The Wallpaper Is Not That Bad

The wallpaper is not that bad.

This in my new philosophy, and it will stand firm, no matter how bad the wallpaper may be.  The wallpaper could be hideous . . . it could be streams and fishing poles, and you are an ardent PETA granola eating fruitcake which means that you find the wallpaper offensive.  Even so, the wallpaper is not that bad.  It could be too dark, some sort of nearly black faux wood paneling wallpaper, and it gives your house the ambience of a cave, and makes you feel lethargic and depressed and suicidal every morning when you wake up, so that you don’t even get out of bed, you lose your job, you gain 400 pounds,  and your family abandons you.  Even so, the wallpaper is not that bad.  It could be more of a mural, something Rubenesque that vaguely reminds you of Leda and the Swan, and causes you to feel liscentious and a tad bit loose with your morals.  Even so . . . the wallpaper is not that bad.

Our wallpaper situation involved grapes, inoffensive grape vines curling about in festive ways all over our kitchen walls.  I kind of liked the grapes.  They seemed wholesome and appropriate, so that a sense of bounty and goodness surrounded me while I cooked.  They would have been horribly inappropriate in the childrens’ playroom, for obvious reasons, but it was the kitchen.  The grapes were okay.

Ashlei hated the grapes.

So, I went out and bought paint, and set about to take the wallpaper off of the walls.  I had not yet learned my lesson, that the wallpaper is not that bad.

It took me perhaps five hours to peel the grapes off of our walls.  Some of the wallpaper came off in long sheets, and this was the easiest.  But too much of it came off in 1 square inch sections.  I used a razor blade to peel up the corners of the wallpaper, and I worked very carefully so as to not gouge the wall behind the grapes.  In working very carefully to avoiding gouging the wall, I found it impossible to simultaneously work very carefully to avoid slicing my fingers.  So I bled frequently on the grapes.  This was no great loss;  Ashlei reminded me that they were headed to the trash, so whether or not they got blood stained was not much of an issue. 

But even so, it vexed me to be continuously bleeding.

After the wallpaper was all off, and after I was no longer dripping, I realized that wallpaper is not all that goes onto the wall when wallpaper goes onto the wall.  There is another layer.  It looks like paper, and it has a lot of glue in it. 

Steve . . . remember Steve the contractor?  Steve is not my friend . . . Steve gave me very bad advice . . . Steve lied to me.  He told me to sand it off. 

I have a vibrating sander.  I hate my vibrating sander.  First of all, the sander is loud, and you have to hold it while it runs, right there in front of you.  You can’t sand from another room.  Also, the sander vibrates.  That means that it turns your nerves, skin, muscles, tendons, bones, and internal organs into jelly.  And finally,  the sander is not well designed, as far as keeping the sandpaper attached.  I averaged about 60 seconds of sanding for every 60 seconds of reattaching the sandpaper.  Actually, it was worse than that . . . it went like this:

1. Sand!  (1 minute)

2. Sandpaper falls off of the vibrating sander! (1 minute)

3. I yell vague threats and imprecations! (1 minute)

4. I reattach sandpaper onto vibrating sander! (1 minute)

repeat these steps 17,400 times.

You might notice that, for every 4 minutes spent on this process, only 1 minute is spent actually sanding.

Another bad thing about sanding: while it won’t work to do what you are wanting it to do, which is get rid of that underlayment glue paper, it does manage to spew several gallons of dust into the air.  So, if you want to breathe while you are sanding, you will have to time your breaths between your sneezes.

The vibrating sander did no good at all.  I sanded for many many hours, and the underlayment glue paper was still there.  it was very smooth underlayment glue paper, but it was not gone at all.  Also, every single piece of furniture in the entire house was now covered with dust.  Also, I was sneezing so hard that I was dislodging my eyeballs right out of my head.  Also, all of the body that I have above my sternum was vibrated into a shivering bag of jelly.

Ashlei encouraged me to “keep on keepin on.” 

Inspired by her stellar see-it-to-the-end attitude (which she transmitted to me from Oklahoma, where she was hiding while I did these things), I decided to see if I could just paint right over the underlayment glue paper.

This turns out not to be a good idea.  The underlayment glue paper, while impervious to a vibrating sander, does not do well with the moisture in paint.  What they need to do down there at Lowes, instead of dithering around and trying to sell dead tree pieces and caulk, is invent a dry paint. 

Because wet paint doesn’t work at all.  The minute I put it on, it started causing that underlayment glue paper to bubble up.

So, I stopped painting, and then my natural brilliance realized something.  The vibrating sander can’t get the underlayment glue paper to separate from the wall, even if you sand it for several dozens of hours.  But put some liquid on it, and it starts separating.  So I decided to put more liquid on it.  I checked out our collection of sprayers, and we had a variety.  I started out with the Raid.  I sprayed all of it, and it worked!  All I had to do was spray each section of underlayment glue paper until it dripped, wait about 3 minutes, spray it again until it dripped, and then the underlayment glue paper scraped right off with a trowel!  Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of Raid.  But we had a spray bottle of turpentine, which also worked nicely.  When that ran out, I found a bottle of Kerosene.  It wasn’t in a spray bottle, so I just sloshed it up there on the walls.  That underlayment glue paper peeled right off.  Then, I used paint thinner, and carbolic acid, and oxyethylene, and diesel, and at the end, I was using a mixture of hydrogenated chlorine and sodium pentothal. 

This took 46.9 hours.  I lost all of the skin on my hands and arms, suffered uncontrollable shakings, and frothed at the mouth. 

The underlayment glue paper, being glue paper, fell onto the floor of my kitchen, where it promptly dried out and turned into a congealed mass that was permanently bonded to the floor.  Having run out of chemicals, I am at a loss on how to get it off.

At this point on the process, I have scraped, square inch at a time, the grapes out of my kitchen.  I have poured a gallon of my blood out upon these grapes. I have vibrated my body into a moaning mass of miserable flesh.  I have filled my house with the dust of a thousand deserts.  I have saturated the sheetrock that still stands in my kitchen with a cornucopia of toxic fumes.  I have turned into a near dead shadow of my formerly healthy self.

The wall needs to be textured.  I have spent, now, around 6,943 hours working in my kitchen.  I have not yet begun to paint.

I cried.

Driving with fruitcakes

We all drive with fruitcakes.

They surround us.  They cause wrecks.  They talk on their cellphones, they text their friends, they apply makeup, they read newspapers, they fumble around on the passenger side’s floor looking for nail polish, they become deeply involved with all sorts of things while they use about 3% of their brain on the fact that they are driving a vehicle 70 miles an hour down a highway.

I do not like fruitcake drivers.

But I have to drive with them, so I have done a longitudinal study that considers the different factors that go into driving and fruitcakeness, specifically related to speed.

First, background:  I drive from Springfield, MO to Branson MO, several times a week, because I live in the one and work in the other.  For the purpose of this study, I focused on the strip of highway that stretches from the highway 65/60 interchange at the southeast corner of Springfield to the highway 65/248 interchange in Branson.  This is a 33.8 mile drive, and I have made it hundreds of times.

For this study, I drove a 2008 Toyota Tacoma with a4 cylinder engine and a 5 speed manual transmission.  The air conditioner was not deployed at any time during the test.  I chose this vehicle because it was readily available at the beginning of the study.  I was going to do the study with a BMW, but there was none available.

Originally, I just wanted to find out how much different speeds affected my gas mileage, but the study became much more comprehensive than that.  In addition to MPG, I kept records of how often I was passed at different speeds and how often I passed other people.  I also kept careful track of how many times I had to adjust my driving to accommodate a fruitcake; either somebody trapped me behind a truck and I had to slow down, or I had to speed up to avoid getting trapped, or I had to change the route entirely because a particular fruitcake was shooting at me.  I referred in my notes to “being caught” if I had to alter my speed significantly.  Finally, I paid attention to how I felt as I drove at different speeds-I gave a subjective stress rating (1-5, 1 being unstressed, 5 being quite stressed) to each drive as soon as the drive was over.

I drove at 3 different speeds, each for three weeks.  I could not keep a constant speed, because the Tacoma doesn’t have cruise control.  Instead, I focused on keeping my speed in a five MPH range.  I do not know whether these speeds were accurate or not; for my purposes, this did not matter.  For the record, I suspect that my speedometer reads slightly high; if the gauge says I am going 70 MPH, I think that I’m actually going about 67.

The first speed that I drove was 75 MPH, fluctuating between 73 and 78.   Objective results:  At 75 MPH, I passed other drivers significantly more often than I was passed.  I passed an average of 42 cars at this speed, and the most that I was passed was 4 times on one drive, and the least was once, which happened three different times.  Two of the cars that passed me I later saw pulled over by the police.  I can only assume that they were pulled over for speed.

At this speed, I averaged 23.07 MPG in the Tacoma. 

 As earlier mentioned, I did not know my actual speed, but I am quite sure that I was going over the limit.  I was never pulled over, so receiving a ticket did not factor into stress or finances.  However, I was aware that I was “speeding,” for whatever that is worth.  Any time I saw a patrol car going in either direction, I slowed down and worried that I had been caught.  I did not feel any moral guilt whatsoever, but I did feel a slight twinge of fear that I was going to get caught. 

I also had to shift to fourth gear to maintain my speed going up two long hills.  For some reason, this slightly raises my stress level.

My stress ratings for these three weeks were 3/5, except for one 4/5, on the trip where I got caught and had to slow down 4 different times. 

Two different times, I wrote (1 bad) behind the number of times that I was caught, to signify being caught for more than a minute. 

The second speed that I drove was 65, fluctuating below.  I tried to never go over 65.  Objectively, I was passed over 60 times on average.  I passed 4 semis one trip, 2 little old ladies one trip, and a bus.

I never had to change lanes; I just sat in the right lane and tootled along.  In fact, I am now formally introducing the word “tootle” into the lexicon of academic language:

Tootle  Verb.  [tood-l]  1.  To meander slowly without stress.  2. To not worry about whether or not you’ll be on time.  Tootled, tootling, tootles.  Ex: Jeb and Eliza certainly tootled stresslessly across Kansas in their Conestoga wagon druing the great expansion of 1885! 

I found that tootling to work had several advantages.  First of all, my gas mileage rocketed up from 23.07 at 75mph to 26.06 at 65 MPH  That may not seem like much, but you just have to do the math to see what long-term savings you can obtain: 

Assume that you drive 100 miles a day (very close to what I drive)

Assume that gas costs $3.00 a gallon (a bit low right now, but times change, and this is just for our estimation)

You can save $54,458.22 if you average 26.06 MPG instead of 23.07!  That’s the price of a BMW 5 speed, or a Porsche Boxster!  (It will take you 100 years to amass this amount)  Start today!

So, back to the study.  In addition to saving over $50 grand, I also found that my stress level plummeted.  I got passed by everybody, I never got stuck having to slow down or move over, and when I went up the hill, I just left the truck in fifth gear.  At the top of the hill, I was only going 55 or so, but I just didn’t care. 

How much longer did it take me to tootle?  Amazingly, it took me an average of 4 minutes longer.  I averaged 28 minutes while driving 75 MPH, and I averaged 32 minutes while driving 65 MPH.  So the difference in time is negligible. 

Now, here’s the interesting part.  When I tried to drive with traffic, everything was in between the two extremes.  At 65-70 MPH, my gas mileage was 24.39.  It took me right at 30 minutes, average, to make the drive.  But my stress level was highest.  This was caused by going with the flow of the traffic.  It means that I was passing and being passed about equally, which is stressful.  I was caught repeatedly, over 4 times a drive, on average, and so I had to either speed up a bit or slow down a bit.  It takes a long time to pass somebody when going 65-70, because the other person is only going slightly slower.  So traffic builds up behind me while I’m passing.  Then, people will cut around and pass me on the right if I don’t get over quickly enough.  This is stressful.  Sometimes, they will make hand gestures to indicate their feelings about me.  This is stressful.  Sometimes, they will also shout orders to me, telling me to do certain impossible and immoral things to myself.  This also is stressful.  I regularly came up on a semi, and wanted to pass, but was unable, because other cars were passing, so I had to slow down and wait.  This is stressful.  Waiting behind a semi also means that the semi will occasionally spray rocks or small dead birds at my windshield.  This is stressful.  On highway 65, the common speed is between 65 and 70 MPH.  I was going with the traffic here, and it was the worst. 

So, if you’ve been told that you should just drive with the traffic, you’ve been told wrong.  What you really should do is either drive significantly faster or slower than most of the traffic.  If I wasn’t worried about attracting the attention of the local gendarmes, I would drive 90, I would pass everybody, and I would and be completely stress free.  It would take me 23 minutes to make the drive.  It would be more fun.  If I had my Porsche, I’d do it in 120, and get there and it would take 17 minutes.  It would be lots of fun. 

The police have ruined everything.

I am sure that they will not allow me to drive at this significantly safer and stress free velocity, so I am instead choosing to drive even slower.  I am currently driving only 60 MPH, and seeing what that’s like.  I don’t have enough information to make any sure judgements, but I can tell you that the stress level is quite low.  60 MPH, when everybody else is going 65-70, is the essence of tootling.  I never pass anybody.  Semis pass me.  Semis pass me going uphill.  Old ladies in mid eighties Cadillacs pass me.  Old ladies with walkers by the side of the road pass me.  I’m amassing a large pile of cash from my improved gas mileage.  I don’t know what kind of gas mileage I’m getting, but it has to be good.  Perhaps I’ll slow down to 45 or so, and amass a million or so dollars.  If I slow down to 30, I can amass a billion.  If I slow down to 20, I can amass a trillion.  I am seriously considering slowling down to zero, and then I will amass an infinite number of dollars.  I already did the math, you don’t need to.  And when I amass an infinite number of dollars, you will come begging me for a loan, and I’ll say no.  First of all, I don’t want to run out, and second of all, slow down and amass your own infinite money. 

It’s all good.

apartment living, toilets, and beating people up.

Anna has shown an independent streak, just lately.

She has turned her bedroom into an apartment.

When I was about 11 years old, my Dad seriously thought about putting a toilet in my closet, just for me.  I liked the idea.  Why, you ask?  Well, I was showing an unusual affection for the toilet.  I was going in there and sitting on the thing for up to an hour at a time.  And there was only one bathroom in our house.

When I was 11, my sister and brother were both entering their maximum-irritating years, which they both have just recently started to come out of.  She was maybe 5, and he was maybe 3, and I was maybe wanting to spend long periods of time away from them, so I would go into the bathroom with a book, a long book, and I would do my job, but when I was done, I would just keep right on reading.  Eventually, Dad would beat on the door and shout, “It’s been over an hour!  hurry up and get out!”

It was a wonderful place, because I shared my bedroom with both of the irritants, and I couldn’t drive, and my brother could climb as high into the tree as I could, even when he was 3.  The bathroom had a lock, and a fan (good for shutting out the sounds), and it was my friend.

I so wanted that toilet in my bedroom.  With a toilet, I could come out of my bedroom every 3 weeks or so, stock up on food, and go back in there, lock my door, and never bother any of the family.  I could have become a hermit, or agoraphobic, or a semi-anti-social type of guy, instead of the well-rounded healthy individual that I ‘ve actually become.  It would have been a lot better.

But Anna has gone way, way beyond a private toilet:

She no longer sleeps in her bed.  She likes it to look nice, so she carefully arranges the blankets in aesthetically pleasing and balanced and well-folded patterns.  She won’t sleep under the covers, because that would ruin the bed. 

She really doesn’t like to sleep on top of the bed, either, because it makes wrinkles.  Instead, she has cleared a space in her closet, and put some extra blankets down, and she asks every night if she can sleep in there. 

Sometimes I say yes. 

She also has a dining room table.  In her room.  It has a nice tablecloth, a couple of chairs, and a decoration on top.  She asks if she and Abbey can eat at her table. 

So . . . Anna has a bedroom in her closet, a bed that she won’t sleep on, so it’s turned into a large piece of decorative whatever, and a dining room in the corner, next to her dresser, which she uses to hang random decorative decorations in decorative fashion.  All she needs is a toilet in the closet.

Abbey, meanwhile, is learning to beat people up.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a karate demonstration at her school, and she came home and said that she liked it.  Good enough for me; I signed her up the next day.

It was either that or some sort of dancing. 

I won’t be having any dancing.  I am a fair athlete; I play basketball, and people who are awful think I’m not bad.  I can hit tennis balls, sometimes all the way over the fence.  I do the P90X without causing damage to the house.  I’m not a muffin of studliness, but athletically, I could be a lot worse.  And I can’t dance, at all.

Anything I can’t do is suspect.  Dancing often involves shaking your booty at members of the opposite sex, which is absolutely no good.  Dancing is supposed to look graceful, but frankly, it mostly makes me uncomfortable, even when it is not I , personally, who is doing it.  Watching other people dance makes me slightly uncomfortable. 

This goes for all dancing:

Ballroom dancing?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Salsa?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Country down-home hoe-down boot scootin’ line boogying?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Ballet?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

the funky chicken?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Ghetto thumpy-beat dancing? Slightly uncomfortable. 

Cheerleading?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Interpretative dancing?  Slightly uncomfortable. 

Modern dance, with non-musical noise as accompaniment, that sort of back-to-our-primal-roots stomping about that seems to be filling our modern art schools?   Slightly very uncomfortable. 

Really, all dancing is uncomfortable for me, no matter who is doing it.  Frankly, gymnastics is uncomfortably close to dancing, which is enough discomfort for me, thank you very much.

Abbey is not learning to dance at all, though, which is what her mother wanted her to do.  But I was against it, because of the whole comfort thing, and also because Abbey has never shown a shred of interest in physical coordination.  However, she has shown interest in beating her sister up, and good parents are always looking to encourage their children’s natural proclivities, so we are helping her to learn to beat people up at a higher level of effectiveness.

She has a gi (Pronounced gi), which is the karate uniform, and it comes with a little white belt . . . she looks awesome in her outfit.  She’s not actually allowed to do any beating up until she progresses to her black belt, so I told her if she tries hard, we’ll just spray paint it for her in a couple of weeks.