was so slow in the first place, and the amount of water rather large, how in the world do I tell if things are getting worse, staying the same, or getting better?

In other words, how can I tell if there’s still a leak, which would necessitate me staying home from work tomorrow to be here for the plumber to come back?

And also, why didn’t the Butcher fix this with his magic powers?

I mean, aside from the fact that he doesn’t have magic powers.

Edited to add:

So, I’ve sopped up the water as best I can with towels, put the towels in the washer on spin, and now they’re in the drier.  Once they’re dry, I’m going to sop up again and see if that seems like less water.

9:50–It does seem like a lot less water.  Towels were getting soaked, but not nearly as quickly as they were the last time and I think I have enough water up that, if I come down in the morning and any water comes up through the carpet and squishes through my toes when I step on it, I will know there’s still a problem.

This morning:

It’s definitely still seeping in.  This probably means that they’ll have to replace my hot water heater.  Can I just tell you how much I’m not looking forward to that?

Especially since I told the Butcher I’d take the day off work today to wait for the plumber, which means I’m the one who’s got to figure out what to do with the dog.

I hate this shit.  I really do.

May 9

Random Things–the Family Edition

–Last night the Butcher told his friends, “We’re totally being liveblogged right now.”  I said, “No you’re not.  You’re not doing anything interesting enough for me to blog about.”  And then I felt immediately bad as they all looked a little hurt and insulted.  But who can blog about a PS2 football game and make it seem interesting?  Not me.

–The Redheaded kid has a tattoo on his forearm of a cross that is so good I keep wanting to take soap and water to it, because it looks totally fake.

–I’m trying to make vacation plans with my parents, which means that I talk to my mom about something and then have to call my dad and see how it was conveyed to him, since my mom has a tendency to make things more interesting than they actually are.  So, I was all like, “I was afraid she might have told you that you all had to stay out at a hippie commune with me and my seventeen lovers.”

And my dad was all, “Well, now, you know I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

Which just goes to show, young single women, that no matter how uptight your parents were when you were growing up, at some point, they’ll accept lesbianism, hippie commune polyamory, or whatever, so long as they can rest assured that someone, somewhere is taking care of you and, thus, by extension, might spoil them a little.

May 9

Help Me Mull This Over

Okay, so it’s pretty widely accepted that the dynamic going on at the height of the lynching era was that white men both felt a lot of anxiety about potential black desire for white women and there’s been a lot of talk about how, since white men could rape black women with impunity, it’s funky or hinky or ironic or meaningful or something that white men were so worried about controlling the sexuality of black men.

We might sum this up as “They’re stealing our women!”

Now, we see a lot of anxiety in the community focused on Mexicans who are “here to steal our jobs.”

And we’ve all agreed that threatening violence against said Mexicans is a component of our broader discussion about what to do about immigration and we’ve all agreed that it’s unacceptable.

My question is–why is it there at all?

We have a lot of aliens in our midst.  Why is so much of our anger and fear focused on Mexicans?  I wonder what that tells us about us.

Are we in the middle of another crisis in white male masculinity, one that centers more on what the white man’s role in the community is rather than what the white man’s role in the bedroom is?

I don’t know.  I just wonder.