DIY, dammit

I ache all over. In the past week, I have done the following feats of Herculean amazingness:

1. Re-grouted our shower, due to water leak that punched a soft, chewy hole in the kitchen ceiling
2. Re-stained deck
3. Drywalled, mudded, and taped hole in said kitchen ceiling
4. Installed two storm doors on dear old Mum’s house
5. Cleaned like a demon

All this and delivered a manuscript, too! And created about 6,235 new concepts for Next Major Project, the ultimate fate of which depend mightily on whether someone wants to pay me to write any particular one. The Duchess has been pushing a particular idea of hers which is an amalgamation of three stories I wrote years ago that she didn’t like much individually, but she hit on the idea of combining them and has haunted me about this ever since, as she believes combining these ideas = instant Nobel Prize. But if someone wants to pay me to write something else–perhaps an Epic Poem dedicated to the lump of green putty found in my armpit this morning–all bets are off.

I am exhausted.

Of course the other night I was sitting at my desk looking out my window onto our street, and a drunken motherfucker stumbled in-between two parked cars as I watched and began urinating lustily. I stared in surprise — I’ve crawled through enough bars on the East Coast to have witnessed plenty of public urination before, but this is the first time it’s happened a) while I was sober myself* and b)  it was right outside my own damn house.

After a second he looked up and saw me watching. He shrugged, looking back at the business at hand.

“Whatchu gonna do?” He slurred. “This is what happens when you drink.”

Indeed. There is wisdom in there, if you care to look. By the time I decided the appropriate response would be to go get the garden hose, hook it up to the kitchen sink, open the front door and douse him, he was long gone, and I’d been staring blankly out the window for about fifteen minutes.

*Old hands will know automatically that sober is a relative term.