My Matchmaker Moment

I went to one of my favorite bars last Friday night, which is significant because said bar is over an hour away from my humble abode, so it's not one that I frequent. Not that I frequent bars, of course.

At said bar, I was talking off and on throughout the evening to an older gentleman. We started out laughing about a guy who tried to pick me up with a line older than I am, and gradually progressed to talking about relationships, our respective failed marriages, and the sad state of courtship today.

During our last conversation, the music turned to a slow song. I watched out of the corner of my eye as a woman seated near us at the bar cast a few quick, sidelong glances at my oblivious new acquaintance. After a few moments, I couldn't resist leaning over to whisper in his ear that his lady friend wanted him to ask her to dance. He immediately looked doubtful and replied that she would never dance with him. At the same moment, the lady in question glanced furtively in our direction once again, and I almost laughed out loud as I assured him that, oh, yes, she most definitely would. He looked quickly and not quite furtively at her, and then back at me, and confided that he was "not much for dancing." I reminded him that he had two perfectly good feet, and not much more than that was required. Then I excused myself to step away, sit back, and watch.

For a minute, I didn't think it would happen. Then he turned around in his seat to shoot me a look that was somewhere between dumbfounded and terrified, and I responded with my best "what are you waiting for?" glare. Another long moment, a "what-the-hell" shrug, and my new friend FINALLY asked his probably-long-suffering lady friend to dance.

I watched them make their way to the dance floor, and flashed my friend a final thumbs-up before I headed for the door. I'll probably never know how it turned out, but I like to think that maybe I started something good.

So what's it all about?

I mentioned to a co-worker recently that I have a blog, albeit a much-neglected one. Her immediate question was "What do you write about?" Hmm... a very good question, considering that I barely write at all. I think if I had to limit my musings and ramblings to any one topic, I probably would never write at all.

So what do I blog about? Maybe the better question is, what did I think I was going to blog about? I guess I thought I was a much more interesting person when I started this. And maybe I was, since at that point I was a suburban Yankee refugee living in the sticks in almost-nowhere Mississippi, which was at least marginally humorous, if not all that interesting.

I didn't think I would write about my personal struggles, except to poke fun at them, because I didn't want to have a whiny blog. I was mindlessly browsing blogs one night, and I found one written by a woman who did nothing but complain about her job and her supervisor. Every post -- and she wrote a lot more than I probably ever will -- was a tirade about her boss. I guess it's cheaper than therapy. Which, come to think of it, would be a really good name for a blog. Or that tell-all book I'm going to write one of these days. Except I really imagined that my memoir and each of its chapters would all have the titles of country songs, and each one would start with a few lines from the song. They could even use actual clips of the song when they publish it as an audiobook. Or a podcast, or whatever they're doing to books by that time.

The chapter about this week would have to be called "Songs About Rain," because that's all it's done for three whole days. Last Sunday I was sitting on my back deck enjoying my last naive glimmer of hope that the Eagles might have a decent season after all. It was about 80 degrees and I was loving life in the South. Now it's 52 and it'll be 46 by morning. My apologies to the people in California who would probably really like the seven inches of rain (OK, I'm exaggerating) we've gotten this week. I'd gladly send it to you if I could. But for now I'm going to go home and try to find some sweaters. And see if I can figure out what it's really all about.

There are just some things...

... you shouldn't put into a bathtub. Hairdryers, radios, toasters, cats -- and ladders. Ladders do not work well in bathtubs, regardless of whether or not there's a bath in the tub. How do I know this? Because I tried it, of course.

Anyone who's talked to me recently has been subconsciously waiting for the wallpaper post. They knew it would be coming sooner or later. And I would never disappoint...

Two days after the bottom dropped out of the mortgage market, my boyfriend decided that he wanted to sell his house. For the first time in recorded history, every economist in America is in agreement on a single point: now is THE WORST possible time since the Great Depression to even dream about selling a house. But my boyfriend has never before let common sense get in the way of his enthusiasm. Why start now?

Fresh from many nights of HGTV research, I compiled a five-page pre-sale to-do list. I figure that by the time we get it done, the housing market will be well on its way to a rebound. Or the house will have fallen down.

First on my list: the wallpaper has to go. I convinced my boyfriend on this point with my large, and still growing, collection of quotes on how much homebuyers hate wallpaper. I had no idea how much I would come to hate wallpaper. Someone else who had lived in the house before had liked wallpaper, but apparently another someone did not, because he or she had painted over the old wallpaper. My boyfriend subsequently made a paint-and-wallpaper sandwich. And now it was up to me to clean the plate.

The kitchen wasn't that bad, mostly because I got to leave large piles of soggy, shredded, sticky paper all over every inch of countertop and most of the floor. My boyfriend is, by his own admission, obsessive-compulsive about cleaning his kitchen. So obsessive, in fact, that he's never actually cooked in the kitchen, because he doesn't like to mess it up. Not to worry, I had no such qualms. After all, I got to go home and cook in my own kitchen without being afraid that I'd end up picking wallpaper out of my dinner.

My boyfriend, being obsessive-compulsive, rarely cares to engage in projects that may upset his well-ordered world. I learned very quickly that the best way to cajole him into action was to start the upsetting process in as dramatic and disruptive a way as I could manage. That way, he'd have to finish the project as soon as possible to restore his order to my chaos. Hence, I started the de-flowering (as in magnolia-print) of the bathroom by tugging at a large piece of wallpaper that had already started to come loose above the shower. I left it hanging as obtrusively as possible, and waited for nature to take its course. Two days later, the vast majority of the magnolias had vanished, leaving behind a sticky residue of wallpaper glue that became my next home improvement project.

I came armed with iPod, scrapers, sponges, and a ladder. Six hours later, all of the above -- and every inch of me -- were covered in a sticky residue of wallpaper glue. Not that it stopped the ladder from sliding around in the bathtub, of course. There are just some things...