Of Marble, Men, and Maltese Canines

Everywhere we look, our house appears to be falling apart. Most of the repairs require money we don’t have, so we try to turn a blind eye. When we moved here over twenty years ago, we told ourselves that it was a fixer-upper, and by-gosh-by-golly it still is! All of our renovation dollars went into that large amount of funds required to raise one child and numerous dogs—I think it’s an estimate in the hundreds of thousands. I find it too painful to research the exact sum, but so far, it has been our only investment with justifiable returns.

Anyway, a few years back I picked up a kitchen trivet from the counter to discover that it was covering a huge weltering burn mark. We host many family and other gatherings, so some scoundrel did the damage, covered up the murder, and stayed for a few more drinks. Of course, the trivet found a permanent home there. Then my BFF Jill accidentally set a plastic plate afire with a birthday candle and burned some odd shapes into another portion of the counter. She felt terrible, but I truly didn’t care because the whole thing was a mess already. Besides, I drew a Happy Pig and Dancing Horse around the burn marks that made for a spiffy conversation piece if I might say so myself, although some people said the pig looked more like an aardvark.

A bargain is never a bargain, but we are also people who don’t learn. We got a great offer on some marble “left over” from another project and the seller told us he knew some people who would cut and install it for less than we could have ever imagined. It was a bargain we couldn’t afford but couldn’t afford to miss. When the installers called Jack early on the morning of the job and the first thing Jack yelled into the phone was, “That’s a bunch of crap!” I knew the day would be going downhill from there.

Supposedly the stone cutter/installers needed more stone even though they had done all of the measuring and assured us it could be done for our budgeted amount. Wow it seems like only last year but was just five days ago when they broke the kitchen sink pipe off at the wall, disconnected all my fixtures (including the dishwasher), and left us with countertops that looked like a very bad glued-together jigsaw puzzle. Jack yelled, “I wish I’d never seen this damn stuff!” I just felt sick that I was going to have to look at the botched job for the remainder of my life.

After much “diplomacy” the installers returned and removed the most offensive portions of the countertop. They were gone for three days while I tried to work on a table covered with every item that previously resided in the kitchen. (I have to work off of the kitchen table because Max can’t make it downstairs to the office.) They finally returned. In the melee of trying to keep lab Max and pug Moses in a back room where they wouldn’t bother the workers, answering phones, and so on, I lost one of my paychecks from a client. I prayed and I sweated, but my prayers went unanswered. I never found the check even after considerable dumpster diving. However, I did find a large honeydew melon ripening in the seat of one of my dining room chairs.

I inhaled a lot of passive glue fumes during said installation and took it upon myself to advise the very young men doing the work that they should be wearing masks. “Constantly inhaling this stuff cannot be good for you,” I admonished. “They stared at me blankly. I told them the story of Popcorn Lung. One of them said, “Wow man.” I had as much impact on them with my warning as I do with my own twenty-year-old: namely, absolutely none. However, they appeared to be slightly amused by my efforts to protect them from lung cancer or worse two decades from now.

Jack came home and though I was relieved and pleased with the results, he started yelling out things like, “Hell, this is a quarter of an inch off!” “Where’s the damn backsplash right here?” “Damn it, I told them to make this hole an eight of an inch bigger!” “The stove won’t fit back in this space!” (Actually it all did fit due to Jack’s expertise later, but this kind of reaction is a pattern of his.) Between calls to Jack, dogs, “work, and lack thereof” and the mess around me, I needed to get out, and since there was no visible means available of preparing any food other than cereal, Jack, my Mom (who had come up to view the debacle), and I went out for a bite. Returning after dark on a busy road that fronts our road of habitat Jack slammed on the brakes for what appeared to be a tiny white and dead long-haired squirrel. Instead it was a white Maltese puppy lying in the middle of the road. She stood up and wagged her tail, stared into the headlights, and appeared to have no idea that she was soon to become road kill. Jack got out of the car, picked her up, brought her to the car, and handed her to me. She was adorable and wore a little pink collar with LOVE embossed on it with rhinestones.

“We don’t need this!” I wailed. “We can’t leave her here and there is no way I’m taking this dog treat to Max. I don’t think he would hurt her, but he could accidentally sit on her.” We started ringing doorbells, and mind you, this is not in a well-lighted neighborhood, but on a rural, dark road. “Well Jack looks cute carrying that little dog around like that,” Mom commented from the back seat. Long story short, we took the dog home and called and called all of the neighbors we could. Amidst much barking, we eventually found the owner who was very happy to be reunited with the little pup that had been let out of the front door inadvertently by the husband.

“She is not street smart!” explained the neighbor when she came to pick up Sassy (her name we now know). “I never let her out alone. He just doesn’t pay attention. I’m going to kill my husband!” she said.

“Well, time’s a wastin’” I advised.