(Scene: our intrepid heroes run errands on a Saturday morning. In the distance: THE WAFFLE SHOP.)
Cate: Ooooooh let’s have waffles!
Joe: They’re closed. See? Closed.
C: But…but…waffles…
(a few minutes later)
C: There’s people inside! Seated!
J: Ehhh…I don’t know. Waffles?
C: PARK THE CAR WE’RE HAVING A WAFFLE.
One day this week I got really hopped up on coffee at work and was all (via email), “Joe! New kitchen faucet? Yes! How about this weekend?? Let’s also paint the cabinets! And walls! Ooooh, and we’ll install a new floor! KITCHEN EXTRAVAGANZA!!!”
After the caffeine high wore off…well, I was still pretty gung-ho about all these kitchen projects. But then my weekend started to look busy, and we wanted to go to happy hour last night, and my infinitely reasonable boyfriend was like, “hey, maybe we shouldn’t be charging into projects willy-nilly? Maybe some planning is in order?” And I was like, “SIGHHHHH, fine,” so we decided just to focus on the initial project: new kitchen faucet.
"I suck! I'm the worst!" - kitchen faucet
Like everything in our apartment, the kitchen faucet was crappy and didn’t work. It leaked a constant, drippy little stream of hot water – which Josie loved, because the flow of hot water through the pipes made a nice warm spot on the bathroom floor – and it hung so low we could barely get a pot under it. Washing dishes was an adventure, let me tell you. Oh, and the little sprayer-thingy? Not connected! Just dangling there! A ridiculous, nonfunctioning ornament!
"Try to fill a pot! I DARE YOU!" - kitchen faucet
So off we went to Home Depot. But, eh, I didn’t like their selection. So off we went to Lowe’s. And we ended up spending a bit more than we’d initially thought we might, but whatever. We got everything we wanted and it isn’t a cheap piece of junk, so. We trotted off home to put in the new faucet.
And then…we put in the new faucet. Easy-peasy.
This was supposed to be a comparison of the two, but it turned into faucet porn.
Start to finish? Including clean-up? Less than an hour! And now we have a gorgeous new faucet – that doesn’t leak! sorry Josie! – and we can fit a pot under it and I helped! I did, I really did! I mean, Joe did 75% of it, but I helped too and I feel awesome.
"I love you! I'm made of sunshine and rainbows!" - new kitchen faucet
I definitely have the DIY, “what can I do next?” bug. Lucky me (I think?), there’s no shortage of things needing attention in this craphole we call home. Next up: painting the kitchen. Unless I drink a pot of coffee and get inspired to move to another room…
FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Hello male human,
Sleeping late, I see. Too bad!
Get up and feed me!
xoxo,
Queen Josie
…you can’t take my perch from me.
(Josephine T. Cat – basil defender, window enthusiast)
Romance novel covers are an endless fascination of mine. Sometimes there’s just a lady, looking helpless or pouty or tousled. Sometimes there’s just a dude, looking swarthy and tough and menacing. Sometimes it’s a totally innocuous image and then you flip the page and – hey there! – sexytimes are unfolding. But sometimes, like with Chieftain – or maybe chiefTain or ChiefTain, it’s hard to tell from the font – the image is just…like…you know? I mean, WHAT is happening here? Is he unconscious? Has he been bludgeoned? The bulging muscles make him look very unrelaxed, like he’s waiting for something bad to happen.
…Which basically sums up this entire novel. Every page I turned was like, what kind of horror is going to pop up next? Look, I don’t think Nan Ryan is a racist person. I just think she probably did her research by watching Disney’s Pocahontas and prefers to rely on race-based stereotypes. But hey, let’s not let all those icky issues get in the way of a love story! It’s just fluff! It doesn’t have to be accurate! Haven’t white people suffered enough?
This week to spice things up I thought I’d read a romance novel about a young, beautiful woman and the older, muscular, very handsome, extremely damaged man that she falls in love with. You know, something a little different. Some uncharted territory. Something to keep me guessing every step of the way, something exciting and new.
I think everybody has a friend who or knows a woman who (or is the woman who) gets involved with really crappy men because she feels like she can “fix” their massive issues. It’s stupid in real life and it’s stupid in rom-com movies and it’s stupid in romance novels but of course it’s in like 110% of them, because hey why not, right? But here’s a novel that’s so damn SPECIAL and UNIQUE that it makes not only the hero a gigantic asshole in desperate need of fixing, but a heroine who is similarly assholish! It’s like an asshole match made in asshole heaven! Pretty much by p. 2 I stopped caring about either of them, though as the asshole-fest progressed I started to feel a little bad for the lady Violet (which, ps, is the name of my car – true story) because the earl was SUCH an assclown. Anyway…uh…enjoy?
